If I asked you how you are right now, or if you are okay, what would you say?
We like to pretend everything is fine, with smiles that rarely show how we truly feel and rehearsed platitudes that mean absolutely nothing. "I'm okay," we say, even when we're not. Then we stop showing our pain as if it were impolite, avoiding it when others are around like it's not inconceivable to not be okay.
Most days, things aren’t fine. We’re tired and overwhelmed, yet we keep going, playing the role of “Functional Adult” in a world that expects us to hold it together. The truth is, we long for the freedom to fall apart without judgment and consequence.
The world isn’t comfortable with discomfort. It wants your grief to be quiet and your breakdowns to be brief. There’s a social expiry date on sadness, as if you can schedule your healing between meetings and errands. Stay sad too long, and suddenly you’re “negative.” Stay strong too long, and you’re “cold.” Either way, you lose.
“It’s okay to not be okay” has turned into a hashtag slogan, printed on mugs and tote bags by people who look passably alright. But behind the cliché, there’s a truth worth holding onto: it is okay. Not the kind of okay that fixes anything, but the kind that lets you stop pretending for a minute.
Sometimes, I think we just forgot how exhausting and draining life can be. That's why we think admitting we're not okay is a failure. That's not the case at all. If anything, it makes us human, and saying 'I'm not okay' is our way of celebrating our humanity. There's no such thing as a perfect person. No one has it all figured out. Life mostly deviates from our plans, so yeah, shit happens. And that's okay.
It's a simple reminder that we're all going through this unpredictable journey together, and admitting we're not okay is less about defeat and more about embracing our commonality in humanity. It's a chance to pause, breathe, and acknowledge that imperfection is part of the process.
Being okay isn’t about perfection or resilience. It’s about showing up as you are, cracks and all, even when things are hard.
Life can feel overwhelming. People disappoint you, expectations weigh you down, and sometimes the veneer of being fine all the time is genuinely hard to maintain.
You don’t need to rush through healing or turn pain into something poetic. Sometimes, just breathing through the struggle is enough, and acknowledging that things are genuinely hard, and to give yourself some patience in the process.
This is Where I Leave You: If you’re not okay right now, don’t rush to fix it. Sit with it. Feel it. Let the world blur for a bit. You’ll find your footing again. But you don’t have to smile through the fall. It's really okay to not be okay.
You're only human.
