“What happened to us? You know? I don’t know who I am anymore. Or how I got here. I miss who I used to be. I wanna have a home again, you know? And real friends. You know, the kind of friendships we used to believe in. I miss that. And I miss you. I guess I miss all of it. Does any of that make any sense?” --Peyton Sawyer (One Tree Hill)
Growing up is one of the hardest things to do, especially when you realize that things are no longer what you thought they once were. These can be relationships, jobs, or even part of yourself. In the past two years, I have watched some of my closest friendships decline to something I don't really recognize anymore...something that breaks my heart because friendships mean the world to me. These are the friends that once saved my life...and now we rarely speak. I have been pushed to realize that the friends I once held so near and dear to my heart...just aren't there anymore. Who's to blame though? Is it really one side or the others' fault? Or are we just victims of becoming adults? I never once intended for friendship to be ephemeral. I wanted these friendships to be life long, but it is at a point in our lives where I honestly don't know what will become of us. My heart aches to know that everything will be alright and that they won't forget what I still know...and that is that no matter what has been said (or not said) or done, they are still the best friends I've ever had.
We've all been growing up, but in that growing up, we have forgotten how to communicate with one another. I go weeks without hearing from them unless I actively make an effort to talk, which is really hurting me. I have tried to reach out, only to find that the harder I try, the more I feel like people pull away from me and push me out. Is it something I did? Or didn't do? I honestly don't know, but I feel so lost in all of this. I guess the point is that, I just miss my friends.
Monday, March 19, 2012
Friday, March 9, 2012
Stay Strong
“There are days where I don’t think I can make it. An addiction is an addiction and you are going to deal with it for the rest of your life. You are going to have days where you are going to struggle. I’m not perfect. But now at least I’m honest with myself and everyone around me.”-- Demi Lovato
For those who don't know me, I have struggled with an addiction for the better part of the last 9 years of my life. When I was 14, I started to cut myself to deal with the emotional trauma that I was dealing with in my personal life at home. Things were awful as I was never allowed to talk about it outside of the family, so essentially I had no one to talk to. In addition to that, I was being abused in ways that no child should ever be abused by a parent. My biological father would hit me, yell profanities at me, slap me across the face, and throw me into walls on a daily basis because he would get angry about something I supposedly said or did/didn't do. But it didn't end there. When I was 14, he was charged with indecency with a child for molesting a close friend of mine while she lived with us. He professed his innocence and we were wait-listed for a trial. This catalyst induced my silence, which came at a lack of personal choice from myself as I wanted so desperately to talk to someone about it while we waited to go to trial for 2 years. So I stayed silent. And in that silence, I was forced to turn to the one thing that would relieve my emotional hurt and pain. Cutting.
By the time we reached trial 2 years later, I was at a point where I couldn't stop myself. There were always little pink lines from fresh cuts on my upper arms and some on my legs where I could easily hide them with pants and shirts. No one knew and no one asked about them either, so I felt safe in my own cocoon of self-harm and escaping the hell that I lived in. During that time, I was also diagnosed with depression by my doctor and put on medication, though shortly taken off afterward when my appetite drastically decreased to nothing. Though I kept my cutting a secret still. After the trial, the truth was revealed as to what kind of monster my biological father really was, so my mother divorced him by the time my 17th birthday came around in September of that year. By then, I had scaled back on the amount of cutting I was doing as things were getting a little better without my biological father in the house to beat me or terrorize me anymore. Yet, I was so entrenched in my addiction that I couldn't completely stop myself. I needed it to function and get through my days where people now knew what my family was like...the truth of how horrible a man my biological father really was. (Even if they still didn't know about the heaps of abuse he threw on me for years before that.) My heart cried out for help to the wall of friends that I had at the time, but I just couldn't bring myself to tell them the truth of what I was doing to myself. I was ashamed and embarrassed that I had sunk so low that I was hurting myself to escape the pain in my heart.
