And life goes on

Reflections of 2016.

As the ball dropped on the year 2015, I did something that I had been telling myself for at least six months I would do. During a quiet evening spent with only three other people,  I raised my glass and toasted a good riddance to the turbulent, tumultuous  year  of 2015, the year that almost broke me, the lost year.

I promised myself that in 2016 I would be better, I would do better, I would force myself to heal. I thought that my sheer will power to deny anything that had happened would push me through.  

I promised myself all of these things that I would do during the year, like, starting to work out again, and taking a graphic art and design class, and finishing a novel, and finding great love, and allowing myself to heal. I told myself I would do things to my house. Only some of those things came to fruition.

Towards the beginning of the year, I made a friend that would become the first person I would open up to. Because this friend hadn’t known me in my previous version and had some struggles of his own, he was able to see past the tough exterior that I tried to put on and see how broken I felt and in his own ways, pushed me to begin the healing process.

I will respect his privacy, but he opened my eyes about a lot of things in my life and about myself, including my previous denials that I wanted someone to share my life with.

See, before, I thought that if I pushed myself hard enough, I could force myself to heal. If I just told myself to snap out of it, I would. I didn’t know that it would take time and months of intensive counseling and therapy to keep all of the hurt, anger, rage and sadness at bay.

Many mornings I didn’t look in the mirror, because I didn’t want to see the toll the year before had taken and because I wore the guilt of things I couldn’t control like a badge.  

I had thought that if I continued to say that I was fine, I eventually would be. That if I denied the desire to have someone share my life, the desire would go away.   I thought that if I just kept pushing every emotion down and swallowing it, it would be ok.

I went out with friends, probably drank too much, worked too many hours, obsessed over working out, but when it came to talking, I just wouldn’t.  I told people I was fine, that I was okay, that I didn’t want to talk about it, or think about it.

By April, those things were beginning to weight more than I could deal with.

There are things that only those closest to me knew over the summer. Only the people that were in my day to day life knew about the debilitating panic attacks, which caused me to be unable to leave my drive way, or shop, or see friends.

Only  a few people who love me most knew about the times that I woke up and cried and rolled back over to sleep because I couldn’t’ deal with the pressure of everything. I couldn’t figure out how to get over a string of  heartaches, let go, and move on.

There are people in this life that will tell you that you just pull yourself up by your boot straps and deal with it. That’s all fine and good and dandy. I agree eventually you do have to pull yourself up by your boot straps, but those people weren’t beside me or with me, when I sat for 30 minutes in my driveway and physically couldn’t make myself leave. Those people weren’t with me when I felt like I had been gut- punched constantly.

They didn’t understand how many things had finally built up and taken a toll on me, or how I had spent years bottling up emotions and tragedies without shedding tears. I boxed everything up and shelved it until the weight finally caused everything to tumble down.  

With so much grief and anger, there were times I felt like maybe I didn’t deserve to move on and have my own life. I felt like maybe I wasn’t a good enough mother, friend, niece. I felt like if I had tried harder, things would have turned out differently.

Guilt in grief has a way of almost destroying you.

See the thing is, people don’t talk about mental health. They don’t talk about the way it impacts your body, and a lot of times we’re shamed or called weak if we break down and can’t push through. But I’m not weak. I’m one of the strongest people I know, ask anyone who loves me. So my loved ones sat quietly by as they couldn’t figure out to heal me or what I needed in order to move on.

So, I knew it was time for me to start counseling. I had to hit rock bottom, before I started climbing back up. 

Months later, after talking and talking and talking and learning ways to process, ways to heal, and healthy ways to grieve, I finally realized that nothing that happened the year before was my fault. Other people make decisions about their lives, and no matter how much it hurts me, I can’t control nor dictate their choices. I can only control my reactions to it.

As I have healed, I have finally started making choices that are about me, choices that are about me and my own future.

I took a job, where although the pay is lower than I’m used to, but I get to meet people, and  have a flexible schedule, and have opportunities to grow and develop as a person and use personality strengths.

I kept writing for the magazine, and have loved every minute of it. I am watching as it grows and develops. I got certified to tutor English for an adult literacy and English as a second language program and have enjoyed seeing my student develop and hope to help her continue her development.

And I completed my novel. It needs revision, but I know in my heart it is good. I know it is timely, I know there are people in this world that will read it and maybe have it touch their lives or open their eyes.

As with every year, I have gone on great adventures to tell people about the existence of structural and natural beauties. I have made my way to castles across the state, to Kentucky and to Indiana.  I thrill for those days when I can tell someone an exciting piece of history and people say “I had no idea, thank you for showing me that.”

