Grief: the darkest comfort

The grief chokes me like smoke within a house fire.

I gasp and clutch my chest thinking about all of the times I took breathing for granted.

Of all the emotions, grief is the one I’m most familiar with. It visits like an old friend, taking away something else I love while offering me it’s cold dark hand.

I dont want to be friends with grief but when all else is gone it’s there offering me tissues while I cry.

Grief tries to explain that they didn’t want to take away those I love but they had no choice, I don’t believe them.

Grief says death has to follow life orders and that everything happens for a reason.

What is the reason I’m meant to feel such pain, so often?

Grief doesn’t know the answer but instead rubs my back and tells me I’ll be ok.

Grief has become a friend to which I didn’t want a friendship with but one I’ve learned to find solace in.

Everything I love dies, but the grief remains.

Accepting my diagnosis

About 3 months ago, I was diagnosed with bipolar 1 disorder. This on top of my already diagnosed anxiety, depression and PTSD.

When the doctor told me I had bipolar 1, all I could do was cry. It wasn’t like he told me I had cancer or that I only had weeks to live but instead he told me that there was a reason I felt so uncontrollable. A reason why my brain seems to constantly run 99 miles per hour and why sometimes I couldn’t shut it down.

My doctor was very understanding and kind in the light of just giving me life changing news. He said that I had been handling it well aside from when I was manic and only sleeping 8 hours a week. The doctor gave me information on just what bipolar 1 is and talked about medication to try and control it. When I left his office, I felt scared.. scared that I would always feel this way. Out of control, and sad.

A lot has happened in my life in the last couple of years. Some good, some bad, some tragic and life changing. I find myself in a manic episode more often than not and with that comes the thoughts of hopelessness, the loneliness even when I’m in a sea of people. The tears which I can’t figure out why they’re there and the overload of texts to people I love asking why they’re mad at me which in turn makes me think they’re annoyed because I asked.

Having these diagnoses does not mean I’m unlovable or that my life is over. It just means that some days, I can take on the world while other days breathing is the strongest thing I can do.

Did you know almost 6 million people have been diagnosed with bipolar and only God knows how many people have not been diagnosed but suffer from the silent demon. There are 6 million people who have the same racing thoughts, night sweats, manic episodes as I do.

I don’t write these words for sympathy but for empathy and to tell you to be aware of those around you. I look up greatly to those around me who do not struggle with mental illness, those who wake up with a smile on their face everyday and live their best life. But some of us, those days don’t come often. Some of us can hide it, fake a smile… seem like the happiest person in the world yet feeling more lonely than a man stranded on a island by himself. Be easy on your friends if they come to you asking if you’re mad or if they cancel plans, act different. Don’t be so quick to assume why they’re doing what they’re doing but instead have empathy. Give them reassurance, the promise of your love. Do it 500 times a day if you need to.

It takes 10 seconds to send a text message, so instead of being annoyed they asked you again if you’re mad.. tell them you’re not and you love them. Ease their mind even if for a moment.

We are all fighting demons and battles no one can see. We are all running from something and trying to find ourselves in this mess of a world.

Be kind

Be patient

Be empathetic

Mental illness is real, it’s scary and it’s lonely.

A letter to the girl (or guy) with their heart on their sleeve.

If you were to think about the characteristics that my dad and I share there are a few major characteristics that come to mind. Besides the fact our baby pictures side by side are impossible to tell apart and I look exactly like him, we both share the quality of being stubborn. Anyone who knew my dad knew that once his mind was made up there was no changing it, we both also love fishing and wrestling. My dad taught me how to defend myself and how to take the fish off. The biggest quality we share is the quality of wearing our hearts on our sleeves and using our whole heart in everything we do.

Some call that sensitive, weak, or even dumb. Some say I just fall in love to easy and that’s why I’m always getting hurt and while you’re not wrong, I do wear my heart on my sleeve which causes me to be extra sensitive and raises the chances of me getting hurt I don’t think that’s a bad thing about me. Wearing my heart on my sleeve means that I give my all to every person who I care about, it means I will drop everything I have going in so I can help. It also means you can do me wrong 20 times and I’m still gonna be there when you need me.