Throughout the rest of my junior year, I hid the fact that I was still cutting and hurting myself from the rest of the world. None of my friends knew anything about it or if they did, they never said anything about their suspicions during that time. It became harder and harder to hide it as I was running out of places to cut that hadn't already been hit before and were too sensitive to touch for a while. Gradually, I just started wearing long-sleeves in the middle of August in Texas. Which isn't normal. But people didn't say anything to me. It wasn't until 2006 that someone intervened and saved my life. It took several months of trying and failure before I was finally able to stop cutting completely. During that time, I was also seeing a school counselor to help me work through some of my problems since I was now allowed to talk about my family life at home. November 2, 2006 will always have a significance in my life as it marked the beginning of a new life for me. From that day forward, I have not cut myself once. Almost 6 years have come and gone since that day and I am still going strong. But I won't lie and say that there haven't been days where I want to break down and give in again. In fact, there have been many days where I have felt like giving up and going back to what helped me through so much turmoil in the past. But that isn't what recovery is about. Recovery is making a promise to yourself that you will fight whatever it is that you are addicted to and keep it at bay when it tries to come knocking again.
Knowing that I am prone to bouts of depression and am not medicated due to lack of insurance coverage and the increasing costs of medication, I know that I have really weak points that I have to deal with now and then. During college, they were fewer and far between, but now that I'm out in the real world and don't see my friends every day, it's much harder for me to sometimes function without seeing or at least speaking to them at some point during my day. They are honestly what keeps me going and keep me strong to fight this never ending battle with depression, self-harm, and feeling like I'm worth something in this world. But my struggles have also offered me a gift. A passion for helping others who have or will struggle like I did and continue to do. We are a world of broken people who are pleading and crying out for help. Who better to help them than someone who has been there and who knows what it is like to be on the other side of the wall? This passion is also something that helps me stay strong and know that I'm worth something. It has also helped me come to terms with what I struggle with and keeps me honest with those around me who know me best about my own personal demons that haunt me even today. But I know that I will overcome. I will keep on rising up and find myself through all of this.
For those who don't know me, I have struggled with an addiction for the better part of the last 9 years of my life. When I was 14, I started to cut myself to deal with the emotional trauma that I was dealing with in my personal life at home. Things were awful as I was never allowed to talk about it outside of the family, so essentially I had no one to talk to. In addition to that, I was being abused in ways that no child should ever be abused by a parent. My biological father would hit me, yell profanities at me, slap me across the face, and throw me into walls on a daily basis because he would get angry about something I supposedly said or did/didn't do. But it didn't end there. When I was 14, he was charged with indecency with a child for molesting a close friend of mine while she lived with us. He professed his innocence and we were wait-listed for a trial. This catalyst induced my silence, which came at a lack of personal choice from myself as I wanted so desperately to talk to someone about it while we waited to go to trial for 2 years. So I stayed silent. And in that silence, I was forced to turn to the one thing that would relieve my emotional hurt and pain. Cutting.
By the time we reached trial 2 years later, I was at a point where I couldn't stop myself. There were always little pink lines from fresh cuts on my upper arms and some on my legs where I could easily hide them with pants and shirts. No one knew and no one asked about them either, so I felt safe in my own cocoon of self-harm and escaping the hell that I lived in. During that time, I was also diagnosed with depression by my doctor and put on medication, though shortly taken off afterward when my appetite drastically decreased to nothing. Though I kept my cutting a secret still. After the trial, the truth was revealed as to what kind of monster my biological father really was, so my mother divorced him by the time my 17th birthday came around in September of that year. By then, I had scaled back on the amount of cutting I was doing as things were getting a little better without my biological father in the house to beat me or terrorize me anymore. Yet, I was so entrenched in my addiction that I couldn't completely stop myself. I needed it to function and get through my days where people now knew what my family was like...the truth of how horrible a man my biological father really was. (Even if they still didn't know about the heaps of abuse he threw on me for years before that.) My heart cried out for help to the wall of friends that I had at the time, but I just couldn't bring myself to tell them the truth of what I was doing to myself. I was ashamed and embarrassed that I had sunk so low that I was hurting myself to escape the pain in my heart.
