It’s 02:30 am, the window is half open and your eyes can't close. Another sleepless night. Your anxieties are so disturbing that sleep decides to move away. You’re scrolling your phone screen in order to escape from those thoughts, but it’s useless. You simply can’t stay away from them. They seem to be ghosts, haunting you all day and at night they decide to attack. It’s terrible. 

   It’s a mix of emptiness and fullness, since you have your mind full of thoughts but all of them are meaningless. It’s hard to control it, sometimes impossible, because they seem to be from the external world. But, trust me, they are from inside. Your wish is to get out of your head and rip them out, from outside. Or sometimes you just want to run far far away, for another country, for a lost land, for somewhere you could feel secure. Even the simplest things, like taking a shower, become a torture. You can’t deal with anymore, you just want to leave, you just want to smile again, you just want to be free. 

   I think the best example I can give you to show what I’m talking about is this one: you lay down on bed or on the couch in order to take a nap. Sometimes, you actually succeed. But, in the majority of them you do not achieve your goal. Instead, you stare at some random point, even though you are not really seeing anything, and start to think about all of your problems for minutes straight. Your life seems to be messy, with everything out of order.  

  I know this feeling very well. Last year (2020) I went through a tough process of self-discovery, which began terribly. The journey was even worse, but the outcome and the things I’ve learned were worth the suffering. I had an experience with mental illness  that I think also happened with a ton of other people. I won’t give a lot of details about it, but what I can say is that I was overwhelmed with the amount of thoughts my mind was processing. I wouldn’t say I had clinical depression, but it was close, very close. The levels of anxiety were ridiculous and kept me down for months. I lost the happiness of living.

   The pandemic has affected everyone in different ways, but a common sense is that mental health was one the hardest hit things. Especially for young people, this time has been a challenge and will definitely leave a scar. Maybe I’m wrong, but I don't remember any historical time when so many people were suffering from their minds. We all agree that this is in the list of most urgent issues of 21th century. Mental stability has never been so desired. 

   In helplessness many youngsters start to think about taking the extreme step of ending their lives. This is insane! How can you give up from the most extraordinary thing that has ever and will ever happen to you: being alive. You can only feel all the sensations, experience all the good and bad things, and think of any thought you want because you are alive. You’re alive. You’re part of life. You’re a slice from the bid cake called creation, in whatever religion you believe. 

  But, has anyone ever told you this? And school? Or, maybe your parents? I guess you said no. And this is the problem: no one has ever told you how to think. Not what to think, but how to think. This is one of the biggest failures of the world education system: the lack of discussion about the ways I can think to boost my life. Now, you may be thinking: what’s the relation of these things with my mental health problem. Well, everything. All of your crazy thoughts come from the imbalance, your imbalance with your own mind. And this comes from the fact that consciousness was never taught to you from anyone (if you’re reading this and someone showed how to be conscious with your mind, congratulations because you’re part of a selective group of people). You were taught how to read and write, how to solve math problems, how to plan your future and choose a college and a career path to pursue. But, you weren’t taught the basics on how to approach your own life with counscioness.   

   When you are far from the harmony point, you’re not even thinking anymore. Thinking means that you’re exercising your thoughts consciously. But now, it’s just a mental diarrhea that 's simply happening. The content of your thoughts don't matter that much, because the worst part is that you're doing it unconsciously. When you consciously reflect about what you're doing, you have the path for a harmonious life traced. But, how do you do that? This is a question that I was used to asking myself last year. And, I’m going to share my reflections about it in the next blog post.