It hasn’t been a good week. A lot of things haven’t gone my way, and yet a lot of people around me don’t know that. I try to be positive and happy even if I’m not because I feel like that is what has been ingrained in me. I don’t know what taught me that though. It could be my parents, friends, peers or the environment I’ve grown up in. However, pretending to be happy all the time is exhausting.

I understand the theory that if you think positively and act positively, something will turn in a positive direction however, sometimes people just need a day to decompress. A day where they can acknowledge life, even if they have to be around friends, or peers or anyone. Being happy all the time is just as unhealthy as being sad all the time. Everyone knows the one person who always is super enthusiastic and hyper. No matter where, when, who or how that person is always bringing positive energy but it is severely obvious when they fake it. If you have to fake the happy emotion you are expressing, you need a day to be human.

We, as a society, need to make it more normalized to show emotions. Just because we cry or scream things in public doesn’t make us weak, emotions are human. I shouldn’t have to force myself to act happy when a life altering, negative thing happens to me. I should be able to express my emotions and not have to feel weak because I cried.

There are many common phrases said to us when we are feeling down whether it be, “there is no crying in a baseball” or “think happy thoughts.” However, these phrases have been around for literally years and things have changed. Now we have technology which makes things like social media available. With the newer things in mind I think the newer generations need to have more emotional flexibility than others had to in the past.

Now I am not saying you should wallow in self-pity and sadness for days upon end. I do agree, to an extent, that crying is not going to help anything. However every now and then we should be able to wallow for a couple days. We should not feel obligated to fake happiness.

The newer generations have begun the change. Mental health has now become a part of the conversation, in fact a lot of the time it is the conversation. However, this is just the start. We need to teach that it is okay to show emotions, to both new and old generations. We need to learn it for ourselves so we can show our children it is okay to be human. If we do not change now with us it will take eons to make this change happen. Let emotions happens, they are what makes us human beings.