Throughout the rest of my junior year, I hid the fact that I was still cutting and hurting myself from the rest of the world. None of my friends knew anything about it or if they did, they never said anything about their suspicions during that time. It became harder and harder to hide it as I was running out of places to cut that hadn't already been hit before and were too sensitive to touch for a while. Gradually, I just started wearing long-sleeves in the middle of August in Texas. Which isn't normal. But people didn't say anything to me. It wasn't until 2006 that someone intervened and saved my life. It took several months of trying and failure before I was finally able to stop cutting completely. During that time, I was also seeing a school counselor to help me work through some of my problems since I was now allowed to talk about my family life at home. November 2, 2006 will always have a significance in my life as it marked the beginning of a new life for me. From that day forward, I have not cut myself once. Almost 6 years have come and gone since that day and I am still going strong. But I won't lie and say that there haven't been days where I want to break down and give in again. In fact, there have been many days where I have felt like giving up and going back to what helped me through so much turmoil in the past. But that isn't what recovery is about. Recovery is making a promise to yourself that you will fight whatever it is that you are addicted to and keep it at bay when it tries to come knocking again.
Knowing that I am prone to bouts of depression and am not medicated due to lack of insurance coverage and the increasing costs of medication, I know that I have really weak points that I have to deal with now and then. During college, they were fewer and far between, but now that I'm out in the real world and don't see my friends every day, it's much harder for me to sometimes function without seeing or at least speaking to them at some point during my day. They are honestly what keeps me going and keep me strong to fight this never ending battle with depression, self-harm, and feeling like I'm worth something in this world. But my struggles have also offered me a gift. A passion for helping others who have or will struggle like I did and continue to do. We are a world of broken people who are pleading and crying out for help. Who better to help them than someone who has been there and who knows what it is like to be on the other side of the wall? This passion is also something that helps me stay strong and know that I'm worth something. It has also helped me come to terms with what I struggle with and keeps me honest with those around me who know me best about my own personal demons that haunt me even today. But I know that I will overcome. I will keep on rising up and find myself through all of this.
Thursday, March 8, 2012
Happily (N)Ever After
"The person that invented the phrase 'Happily Ever After,' should have his ass kicked--so hard." - Grey's Anatomy
I find that there really is no such thing as a "happily ever after" in life. At least not in the permanent sense. There can be pockets of happiness that we find as human beings, through relationships and joyful events such as marriage, births, and family gatherings, but is there really a happily ever after for life? What about things such as death, job loss, and disasters that we have no control over? Those things surely can't be counted into what was in mind when the happily ever after notion was invented. Those fairy tales were all about good triumphing over evil and the princess marrying her prince before setting off into the sunset to live happily ever after for the rest of her life. But what about the rest of the story?
All of my life, I grew up on Disney fairy tales. My particular favorites were Beauty and the Beast and The Little Mermaid and I will admit openly that I wanted to be Belle and Ariel when I was a little girl. To some degree, at 23, I still do. But I realize as an adult that there really can't be a happily ever after for most people. Yes, there are the rare exceptions to that rule, but those are few and far between. The rest of us are left to the reality that is life. We will get our hearts broken, our dreams will change or be shattered, or we'll lose someone that we love. I have experienced this disenchantment firsthand with heartbreak, death, and my dreams being punched in the face. My first love broke my heart when he chose someone else over me, three of my grandmothers died within a two year span of each other, and I had to change my entire life course because of financial means. The truth of it is...reality sucks. It's why many people are content to live within their dream worlds where nothing can truly hurt them. I, on the other hand, have accepted reality for what it is and have tried to make the best of it.
My fairy tale isn't to find some dashing prince who will save me from all of my problems in life. Instead, I just want to succeed at what I do and help others. That has been my life goal since I was eighteen and realized that I had a passion for helping others with their problems. I know that when I grow up, I want to be a counselor for disadvantaged teens who cannot otherwise afford mental health care, but go to school within a school system. These are the people that need help...because without help, they become disenchanted with life completely at such a young age. I almost did. But through the help of one counselor, life turned around for me. I'm not saying that I got a happily ever after, but I did get a second chance at life. And that is what I hope to bring to the future kids.
