I’m an Introvert. Here’s Why I Write.

For the past few months, I have felt conflicted about why I am writing for Your Friend Jane.

It started out simple. I felt alone; I discovered this burst of inspiration to start anew; I wrote about it; I published Your Friend Jane's first post on discovering myself through my loneliness. That's it. I did not think of the long-term goals of this blog. I just wanted to validate my feelings and share it on a platform to help others.

But it began the wave of comments from people who read that first post, were dealing with the same thing and felt inspired from what I wrote.

What was beautiful about that first post was it was my first glimpse of what a simple thing could do.  Simply admitting that I was not feeling my best but that I was going to stay positive had impacted a few people already. It began to open the door of what I really loved to do — make people realize that they are not alone and to feel inspired to live.

It flourished into a dream I had not envisioned before. My goal had always been to help people, sure. And I had always really enjoyed giving advice to my friends about pursuing their dreams, being who they want to be, living in the moment. But this platform, this rinky-dink platform that maybe, what, 10 people read? It began to transform into my passion.

But passions sometimes crumble when the pressures of what is expected and what receives the most praise becomes more important than the truth behind the content.

That is what happened with this blog.

I began to write things that I believed would inspire people the most which meant being positive all of the time.  I mean, I do try to be positive in my everyday life, try to make people laugh, try to see the light behind the clouds. There is just no good in being negative all of the time, and you can really look at anything (within reason) with a positive light.

But I began to write about mental health in a way that I did not entirely feel captured what I had intended, just for the sake of avoiding judgment from others. When I was writing these posts, I would think to myself, "Perhaps this is too much negativity and not enough positivity? I will just cut out that paragraph about my mental illnesses and add a few more about being positive! I don't want to scare anybody or make anyone worried. If they just read all of this negativity, they won't want to read my posts again."

This is where I need to write my truth. 

Your Friend Jane began as a journal, a journal where I was trying to convince myself to see the light and where I thought my issues were just me overreacting. Because I did not know that a person could act okay but still be hurting on the inside. I really just needed a platform to vent on.

However, as this blog begins to evolve into something somewhat grander than what it was, I know that what I was writing about in the past was not just a feeling, not just me being sad. I was hurting and in need of help. 

I have since then grown. I have realized that a person can appear happy but feel destroyed inside and that writing about your struggles is not always enough to get over them. I am beginning to understand how my mind works, what makes me feel happy, who makes me feel happy, where I want to go in this life. I am much happier than I was.

But I am still on this journey of peace. I am not fully healed. Will I ever be? Who knows. But that is what is really inspiring about mental health. We are all on this journey of discovering inner peace. Some may discover countless bumps and fallen trees along their route, some may find a simple path that leads straight to it. Either way, we are all allowed to do things at our own pace.

I want to continue this journey of self-healing in an honest manner. I want to write about my story just as much as I want to write about being positive, pursuing your passions, learning to accept yourself before you love yourself and more.

I really just want to write what I feel without the fear of judgment, shock or of worrying people. And what I will write about will not always positive, but that does not mean I should not write about it. 

That is what this blog is — a journal. I want to show people that you can appear happy but still be suffering. You can be a strong person but still experience days of weakness. You can have this desire to help others but still be figuring things out yourself.

Ultimately, I want to write these things at my own pace in a manner that is honest and inspirational. We are all trying to figure out what makes us happy. Like many people at this age, I am still figuring out what that is exactly, but that is why I do this. I want to be on this journey with you. This kind of thing shows us that we are never really alone.    

So yes, I want to spread positivity through my writing. I genuinely want people to fulfill their dreams and live their life to the fullest, because as cheesy as it may seem sometimes, I think we all need that reminder that you really only have one life, so why not make it a good one?

But I also want to be honest. Honesty is not always sunshine and fairies, but I do want it to be at the core of what I do.

I just want to live an honest, happy life.

Your friend,
Jane