By Sarah Hawkins, TIWP Student

It is a weird thing to say, but sometimes I just want to not be okay. It’s not that I don’t want to be happy. It’s that sometimes I’m going to be sad or angry and instead of hearing, “You’ll be okay,” I want to hear, “It’s okay that you are not okay.”

When I hear the words, “You’ll be okay,” or “You have great things coming” or anything like that, guilt sets in. It doesn’t automatically make me feel better like someone might think. It makes me feel like I am not supposed to feel bad. Then I have to respond—and how do you respond to that?

Maybe I will be okay or maybe I won’t, but at this moment I am not. And that’s okay.