The Way I See It: I felt alone until I realised we are all connected

16-year-old Ellie Menton discusses how our feelings can affect those around us.

I had two weeks recently where I felt the lowest I’d been in a while. The smallest things were over-whelming me, and I was so tired that my personality took a dramatically negative shift.

Things that usually made me happy were drowned out by the white noise of my panic; I was worried that I was becoming someone I did not want to be, and I couldn’t ask for help, because I didn’t know what anyone could do to help.

Looking back at my upbeat attitude last month, I have no idea when, or why, I slipped up and let myself get so upset. Either way, the more I think about it, the more I see that I did very little to help myself feel better.

I stopped taking care of myself. I tossed my own advice out the window and forgot that I’m a human being.

I need water and sleep and good food and fresh air, because, contrary to what I might think, I am not, in fact, a machine.

And, of course, once I stopped taking care of myself, it had a domino effect and began to affect the people around me.

It’s crazy, isn’t it?

No matter how insignificant you might think you are, you’ve impacted the lives of the people around you.

Everything is so intricately woven together that, when you step back to examine it, the complexity of our interconnectedness is almost ridiculous enough to laugh at.

I mulled this over for a little bit, and listed out things or feelings for which I was grateful, to remind myself of things that come to me naturally and that I can reach out and find whenever I need to.

I thought of walking into a warm room after being out in the cold, or my fingers shaking excitedly while opening a package for which I’ve been waiting, or sitting down to do some work and realising I have it already done.

Looking at life as something filled to the brim with experiences makes it much more exciting to me. Sure, there’s going to be bad stuff, but the good stuff doesn’t just disappear in the presence of negativity. It only gets harder to see.

Every emotion you feel, every sensation, is an entire experience in itself.

Becoming aware of how I felt made it easier for me to figure out what my next move was, and helped me understand myself a little more.

Don’t get me wrong, this little epiphany doesn’t solve all of my problems, but it does let me deal with myself and enable me to improve, while feeling relatively happy along the way.

I’ve grown a little, and for that I am both glad and grateful.

It probably means I’m doing something right.

Ellie Menton is a 16 year old secondary school student.