When Life Becomes The Real Teacher.

Hello Hive Learners community, I hope you all are doing okay and having a better week than mine, Today’s prompt got me thinking deeply because it made me remember some hard truths I had to learn not from school or any textbook, but from life itself.

See ehn, school will teach you about subjects, grammar, and how to write long essays that follow format, but it won’t teach you how to protect your peace of mind ,that lesson? life itself taught me, and in the hardest way too.

I think the first time I realized this was when I started having issues in my personal life especially in my marriage, I won’t go into too many details, but let us just say things were not rosy like I hoped it would be, there was a time I would cry almost every day, and I still had to wake up and act like everything was fine, I was breaking inside, but I kept enduring because I felt like that was what I was supposed to do.

People around me kept saying things like “just be patient”, “it is how marriage is”, “don’t leave your home”, and all those phrases that just make you stay in pain because you are scared of being judged, So I kept enduring, but at what cost? I started to lose myself, my confidence dropped, I started to second guess everything I did, It felt like my entire identity was being swallowed up by unhappiness,that was when I knew that this was deeper than what school could prepare you for.

Nobody taught me in school how to choose myself without feeling selfish, Nobody taught me how to say “this is too much” and walk away for the sake of my mental health, I had to learn it on my own, I had to learn how to block out voices that didn’t live in my shoes and decide that my peace was important.

One day, I just told myself , if I continue like this, I might not survive it and I had to leave for my sanity, And trust me, it was not easy at all, The judgment, the insults, the whispers, the “what will people say?” , all of them came, But peace of mind has no price tag, I am not saying I have it all figured out now, but I am in a better place mentally, I smile more, I sleep better, and I am more present for my kids.

So yes, this is the lesson life taught me, Always protect your peace, Whether it is a relationship, friendship, family, job, or even a church group ,once it starts affecting your mental health, you owe it to yourself to step back, It doesn’t mean you are weak, It means you value yourself.

School never taught me that, Life did.

And that is why I hold on to it tightly, because this life is already hard, You don’t need to add unnecessary pain to it, If you do not protect your peace, nobody will do it for you.

I hope someone out there learns from my story too. Peace of mind first, always.

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