I find that there really is no such thing as a "happily ever after" in life. At least not in the permanent sense. There can be pockets of happiness that we find as human beings, through relationships and joyful events such as marriage, births, and family gatherings, but is there really a happily ever after for life? What about things such as death, job loss, and disasters that we have no control over? Those things surely can't be counted into what was in mind when the happily ever after notion was invented. Those fairy tales were all about good triumphing over evil and the princess marrying her prince before setting off into the sunset to live happily ever after for the rest of her life. But what about the rest of the story?
All of my life, I grew up on Disney fairy tales. My particular favorites were Beauty and the Beast and The Little Mermaid and I will admit openly that I wanted to be Belle and Ariel when I was a little girl. To some degree, at 23, I still do. But I realize as an adult that there really can't be a happily ever after for most people. Yes, there are the rare exceptions to that rule, but those are few and far between. The rest of us are left to the reality that is life. We will get our hearts broken, our dreams will change or be shattered, or we'll lose someone that we love. I have experienced this disenchantment firsthand with heartbreak, death, and my dreams being punched in the face. My first love broke my heart when he chose someone else over me, three of my grandmothers died within a two year span of each other, and I had to change my entire life course because of financial means. The truth of it is...reality sucks. It's why many people are content to live within their dream worlds where nothing can truly hurt them. I, on the other hand, have accepted reality for what it is and have tried to make the best of it.
My fairy tale isn't to find some dashing prince who will save me from all of my problems in life. Instead, I just want to succeed at what I do and help others. That has been my life goal since I was eighteen and realized that I had a passion for helping others with their problems. I know that when I grow up, I want to be a counselor for disadvantaged teens who cannot otherwise afford mental health care, but go to school within a school system. These are the people that need help...because without help, they become disenchanted with life completely at such a young age. I almost did. But through the help of one counselor, life turned around for me. I'm not saying that I got a happily ever after, but I did get a second chance at life. And that is what I hope to bring to the future kids.
Wednesday, March 7, 2012
Hope For The Hopeless
“When do you throw in the towel? Admit that a lost cause is something just that? There comes a point where it all becomes too much. When we get too tired to fight anymore. So we give up. That’s when the real work begins. To find hope where there seems to be absolutely none at all.” -- Grey's Anatomy
This is how I've felt for the past couple of days. Sunday afternoon, I finally ended one of the most toxic friendships I have ever been through in my life. Five years of emotional abuse has come to an end after I finally put my foot down and said no. It wasn't easy, but it was something that I had to do to regain the self-respect that I had thought I lost when this guy decided that he wanted to string me along for years while he dated another girl, got engaged to said girl, and then the relationship ended when she cheated on him. I said friendship, but he was always pushing me for more, even if we live five hours from one another and he is in the Armed Forces while I'm about to start graduate school in another town. The breaking point came when he asked me if I would ever have sex with him...over a text message. Who the hell does that?
That was the breaking point for me in which I decided that I was no longer going to put up with his mind games and toying around with my heart. I put my foot down a few days later, after mulling it over, and told him not to ever contact me again. This, of course, set him off and made him leave a string of voice-mail and text messages telling me that I was the one trampling over his feelings. Well I suddenly let loose on him and really let him know what I thought of him and how he's treated me over the past five years. At the end of it, I deleted his number from my phone and his friendship from my Facebook. But the thing that hit me the most is that I have essentially deleted the only guy I've ever had real feelings for that reciprocated them in any fashion. Where does that leave me romantically? I guess it's saying that I'm single and unattached to anyone now. But that doesn't give me hope for the future and not being single. I just want to find that person, like everyone else does, that makes me feel happy and loves me for who I am. And who I love in return. But I guess hope is where you least expect it. I move in five months to a new town with new people...who knows, maybe my prince will be waiting there for me.