I have opened up to people, and shared my heart, my dreams, my strengths and weaknesses. I opened up and shared not only my darkness, but that light that in previous years I had only let my closest friends see. 

What those people have done with me being laid bare, has no consequence for me. I opened myself u whoand finally after years of not giving anyone an opportunity to get to know me, allowed someone to hear my hopes, my dreams, my passions, even my weaknesses.  

For once, I have allowed myself to be human, to be vulnerable. That in itself has been a challenge for me.  And in allowing myself to be vulnerable, I have finally started to become whole again.

I have stood by my loved ones as they went through their own personal struggles this year, and sometimes through their struggles I have learned things about myself. One of the things I learned is that there are times they are strong, because I have been strong. They have told me they have looked up to me and admired my persistence, my stance that you must love yourself before you allowed yourself to be loved. I have learned that in times of need, I will remain strong for them.

I am growing, I am developing. This year I finally realized that the hurt of years gone by does not define me, and that I can move on without settling for being treated as less than.

I finally learned that for some people, it won’t matter how much I am, how smart, how pretty, how funny, how good, they will never love me. But I will no longer allow that to define me. I am finally learning that my happiness means more to me than saving the feelings of those who do nothing but attempt to tear me down.

There are things that will always hurt. There will always be anniversaries, birthdays, or just some days when I am genuinely sad because of the memories. But, I finally have the ability to remember not just the hurt, but the fact that I was lucky to have loved people so much that losing them hurt so much. Where there is great hurt, there was also great love. That’s taken me awhile to understand.

The last two years I have allowed myself to be lax on having a five-year plan. I stopped asking myself where I see myself. I stopped asking what I wanted and how to accomplish my goals.  

That changes this coming year.

In 2017, I will revise my freshly written novel, and will start the submission process. I have a story that I think needs to be heard to help other people begin their healing. Even as I wrote it, there were times I had to walk away because there were feelings that were too fresh, too familiar.

I will continue writing for the magazine and tutoring. I will also spend more time working on and developing my blog. This means many more road trips to destinations off the beaten path.

  Maybe sometime I’ll travel to someplace exotic, maybe I’ll fall in love, real, true, lasting, forever love. Maybe I’ll take some more classes and learn new skills. Maybe I'll toast the New Year with a kiss, maybe I’ll toast it with a hug from an old friend. However I roll in the New Year  I will toast to a me that has finally grown, a me that is evolving, a me that went through hell and came out the other side, tattered, but not broken.

Whatever happens in 2017, I will know that although 2015 was the lost year and 2016 was the year I learned how to heal and without that, I wouldn’t have 2017, the year of dreams and possibilities. 

Then there was hope.

I'm overdue for a blog post. I'm aware of this.

I don't always know how to talk about these things without backtracking to when I started this blog.
When I started this blog, I was so excited for my future. I was a mom, a student, an intern, an employee and I was juggling all of those things so well and discovering so many new and exciting things along the way.

Then I was a reporter, and I was living my dream of writing for a living.

Then, life happened.

I have said over and over that the last two years of my life have been my darkest days, my darkest period. I havent always known how to reach out and say "someone help me" an in fact I'm normally very bad at it.
 
This isn't a sad post though, it's a happy one. I'm only talking about the dark things because I need to talk about the panic attacks that happened because of that.

I've always been the type of person that if I was hurting, I shut down and shut people out. I refused to talk about my problems, my sadness, the aches. I tried to fill the hours with work, so that I didn't have to think about the hurting and sadness.

Only, finally those things caught up with me and one day I couldn't breath. I couldn't leave my driveway. I couldn't do all of the million things that I used to do without thinking about them.

I slept for days on end, and sat in my car one night trying to convince myself to simply pull out of the driveway to go see friends. Even that wasn't possible.

I guess for the first time, I'm not ashamed to say that I am in counseling. I'm not ashamed to say that I needed help to get me over the hump. I'm not ashamed to say that I started reaching out to my friends and saying I"m sorry for the times I've shut them out, because I really didn't realize I was doing it.

I am proud to say that I finally have found some light. I finally have found some hope.

My life has been constant change and upheaval the last two years. All of those changes were destructive to me. Now I'm making changes that are positive. Changes that will allow me to grow. 

Through counseling, I started resetting goals. What are the things I want to do with my life?
1. I want to write for a living. One way or the other. That dream may be slow but it is and always has been my number one goal.

2. I want to help teach literacy. I didn't realize that was a goal untilw

3. I want to have many adventures an travel.

4. I want to take a graphic art an design class. 

5. I want to have people who love me.

I guess I always had number five, but when you're hurting sometimes you feel like no one else in the world can understand that pain.

