To Everyone Who Has Been Told That They Need To ‘Chill’ Because They’re Too Emotional

I’m sure it’s nice to be chill. I’m sure it’s so much easier to live in this day and age when you’re not as emotional or hot-headed as others. I’m sure it prevents a lot of heartbreak and pain when you don’t care about what people do to you and when you don’t fall too deeply. I’m sure it’s refreshing to know that you’ll never be torn because of another human being since you always have the upper hand.

It’s better to be you, I admit that. You just know how to move on, how to get over things, how to detach and how to let go.

But you have to understand that some people are simply not born this way. Some people can’t help but feel everything, some people can’t help but live through their hearts and their emotions because that’s how they feel alive.

They’re emotional, they’re impulsive, they overreact, they cry, they bleed easily and they need love. They can’t live without love. They need to feel. It’s their air, their water and their universe.

Asking them to be ‘chill’ or ‘cool’ is like asking a flower to bloom in the middle of winter.

They’re just not wired this way, it’s not in their nature, their minds can’t comprehend it and their hearts can’t just let go. They’re the ones who hold on, they’re the ones who forgive, they’re the ones who keep giving chances, they’re the ones who keep fighting for all the wrong ones, they’re the ones who dream and the ones who still believe in happy endings.

When they like someone, they want to be with them all the time, they want to know everything about them, the want to always be there for them and they want to cherish them. They can’t play games, they can’t date multiple people, they just can’t take their feelings lightly and they don’t know how to forget someone they can’t stop thinking about.

When they’re hurting, they can’t just switch their feelings off, they have to hurt in order to heal, they need time to understand their pain and they need space to regain their strength. They can’t wake up and pretend like nothing happened, they can’t act, they can’t just live their day-to-day life when they know something is killing them.

They know they make their lives harder than it has to be but they can’t also run away from themselves. They can’t run away from the truth. They can’t run away from their feelings.

So don’t tell them to be chill. Just tell them that it’s okay to hurt, it’s okay to feel, it’s okay to have emotions that others may not understand, because they know that no one can really help them or understand them but sometimes they just want to know that people won’t judge them, they won’t make fun of them, they won’t call them crazy, because they already feel alone in this world and it gets lonelier when even the closest people to them are asking them to be someone they can’t be, someone they can’t even understand. 

Rania Naim is a poet and author of the new book All The Words I Should Have Said, available here.