Life isn’t always going to go as you thought it would. It is often full of surprises that you cannot in any way predict. As someone who cries when hit in the face with the kinds of surprises that life throws at me, I am here to give you some advice: It is okay to take a step back.

If you were just hit in the face with a surprise like, say, finding out your cat died, you are free to drop whatever it is you are currently doing to grieve. Take a step back from whatever your life is currently trying to hand you while simultaneously smacking you in the face with that bad news. Of course, in some cases you will need to maintain your composure until after life is done handing you a thing before you get to let your emotions out, and that is fine too, as long as you don’t just bottle up what it is that you’re feeling and tuck it away.

Take this from someone who still has trouble expressing how she feels to certain people: you are eventually going to need to talk about something important, and if you’re as emotionally constipated as I am, the dams might just burst and you might just start crying randomly. I speak from experience. Taking breaks from responsibilities or events to express emotions about other struggles is not selfish.

Really, there aren’t a whole lot of things that are selfish-- the word is just exploited as a way for other people to make you feel bad when they do even the tiniest things for yourself. Do not be that person, and don't feel obligated to accept that kind of treatment .

Another reason you should learn to take a step back from everything going on around you is so that you do not get overloaded in the first place. When I was young, I often got too ambitious and tried to invest my energy in too much at once. I still do this today. This behavior often results in me crying and inconsolable, unable to let someone know what is wrong until I have gone and cried out all I can cry. This process usually takes anywhere from a couple of hours to an entire day, and by that time I usually have forgotten why I was so upset in the first place. I hardly ever give myself time to just step back and absorb what is going on.

While you are still growing, you need to understand this. You may want to run headlong into things to prove that you are mature enough to handle whatever situation you are thrown into, and some of you may be sure, but a bunch of us aren’t. There is nothing wrong with turning down or stepping back and taking time to consider, whether the decision is small or monumental. Life is all about learning how and when to make certain decisions. Granted, life may just want to throw unpredictable situations at you at random, but once you have them, you have them. Don’t take terribly long to decide (another, somewhat paradoxical, flaw of mine), but please know that you are allowed to take time to figure things out.