This quality has gotten me in trouble a lot in life, caused me to be used just when it’s beneficial to other people. When they’re lonely or sad but then when they feel better I’m no longer needed. While yes that is one of the most painful things you can experience, I’m not mad at them. I was there for a reason, to help them through whatever hard time they were experiencing and looking back I’m thankful I could he that for them.

I guess what I’m saying is life is scary, it changes in a second and you never know anyone’s true intentions. Sometimes I wish I could he heartless and cold; turn off my emotions but then I think if I did that, I lose the whole essence of who I am. Yes I overthink situations, fixate on the one bad thing that was said. Yes I jump to conclusions and expect to be hurt everytime someone even breathes wrong. Yes I’m sensitive and can tune in to other people’s emotions and feel what they feel. But you know what else I can do? I can over love. If I care about you, like you or love you you have a part of me forever. I over sympathize, never thinking someone is wrong for how the feel or what they think.

There are plenty of pros and cons to who I am as a person and to who my dad was as a person but the older I get the more thankful I am that I got those qualities from him. The more thankful I am that when I’m 90 I can tell my grandchildren what heartbreak feels like but what true unconditional love feels like as well.

So to the girls (and guys) who feel like they have to be sorry for wearing their heart on their sleeves or over loving and under protecting themselves stop. Stop beating yourself up, embrace the ride. Enjoy the good times and let the tears flow during the bad because no matter how terrible the storm is and how much damage it does to the house, when the bones are good which ours are.. the house won’t fall.

Over-love

But never feel sorry for that.

Signed,

The girl with the heart sliding down her sleeve.

I won’t apologize

I kind of grew up backwards. I was a grown adult by the time I was 10. Cooking, cleaning, making sure everyone was taken care of. I didn’t do it by choice, I had to. I had to adapt to survive in the environment I was given. I grew up thinking that’s what life would be like.. go to work, come home make dinner clean etc and do it the next day. So when I got in a serious relationship at 16 I thought, this is it. This is what I’m suppose to do. I’m suppose to settle down now because hell it’ll probably never happen again.. and have babies and live happily ever after.. right?

Fucking wrong.

For those of you that have been following along with my blogs and my story, you know that after 5.5 years I decided to walk away from everything I knew. And at first I was terrified. The thought actually terrified me for over a year prior to actually getting the balls to do it. I didn’t know what I would do. Who would I hang out with, how would I make friends, where would I go?

In the past 4 months I have made more progress as a human being than I even knew possible. My anxiety has decreased by at least 55%, I am talking to people I normally would of been afraid to talk to, I’m going to the gym on the regular, I’m eating healthy, I’m going to concerts and events and ya’ll I’m loving life. Don’t get me wrong there are still nights I cry myself to sleep wondering if I’ll be alone forever but I have come to learn that, welll… that’s part of being human.

I won’t apologize for how I chose to find myself. I won’t apologize for the fact that people don’t support how I am living. It blows peoples minds the me.. a 23 year college student is acting like… well a 23 year college student.

Most of my friends and family have only seen my reserved, shy, stable, anxiety ridden side so the fact that she’s gone and this new me is here scares people.

I know I’m gonna lose people on my journey to self discovery and THATS OKAY.. but don’t you EVER tell me that I am ruining my life by trying to find myself. Don’t you EVER try to make me feel guilty for having self confidence and for meeting new people and putting myself out there because the girl I was a year ago would be hiding in the corner somewhere.

I am growing.

I am changing.

I am becoming me.

So get onboard and ride with me or exit left and have a nice day.

11:11 make a wish

Do you ever close your eyes and a movie plays in your head.. I’m not talking Planet of the Apes or anything but a movie of your life, and it’s on a certain scene. Maybe it’s a love scene. You’re running into the arms of the one person you can’t stop thinking about but right before they close their arms around you they disappear.. you’re left standing alone in the dark.