This is how I've felt for the past couple of days. Sunday afternoon, I finally ended one of the most toxic friendships I have ever been through in my life. Five years of emotional abuse has come to an end after I finally put my foot down and said no. It wasn't easy, but it was something that I had to do to regain the self-respect that I had thought I lost when this guy decided that he wanted to string me along for years while he dated another girl, got engaged to said girl, and then the relationship ended when she cheated on him. I said friendship, but he was always pushing me for more, even if we live five hours from one another and he is in the Armed Forces while I'm about to start graduate school in another town. The breaking point came when he asked me if I would ever have sex with him...over a text message. Who the hell does that?
That was the breaking point for me in which I decided that I was no longer going to put up with his mind games and toying around with my heart. I put my foot down a few days later, after mulling it over, and told him not to ever contact me again. This, of course, set him off and made him leave a string of voice-mail and text messages telling me that I was the one trampling over his feelings. Well I suddenly let loose on him and really let him know what I thought of him and how he's treated me over the past five years. At the end of it, I deleted his number from my phone and his friendship from my Facebook. But the thing that hit me the most is that I have essentially deleted the only guy I've ever had real feelings for that reciprocated them in any fashion. Where does that leave me romantically? I guess it's saying that I'm single and unattached to anyone now. But that doesn't give me hope for the future and not being single. I just want to find that person, like everyone else does, that makes me feel happy and loves me for who I am. And who I love in return. But I guess hope is where you least expect it. I move in five months to a new town with new people...who knows, maybe my prince will be waiting there for me.
Sunday, February 12, 2012
Happier Alone
“There is a reason I said I’d be happy alone. It wasn't because I thought I would be happy alone. It was because I thought if I loved someone and then it fell apart, I might not make it. It’s easier to be alone. Because what if you learn that you need love? And then you don’t have it. What if you like it? And lean on it? What if you shape your life around it? And then it falls apart? Can you even survive that kind of pain? Losing love is like organ damage. It’s like dying. The only difference is, death ends. This? It could go on forever.” - Grey's Anatomy
Being single at 23 has always been a choice for me. I have never dated a guy, been kissed, or even really given my heart to someone fully without reserving myself and keeping a wall up to surround me. But I've been focusing on other things for so long, such as school, working, and getting to where I want to be in life, that I really haven't put the thought into dating. Now that I have a break from school, I've had a lot more time on my hands and I've come to realize how much it really does suck to be alone. But at the same time, I'm happy too. I don't have to put myself out there for guys to judge and to get rejected by people that I happen to like. But what if I did?
I have always had this ornate fear of being rejected by guys because I'm not the prettiest or thinnest girl in the world. But more importantly, I'm scared to fall in love because I don't know what I would do if I ever got dumped or if the guy fell out of love with me. If I learned to rely on that love, I don't know if I could pick up the pieces and survive that sort of pain. I've survived a lot on my short life, but one thing too many might push me to that breaking point. I'm a self-reliant person for the most part and always have been, but giving my heart to someone else scares the living hell out of me. My mother was married for almost eighteen years to someone that didn't love her and who tricked her into marrying him...who's to say that won't happen to me? I don't want it to, nor do I want to be stuck in a situation years down the road where I have children with someone that doesn't love me. And my kids have to see that...I don't want to subjugate my future children to that sort of thing.
But like every other human being, I crave love too. It's a balance of insanity that lives in my own head all the time. I don't even know how to deal with it all and I'm a Psychology major! But I do know this: Maybe someday I'll reach the point where I'm okay with falling in love. But for now, I can't do it. For now, I'm going to be alone...and I'll be happy.
Being single at 23 has always been a choice for me. I have never dated a guy, been kissed, or even really given my heart to someone fully without reserving myself and keeping a wall up to surround me. But I've been focusing on other things for so long, such as school, working, and getting to where I want to be in life, that I really haven't put the thought into dating. Now that I have a break from school, I've had a lot more time on my hands and I've come to realize how much it really does suck to be alone. But at the same time, I'm happy too. I don't have to put myself out there for guys to judge and to get rejected by people that I happen to like. But what if I did?
