Donation of Emotions, A Comprehensive Insight Into My Teenage Years
- You must have experienced teenage mood swings, Right ?
- Did they ever get intense or hard to handle ?
- Did you ever feel like a stranger, during those years ?
Well, I did.
Disclaimer: The following story is fictional. It’s just a figment of my imagination. I wrote it during an emotional phase. It must give you an idea about how I perceived myself or how my self motivation during that time was nowhere to be found.
Here’s how I thought of myself.
I was incapable of handling emotions. Those little hormonal entities in my blood, made me crazy; but we need these emotions almost as much as we need air to breathe. So, my parents decided to set up a donation box in our yard on my twelfth birthday where people would give their unwanted emotions so that I could learn to experience them.
I am 15 now and have experienced the same darkness for the past three years. I woke up every morning to see my emotion box black in color. Every day I would open it and be sucked into a vortex of negativity. Having nothing to compare the feeling with, I started living in an illusion, believing those emotions filled the empty void inside me.
Like every other day I opened the box, without noticing that the it’s color was different that day. Suddenly I turned my frown upside down! I started appreciating the seemingly un-seeming, like the warmth of the sun on my skin. I felt uncomfortable. I didn’t know what this feeling was, but whatever it was, it was good. I yearned to feel that way every day when I opened my eyes.
Thoroughly engrossed in the strange feeling, I didn’t hear the sound of my parent’s footsteps approaching me. I turned around when they tapped my shoulders, overjoyed to see them for no apparent reason. They looked different given the way I was feeling that day. They informed me that this morning someone came and donated ‘Happiness.’ I now felt it, so indebted to the person that I asked if he had left us an address so that I could thank him. He didn’t, just a piece of paper that read ‘Enjoy.’
What made me change my perspective.
JH Hard once said, “All that you were desperate to be, when all you needed to be was you.”
I relate to this quote now, when I am older and realize that; I myself, had put me into a shell and excluded myself from the world beyond. I was like a caterpillar trapped in a cocoon, it didn’t need to be in. The idea of morphing into a butterfly was unfathomable at that point. But I made it and so can you !
I felt hesitant in approaching my friends to share feelings or get some advise as I knew they too were sailing in the same ‘Teen Crisis Boat’. So I found a best friend in my mother.
She made me realize that when we were babies, unable to express ourself it was our parents who understood every single need of ours, without words. The teen phase isn’t different either; they are still there for us. We are the ones not willing to speak.
Let’s think about it, before entering the phase, parents were our best friends, weren’t they? Whatever happened in school we always rushed back home to tell them. Whenever we get hurt we used to come back home to them, so that they could ease our pain… So why should the first adolescent year be any different ?
My mother made me realize that the situation never changes, our thought process changes and makes us feel like a stranger, to the people we love the most.
We need to learn how to fight this feeling. Take the help of your parents. They’ll help you find your true personality. And why not give the people who gave birth to you the pleasure of getting to know you 100% unfiltered.
How I found myself, again
In the journey of finding myself, my mother pushed me into debating and Model United Nation conferences; And let me tell you my first conference was scary. I didn’t know how to talk to people, How to manage and defend my portfolio, and things like that. I looked for bits and pieces of me in others and the exposure I got from there was amazing!
I won the next event, and there was no going back from there. Slowly and steadily my personal development graph went up. Debating allowed me to gain confidence to interact with wonderful people and thus find beautiful things about myself.
Through debating, I learnt people skills and got to know about how general human psychology works. Today I consider myself as a very upbeat and extroverted person. I am not afraid to make friends or talk to them. This was all because of my dedication towards getting out of my cocoon, even when it felt difficult.
So take motivation and always believe in the mantra that ‘This too shall pass !’
So believe in yourself, because you are unique, you are the best. Remember you too are going to transform yourself into a butterfly. The cocoon will break, because it is just a phase; but it will require strength from you. You are going to become a beautiful butterfly, I believe in you !
