Hopefully Accepting

Should you need help on mental health, you can reach the Baguio City Health Services Office Mental Health and Wellness Unit at 0919-069-6361, Department of Health CAR – Mental Health Unit at 0938-757-6458 and the Baguio General Hospital Psychiatry Unit at (074) 442-2365.

Acceptance – an element in a psychedelic plethora of words. Big words. Perhaps the hardest thing to do when you are left with no other choice. One thing that any person would struggle with whether with a mental illness or not.

Sometimes, acceptance is the bravest thing to do. It is turning your back at times in order to find you. It is going further with open-ended questions. It is taking reroutes when you know that things aren’t serving its purpose.

It’s like wearing that happy smile after you cried yourself to sleep last night. It’s like laughing again after that loss or grief you felt. It’s like forcing yourself to get up after taking a big fall.

Sometimes if you think of it – like analyze it without bias judgment, you know what you had to do – to accept. Why? It is because life is not always a happy or triumphant ending. It’s not even a bed of roses like when Bon Jovi mimics that in a high toned and raspy voice.

Sometimes it may also take time and learn to grow on your skin like pruned grapes ready for the picking. They say only time will tell but I think time is just an element essential for acceptance. Why? It is because some of the darkest nights may be survived somehow – although it seems chaotic at first.

Yet, know that whatever happens this circumstance may pass too. Things may be better. But in the case of mental illness and other health issues, things may not be too hopeful and may not be guaranteed.

However, do remember that we are often our hard-headed self. Sometimes when the world thinks we can’t do it, the more we challenge the world that we can be something. Maybe not as much as we have dreamed of but perhaps even more than ourselves – to manifest our true selves.

Acceptance per se is not failing because it entails the greatest bravery known to mankind. It is always the concept of trying and realizing what needs to be done and what really works. For sometimes, our emotions are that – they form the basis of our decisions and actions.

There really is no one rule in this world. There really is no one way to acceptance even in mental health. There really is no one coping strategy to emphasize that acceptance will happen. But as far as I can say, do what’s good for you.

Afterall, you will know what is good for you too – despite the non-objectivity that happens during moments of insanity. But there will be lucid intervals, the ones where you realize you knew what you had to do exactly.

Maybe, a lot of times – just try to live. You were born here in the first place, there is no other purpose but to live and feel.

You may think you’ve wasted so much time on one thing, one person or one illness. But really, maybe it’s not wasted time. It is the purpose of becoming. It is the purpose and the right to live.

It’s National Disability Rights Week, live with the right to live. Maybe then, things will be better and simpler. Let’s not make things too complicated, aren’t we?

Know that you are amazing and able in many ways!