I have always had this ornate fear of being rejected by guys because I'm not the prettiest or thinnest girl in the world. But more importantly, I'm scared to fall in love because I don't know what I would do if I ever got dumped or if the guy fell out of love with me. If I learned to rely on that love, I don't know if I could pick up the pieces and survive that sort of pain. I've survived a lot on my short life, but one thing too many might push me to that breaking point. I'm a self-reliant person for the most part and always have been, but giving my heart to someone else scares the living hell out of me. My mother was married for almost eighteen years to someone that didn't love her and who tricked her into marrying him...who's to say that won't happen to me? I don't want it to, nor do I want to be stuck in a situation years down the road where I have children with someone that doesn't love me. And my kids have to see that...I don't want to subjugate my future children to that sort of thing.
But like every other human being, I crave love too. It's a balance of insanity that lives in my own head all the time. I don't even know how to deal with it all and I'm a Psychology major! But I do know this: Maybe someday I'll reach the point where I'm okay with falling in love. But for now, I can't do it. For now, I'm going to be alone...and I'll be happy.
Thursday, February 9, 2012
Traumatic Blessings
“It doesn’t matter how tough we are. Trauma always leaves a scar. It follows us home, it changes our lives. Trauma messes everybody up, but maybe that's the point. All the pain and the fear and the crap… Maybe going through all that is what keeps us moving forward. It’s what pushes us. Maybe we have to get a little messed up before we can step up.” -Grey's Anatomy
I'll be the first to tell you that having a traumatic experience in your life sucks. No matter what you do to try and forget it, you really can't. There is a scar that runs deeper than anything skin deep; one that cuts straight to your soul and makes you feel like complete and utter crap. That pain is something that hurts more than anything imaginable at times...the times when you feel like you can't do anything to change what has happened to you into anything positive. It's a drowning feeling, like being stuck out at sea without a life saver or anyone there to grab you from the water. But mostly, it's a dull ache that resides in your chest, laying dormant for weeks, months, or even years, just waiting for the opportune moment to seize hold of you again and drag you back into the pits of your own personal hell. For me, it's the moments when I'm forced to look at my past that hurt the most and bring me down to the hell that I feel.
For much of my childhood on into my teenage years, I was abused by someone that was supposed to love and protect me from birth. Constant verbal, physical, emotional, and mental abuse that went on from the time I was old enough to understand what it meant until I was almost seventeen. At one point, it was a daily thing when my mother was at work or at school for my "father" to tear me down as a person, telling me that I was never good enough and that I was never going to amount to anything. When I would do something wrong, he would slap me on the face or shove me into a wall, saying that if he didn't have "so much control", I would have been thrown through the wall. Or if, God forbid, I refused to do something I was told, he would hit me some more, yell at me, and then "spank" me with a belt. (If you could even call that beating a spanking.) I would have bruises on my legs and back from the belt for days after. Sometimes I'd have bruises on my arms from where he grabbed me to push me into a wall. None of which any of my friends knew about because it was easy to hide them. It got to the point where I feared my "father" and his fits of rage and the terror he would inflict upon me. I never wanted to go home after school or band practice. And I never wanted to even be in the same room as him. Finally, it all ended when I was seventeen after my mother filed for divorce. But even she doesn't know some of the abuse that he inflicted on me, nor will I ever tell her because she felt guilty enough as it was.
But through all of this trauma, I've been pushed forward toward what I want to do with my life. I chose Psychology as my major in college for one reason: I want to help people. I want to help them through the hard times where they feel alone and like no one is listening because I've been there. I've been the scared sixteen-year-old, crying out for help to a wall of people who knew nothing about what I was going through. Just as I have been the confused twenty-something year old that has a traumatic past I don't like talking about lightly with new people. But through my education, I've learned that the best kinds of counselors are the ones you can relate to the best. If my trauma can offer someone that little bit of comfort, that edge of ease, then what I have gone through is worth it. Because I can reach out to those that otherwise might not open up to someone else...I can help them. And that is something that I consider a blessing.
