It’s all my fault and that’s okay.

Accepting my own role in the struggle

Hii!

Every week, I’ll share personal essays from fellow Sadgirls in our community. For now, let’s call it…Sadgirl Submissions! This allows us to share our experiences with each other and normalize emotional expression. This week’s essay is from Aisha, who says:

Hi my name is Aisha, I’m a Nigerian-Irish screenwriter, director and Libra. Learning to wear my heart on my sleeve. For all my ramblings about life, creativity, and film, you can read my essays on Substack.

If you’d like your essay considered, check out this post.

TW: Mental Health, Depression, Anxiety

At 24 I had somehow become my most bitter and anxious self, horrified by my own inability to be grateful, to smile, to live fully in the moment. I chastised myself for this inability. How come I have not healed? How have I regressed?

I had become so accustomed to my issues falling neatly into the fact I struggled a lot with my mental health. But now I’ve done the therapy, been weened off of the sertraline, and recited the prescribed morning mantras—how do I learn to live with myself?

So, of course, I ran straight back to my therapist, completely afraid to face whatever was ahead of me. I have somehow become used to suffering, that was my normal, life just happens to me and I take the suffering on the chin, I persevere. And when suddenly it wasn’t, I didn’t know what to do with myself. How do you embrace life when it has burned you so many times before? I felt as if I was naively putting my hand back on the stove. So I self-sabotage, I make life harder for myself, I stay in situations that do not serve me, I overspend, I envy, I overeat, I bedrot, I refuse to be vulnerable, I give up and do not start again.

I think part of me clings to the suffering because it feels familiar, almost safe. There's a strange comfort in knowing what to expect, even if it's pain. Letting go of that feels like stepping into the unknown without armor, like I’m exposed to a world that could disappoint me all over again. And so, I sabotage myself—not because I want to fail, but because I know how to handle the fallout of failure. Success, joy, even just peace—they feel foreign, almost suspicious, like a kindness I haven’t earned.

I was creating my own problems because I felt lost not having anything to fix. This is, of course, a toxic way to live. My therapist is Nigerian and quite blunt, she told me in part I needed to get over myself and accept the fact that my life was still a good life, albeit not perfect but a good life and I am on the path of building an even better one if I want it. She firmly cemented that part of learning to live again is learning to trust life, even when it doesn’t make sense. Trusting that not every twist and turn is an omen of disaster.

I wanted my therapist to validate my pain, to confirm that the emptiness I felt was a reasonable response to my life. But instead, she handed me a truth I wasn’t ready to hear: my suffering had become a habit. A crutch. And while my pain was valid, it wasn’t the only story I could tell about myself. It wasn’t the story I had to keep living.

I’d been waiting for some moment of arrival, some ultimate healing before I allowed myself to just live. And what if that moment never came? Was I going to spend my whole life in limbo, waiting for permission to enjoy it? The thought terrified me. But it also woke something in me—a flicker of determination to stop waiting and start living, imperfect as I was.

I crawl back to myself — desperate to accept happiness back into my life. I tell myself I am an inherently happy person, but I just need to find that joy all over again. Joy didn’t come rushing back all at once. It wasn’t a grand arrival; it was in the tiny moments I’d trained myself to overlook.

The worst of it was truly over, and I can start over. So I say my morning mantras, I make my gratitude lists, I breathe in, and I breathe out. I clean my room and make my tea. These feelings have not disappeared, but I acknowledge I can handle them, I can cope, and they do not hold me hostage. I still talk to my therapist on occasion, but I do not feel that same reliance.

I do my best, and that’s enough. Some days, joy is small—a fleeting smile at a stranger or the sun spilling over my desk. Other days, it’s harder to find, but I remind myself that it’s there, waiting. Healing isn’t perfect, and it isn’t linear, but maybe that’s the beauty of it. I’m learning to trust that happiness, like pain, is a part of life I don’t need to run from.

love,

Aisha ✰

♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡

Read my surreal novel: How to Be a Better Adult

Read my nerdy self-help book!: The Magical Girl’s Guide to Life

Follow me on Instagram!: @Jacqueaye