You open your eyes and remind yourself that none of its real.. it’s just a thought. Your mind is playing tricks on you.

Maybe you wake up from a terrible nightmare. Maybe you’re like me.. you keep having the same reoccurring one. One where your dad is alive.. he’s fishing at his favorite spot, you can see him from across the lake. He looks happy, content. Your heart fills with joy and your stomach with butterflies as you think this is it. I finally get to see him again and talk to him. So you take off running as fast as your long, extremely out of shape legs will let you go.. but when you finally reach the spot where he sat there’s nothing but a fishing pole left with no bait.

You wake up in the middle of the night, sweat dripping down the crease of your back and tears Falling out the corner of your eyes. You scream and ask God why.. why is he torturing you. Why is putting pictures and videos in your head of people that aren’t here anymore. Whether they’re dead or they’ve just walked out of your life..

Why keep reminding me of what my heart Longs for?

……

I have a theory.

Our hearts.. they make wishes. They want certain things, certain people and they don’t quite understand why. All they know is that they reminded them of home when they were with them and now that they’re gone they’re sitting and waiting.. like a toddler waiting for their father to get home from work. I believe that our heart is like a toddler. Full of life and trust.. and hope. Our hearts are innocent.. and even though over and over and over we beat and abuse and torture them.. they still believe. They see the good, the possibilities.

So how do I teach my heart? Teach my heart that those movies playing in our head.. in our heart. They’re not real. My dad isn’t coming back, that boy isn’t going to love me the way I deserve. Sometimes I feel as if I’m a third party, trying to console my heart.. trying to make it feel better if only for a second.

They say time heals all wounds, but what heals time? What heals the memory that has been burned so deep into my brain that every song, every tv show, every sound has a memory attached?

Death.

Heartbreak.

It’s inevitable. We can’t stop it. We know it’s gonna happen, but that doesn’t change the fact that our poor little heart is never ready.

I guess today I’m sad. Today I’m sad for my heart. It’s been through a lot in its 23 years of beating. It’s taken a lot of beatings and has broken more times than I can count.. but it’s still trucking.. and it still has faith.. it may be a small amount of faith but even faith the size of a mustard seed can one day become a garden.

Who taught you to be soft?

Who taught you to be soft?

Who taught you to be so afraid of the world that you sit in panic instead of trying new things?

Who taught you to live in fear instead of going after what sets your soul on fire.

Tomorrow isn’t promised.. isn’t that the famous line? But it’s true. We see it time after time. Someone’s here laughing it up today and tomorrow we never get to see them again.

I’ve been thinking about how I want to spend my life & how I’ve spent my entire life up until this point.

I was taught to be afraid of life. To fear the unknown because only familiar things are safe. Taught to never color outside of the lines because that’s not what good kids do. Taught to stay on the sidewalks because people drive like maniacs in the road.

When I was 5 I was beat with a metal spoon until there were bruises

10- a dog chain put around my neck and told maybe I should be treated like a dog

12- taken to the police station for a piece of food left on a spoon

And that’s only what happened on the weekdays.

I spent my childhood afraid. I spent my adolescence hiding.

And when I thought it was done, when I thought the beatings were done, the mental ones began. Thrown into a world of heartache and pain. Thrown to the side by the ones who should of taken me in.

I’ve made a life for myself.

22 and with a good job, car and home. But it’s not enough is it? It doesn’t give me back the golden years. It doesn’t change the fact I didn’t have my first real sleepover until middle school or the fact when I had friends over I was called gay and yelled at.

How do you clear those memories. How do you forget about the fact you were molested by your grandfather or the fact that your grandmother chose him over you.

How do you get over being blamed as a three year old for ruining a family when you told someone what happened.

How do you live a life of gratitude when the world has done nothing but strip you down and beat you with lashes since you took your first breath?

So if you’re asking who taught me to be soft, it was you. the one who I trusted as a child. The one who was suppose to protect me but instead hurt me.