I'll be the first to tell you that having a traumatic experience in your life sucks. No matter what you do to try and forget it, you really can't. There is a scar that runs deeper than anything skin deep; one that cuts straight to your soul and makes you feel like complete and utter crap. That pain is something that hurts more than anything imaginable at times...the times when you feel like you can't do anything to change what has happened to you into anything positive. It's a drowning feeling, like being stuck out at sea without a life saver or anyone there to grab you from the water. But mostly, it's a dull ache that resides in your chest, laying dormant for weeks, months, or even years, just waiting for the opportune moment to seize hold of you again and drag you back into the pits of your own personal hell. For me, it's the moments when I'm forced to look at my past that hurt the most and bring me down to the hell that I feel.
For much of my childhood on into my teenage years, I was abused by someone that was supposed to love and protect me from birth. Constant verbal, physical, emotional, and mental abuse that went on from the time I was old enough to understand what it meant until I was almost seventeen. At one point, it was a daily thing when my mother was at work or at school for my "father" to tear me down as a person, telling me that I was never good enough and that I was never going to amount to anything. When I would do something wrong, he would slap me on the face or shove me into a wall, saying that if he didn't have "so much control", I would have been thrown through the wall. Or if, God forbid, I refused to do something I was told, he would hit me some more, yell at me, and then "spank" me with a belt. (If you could even call that beating a spanking.) I would have bruises on my legs and back from the belt for days after. Sometimes I'd have bruises on my arms from where he grabbed me to push me into a wall. None of which any of my friends knew about because it was easy to hide them. It got to the point where I feared my "father" and his fits of rage and the terror he would inflict upon me. I never wanted to go home after school or band practice. And I never wanted to even be in the same room as him. Finally, it all ended when I was seventeen after my mother filed for divorce. But even she doesn't know some of the abuse that he inflicted on me, nor will I ever tell her because she felt guilty enough as it was.
But through all of this trauma, I've been pushed forward toward what I want to do with my life. I chose Psychology as my major in college for one reason: I want to help people. I want to help them through the hard times where they feel alone and like no one is listening because I've been there. I've been the scared sixteen-year-old, crying out for help to a wall of people who knew nothing about what I was going through. Just as I have been the confused twenty-something year old that has a traumatic past I don't like talking about lightly with new people. But through my education, I've learned that the best kinds of counselors are the ones you can relate to the best. If my trauma can offer someone that little bit of comfort, that edge of ease, then what I have gone through is worth it. Because I can reach out to those that otherwise might not open up to someone else...I can help them. And that is something that I consider a blessing.
Monday, November 14, 2011
The Truth Sucks
“The truth is painful. Deep down nobody wants to hear it, especially when it hits close to home. Sometimes we tell the truth because the truth is all we have to give. Sometimes we tell the truth because we need to say it out loud to really hear it for ourselves. And sometimes we tell the truth because we just can’t help ourselves. And sometimes, we tell them, because we owe them at least that much.”-Grey's Anatomy
This quote hits so close to home it's unreal. Everything I have been feeling the past couple of weeks/months is culminated into one simple quote from a show that I love. The truth sucks to hear, especially if it's something that you've seen coming for a long time, but when it finally hits you and it's said aloud, you have to face reality. That is something I've been facing. I've been in denial about some of my friendships for a very long time. Some that I've been letting people use me because I don't want to lose them as a friend and others, well, that are just poisonous to me. These friendships I've just been letting go on out of fear of being alone in the world. But it's becoming an issue that is affecting my mental health and well being, so it's time to let go of some of those friendships...but that is so much easier said than done.
This quote hits so close to home it's unreal. Everything I have been feeling the past couple of weeks/months is culminated into one simple quote from a show that I love. The truth sucks to hear, especially if it's something that you've seen coming for a long time, but when it finally hits you and it's said aloud, you have to face reality. That is something I've been facing. I've been in denial about some of my friendships for a very long time. Some that I've been letting people use me because I don't want to lose them as a friend and others, well, that are just poisonous to me. These friendships I've just been letting go on out of fear of being alone in the world. But it's becoming an issue that is affecting my mental health and well being, so it's time to let go of some of those friendships...but that is so much easier said than done.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)