The Year of Digging
In July I shared with my Instagram followers that 2018 was, and still is, my year of isolation. I think that for anybody graduating from varsity and moving to a new place, starting a new job, it requires a lot of adjusting. Whether you are moving to a rural area, or a big city, you have to find new people. New people that you can rely and depend on. As the age old saying goes, no man is an island. This year, however, has taught me that every now and again, isolation is needed. Some sort of separation from your normal routine, normal environment, normal crowd. This separation does not promise comfort. It does not promise a smooth sail. But it does promise growth, it does promise a lot of learning and unlearning, and it does promise adventure.
A year ago around this time, I had just finished my final exams of my undergraduate studies. I was trying to catch up on all the sleep that I had missed out on, while trying to come to grips with the reality that I was now done with varsity. The pace at which I had to work was much faster that the pace with which I was faced with this year. I could get home and actually be a couch potato if I wanted to. It was a totally different tempo from what I had become accustomed to in the past four years.
A few months into my ‘isolation’, I started feeling some things bubbling up inside of me. Things that I had suppressed during my varsity years because I just didn’t have time to deal with them. The thing about varsity is that it is not on your timetable, or life events. It doesn’t matter what you are going through, there is still that case study that needs to be handed in tomorrow. It doesn’t matter if you’ve just lost your grandmother, there is still that reflection that is needed on Friday. You kind of learn to just take a breath, push the issue aside, and work through the tears. This is the trap of living a fast paced, highly demanding life.
I started realising that throughout varsity, I picked up some coping mechanisms. Coping mechanisms that weren’t necessarily healthy. But these coping mechanisms helped me to meet deadlines, and they got me to lectures every week. I identified these coping mechanisms, not only in myself, but in those that were close to me. Instead of dealing with the emotions and thoughts that were confronting us, we would eat, we would nap, and we would spend hours on YouTube. All of these things made us feel ‘better’. But they were just one of the many layers that we were piling up on top of what we were feeling and thinking. Kind of like an emotional chocolate trifle.
I believe that this emotional chocolate trifle is what is leading a lot of young people into addictions and depression. We do not know how to deal with things in a healthy way. We don’t know how to be vulnerable and who to be vulnerable with. We have learned to just soldier on, even when we can sense that we need time out. It is because of this that I often ask my closest friends the following question: “Are You Okay?” And my friends know by now that I cannot accept “okay” or “fine” as an answer. Because the truth of the matter is that when we don’t speak about our emotions, we continue to ignore and supress them and that is a recipe for disaster.
Jenny TeGrotenhuis, a therapist and certified clinical trauma professional, wrote a great blog post on how connecting with your pain can actually save your life. I just want to encourage you to analyse your coping strategies, and to deal with the pain and issues that have been buried by all the busyness and distractions. Lastly, don’t forget to check up on those close to you because we’re all fighting something.