But now that I’m soft, I’m the only one who can fix it. The only one who can make my skin tough, my heart rigid, not afraid of scars and possible pain.

I will fix me.

I will stop being afraid of the world.

I will take on the world like a bull, doing what makes me happy instead of what makes you happy.

You broke me.. but I will fix me.

When did family become strangers and strangers become family?

Since I was born the one thing I’ve always remembered is having a very divided family.

I had my dads side

My moms side

My dads moms side

And my dads dads side.

Make sense yet?

I had family who couldn’t speak about one another without insulting them at least 5 times in the first sentence. I have cousins that live less than 5 minutes from me yet I’ve never had more than a 5 minute conversation with and if I saw them at Kroger most likely I’d awkwardly avoid them out of fear of awkward conversation.

I have family who the only thing I know about them is what their social media says.

And I have family who aren’t related to me at all.

I remember being a young kid and sitting around the Christmas tree with my cousins and aunts and uncles and spending major holidays together but whenever there was a family reunion I was still in utter shock by the amount of unfamiliar and foreign faces I would see.

What kind of world do we live in that we are further away from those who share our blood than we are from complete strangers?

I refuse to bring babies into a world where they don’t know their cousins, a world where all they hear is bad things about their family. The truth is, I have a huge family. Between cousins, 2nd cousins, aunts, uncles, etc.. there’s almost to many of us to count and yet at the end of the day I don’t know any of them and that breaks my heart.

I am so thankful for the friends who have become family and the people who have adopted me into their families but I’m just heartbroken by the loneliness I feel and the separation I feel from my actual blood family.

Do I think you should have every family member close to you, especially if they’re toxic?? Hell no. There are certain “family members” that I do not consider family.

But reach out. Say hello. Make a move. Our lives are to short and life is to damn hard to be walking around alone.

Don’t talk shit to your kids about their cousins and aunts.. don’t corrupt them. Let them make the choice for themselves. Stop trying to decend your hatred to your kids.

I find myself being so angry with so many people solely based on the lies I have been fed my entire life. Stories of people that at the end of the day were just that. Pissed off stories that weren’t true. I have lost a lot of time with a lot of people that I’ll never get back but I plan on bringing kids into the world in the next couple years and they won’t have the childhood I had. They will have love and compassion and the opportunity to form their own opinions.

Disclaimer: I have a lot of people that are not blood related that have been family to me when I had no one & I would never change that.. but sometimes when my mind starts going I can’t stop it.

Calm within my storm

How do you find peace?

A moment of solitude within a lifetime of chaos

A breath of fresh air when you seem to take gulp of water whenever you open your mouth.

For me it’s things that scare the shit out me.

Crazy right?

I’m serious though.. the things in life that scare the absolute shit out of me are the places I find the most peace.

Riding my first roller coaster (which I just did a couple months ago, btw). I was scared shitless.. racing hard, sweaty palms but in the moment the coaster took off, the moment my heart took off with it.. for a split second there was complete silence in my brain. I felt solitude that I was happy. Content.

Riding a horse. Something I cherish more than words can ever say. Going out into the arena is something that will forever terrify me. The judgment, the expectation to be amazing, the gut wrenching feeling of failure.. it’s terrifying. But in that moment when my horse takes off through the gate, none of it matters. The ribbons fade away, the noise of the other people around, it’s me my horse and the arena and that my friends is where I find peace. I can only grasp it for 10-20 seconds at a time during a class but for me it is worth more than any amount of money in the world.

Am I perfect at it? Hell no.

In fact most days I think I suck, but I love it. I don’t do it for the ribbons, I do it for the shear peace I feel in the arena under the lights. The solitude I feel with a 1500 lb animal under me.

I’ll never be a first place champion, I know this. I’ll never beat the younger kids who have spend their entire existence on a horse, but I will be one of the most passionate, kind and humble ones out there.

Because for me it’s one of the only places I find calm during my storm.

