Through my hardest moments and the hardest times in my life, I’ve struggled. I’ve found myself struggling a lot.
But during my struggles, I still managed to be there for my friends and show up for them when they needed me. Even though I was struggling and needed to focus on helping myself and doing whatever I could to make myself better, I also knew that it was possible to be there for those people in my life who were struggling as well. You can’t just close yourself off.
There are times where I think it is important to be selfish, times where we should absolutely put all of our focus only on ourselves. But there also are times where a struggling person can still help out someone else who is struggling.
I truly believe humans have the ability to care for themselves, while also caring for others. Sometimes we get so caught up in the way that we feel that we forget that even though we might be struggling, we still have something else to offer others in our lives.
We all want to be intrinsically understood. But how can we understand others if we just close ourselves off from them? Who will want to understand us if we always turn away from them?
In my hardest moments, I’ve had friends not bother to check in on me and I always tried to justify it. I was always ready and willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. I made excuses for them — that maybe they were struggling too, and that they were focusing so much on themselves that they didn’t have time to check in on me.
Then it hit me, even in my hardest moments and the hardest years of my life I had still made time to check in on them. Why couldn’t they do the same?
I realized that it is very possible to be there for yourself and others at the same time. In fact, I may even call it necessary to be there for others.
Some of us get so caught up in our struggles that we forget that even when we are struggling, we still have help to offer to someone else. We still have love to give out, even when we don’t feel like we’re receiving much.
This doesn't mean that we constantly have to put others before ourselves. It just means that we are capable of still being there for people even if we’re struggling a bit. We should always be showing up for the people we love and care for.
This can be as simple as just asking someone how they are doing, or if there is anything you can do to help them or simply bonding over similar struggles and finding a way to help each other based off of what you’re both going through.
It is possible to be there for yourself and other people too. Don’t stop giving out love when you’re not feeling any. Show up for the people you care about.