I guess what I’m rambling on about it is, you have to find what gives you peace. We spend so much time searching for answers and searching for how to be the absolute best at what we do because heaven forbid our neighbor beats us.. but do it for that feeling, the feeling that you get on your drive home where you just smile and feel peace because you know that’s exactly where you should be.

And doing things that scare me, that’s where I need to be. Finding calm areas during my storm.

Father’s Day is here.. but you’re not.

My dad passed away on a cold December day.. he had spent numerous nights lying in ICU at Riverside. The infection running through his body had grown out of control and we knew there was no chance of survival. Machines were doing the work for him.. I close my eyes and can see the room again. My cousin and I held his hands.. one on each side for what seemed like eternity. They took him off life support and we waited, and I’ll tell you it’s like waiting for the end of the world and in that moment that’s what it felt like.

I haven’t spent a Father’s Day with my dad since I was in high school and it’s something I will never forgive myself for but I always thought I had more time. Hell I never thought at 22 I’d be spending Father’s Day avoiding everyone and everything because my heart is hurting so bad.

I smile when I see everyone posting pictures of their dads and when they tell little stories about how amazing they are. I smile with a tear rolling down my face.

I know I’m not alone today. I know I’m not the only one in the world wishing they could make things right, go back in time. Spend one last Father’s Day with the man who made them who they are.. the man they look most like. The one who was more excited for a new fishing pole or upcoming Wrestling paper view than just about anything.

I have been thinking about how I’m going to survive today. How I’m going to endure the pure pain I feel radiating through my chest and I have a couple ideas:

Don’t push yourself, it’s okay to feel sad. It’s okay to feel like you just don’t have the courage or strength to put on a smile and brave the world. Don’t force yourself to do those things.

Listen to your body. It sounds stupid I know but it’s true, sleep if that’s what your body is telling you to do.. run a marathon (not me of course but you can!) do what your body needs to do so it can feel better.

Find ways to remember him, for me it’s watching movies, wrestling and music. Three things my dad enjoyed no matter what they say threw at him. Do things that remember him and honor him. Even if you’re alone while you do it.

If I had another day, another chance to say I’m sorry. I would scream it from the rooftops but the truth is, I don’t. I avoid the scam emails telling me what to buy him for Father’s Day because surprise I don’t think spending $600 on a new grill is gonna do much considering he can’t use it. I will most likely spend my day watching movies that make me cry and eating junk food but that’s okay because I know if he was here he would be okay with it. He would tell me he loves me and that he’s proud of me.

Mother’s Day & all its complicated glory

moth·er

ˈməT͟Hər/

noun

1 1.
a woman in relation to her child or children.”she returned to Bristol to nurse her aging mother”
bring up (a child) with care and affection.”the art of mothering

Most people spend their Mother’s Day with just that their mother. The one who raised them, the one who gave birth to them. Mother’s Day isn’t just for the women who birthed a child. It’s for the women who raised a child when no one else would, it’s for the aunts who stayed on the phone listening to a 12 year old cry because her parents weren’t around. It’s for the grandmothers who bought school clothes and supplies because no one else would. Mother’s Day is for the mother’s of friends and your boyfriend who took you in when you felt like you had no where else to go. Mother’s Day is for the women who acted as a mother and father.. but is also for the men who acted as both father and mother.

Mother’s Day is not just for the women who birthed children.

It’s for the women who stood up, walked in, and stayed.

I have quite a few people to thank on this day, but this day will forever remain a challenge for me.

I can never thank the women who helped shaped me into who I am enough.. the good and the bad. I’ve had some women who strictly where showing me what kind of woman and mother I did NOT want to be, and that’s okay. They served their purpose in my life. And I have some that I aspire to be like everyday.

So as you celebrate this Mother’s Day, don’t just thank the women who birthed you but thank all the women who stepped in and played a role of mom at some point in your life. When they say it takes a village to raise a kid they aren’t kidding.

Sometimes it’s just parts of different villages.

Happy Mother’s Day to all the beautiful women in my life, I love you all so much.