This past week, I can honestly say was the best week I have had in those two years.

I got my certification to teach adult literacy and I meet my first student tomorrow.

I'm writing for "This Is Findlay" Magazine

This past week I went on three adventures!

I went to the Columbus Museum to see the Picasso exhibit, I went to Kirtland for the Vintage Wine Festival, and I went to Fort Wayne to the Zoo.

And yes, two of these adventures were with a special new friend, but I won't discuss that until I'm good and ready, other than to say he is an incredibly sweet person. 

Two months ago none of this would have been possible. Two months ago, I had forgotten who I am.

But now I remember.

I remember that I am a person with dreams. I am a person with goals. I am a person who is not happy unless they are meeting people and trying to explore the outer world.

I know that normally my blog posts are filled with descriptions of the places I've been. They're normally filled with suggestions of adventures you should try.

This post wasn't really about my adventures though.

This post was about having your chest feel literally heavy because of the darkness and then finding a tiny spot of light and pushing that light until it's bigger. Until you can see the world again

I know who I was in all of the "befores" before the last two years and I know who I have been these last two years. I know I'm growing and changing.

I think I'm going to like the woman I become, because I'm working so hard to become her.


By the way, the Picasso exhibit it worth it, if you make it and it's only there until the end of September. So, I would still highly recommend it.

adventures and life lessons of a super-woman: Slaying those dragons

adventures and life lessons of a super-woman: Slaying those dragons: It has been more than 90 days since I sat here in front of my laptop to tell stories about adventures or feelings. It's been more than 9...

Slaying those dragons

It has been more than 90 days since I sat here in front of my laptop to tell stories about adventures or feelings. It's been more than 90 days since I've chosen to reflect on who I am and where my path leads, both good and bad. Yet, here I am again.

I am sure that there are people who are wondering, have wondered, what types of adventures I was up to. What types of things I wasn't sharing. What glorious life lesson had I learned.

Let me tell you a story. I'll try to keep it brief as I know the average attention span of Americans today is three minutes.

This story is about a woman, who had lost everything. One of her best friends committed suicide two years earlier. She lost a god brother to heroin addiction, two sons, one to stupid bad decisions and one to the military to get sent several continents away. During that time, she switched jobs, from a job she loved, to a job she hated, in order to keep a house that her uncle who died had wanted her to have.

Are we following me so far? Does this girl seem familiar?

This woman at the beginning of January met a guy. This guy will go nameless, but she thought he was really something. Maybe because she had already lost so much in her life, in her mind she gave him super powers he didnt have.

Maybe in her mind, she gave him the superpower ability to heal her.  Only, he didn't heal her. AS we all know, no one can really heal another person and it was only a short matter of time before he realized his inability to heal her and called it quits.

I will defend him and say, it wasn't his fault. He's a nice guy, not a bad guy. but one person cannot handle that much emotion.

I said some hateful words to him at the end, words he didn't deserve from my mouth.

So here's the truth. If you had met me a month ago, you wouldn't have recognized me.

The woman you all have known that went on adventures, and smiled a huge smile and couldn't wait to meet new people and learn new exciting things? She was gone.

She had been buried underneath a rubble of stress and sadness, grief, and anger. So much anger.

In her place was a woman that woke up, saw what time it was, looked at her phone and cried before rolling over to go back to bed.

In her place, was a woman who wondered, what it would feel like to just....not exist. Would it be dark? Would I be reunited with the loved ones I lost ?

And here, here it is. What I say is, don't judge this next part. You havent lived my story.

I drove around late one night, perfectly sober, but with the feelings and emotions as if I had drank a fifth of whiskey. I cried as I drove and text several people, desperate to reach out to any human contact that would hold my hand for a night.

As I drove, I thought, "I don't want anyone to be as angry at me as I was at my friend."
I started thinking about the letters I would write to the people who have loved me, begging them for forgiveness but telling them I couldn't take the hurt anymore.

I prayed to the God that I grew up learning about and asked him to just stop this hurt. I railed against him for letting me hurt so much anyway. I haven't been a bad person, what did I do to deserve so much pain and not deserve love

That thought of people being that angry at me, and hurting that much is what finally propelled me to call a counselor the next day.

And so here is another adventure. This adventure is a lot more subdued than chasing castles, or horseback riding. It isn't an adventure to the unknown. This adventure is an adventure in healing.

In the first two hour session, my counselor lifted something about my friends suicide off my shoulders.

For two years, I had walked around hating myself for not being there. I had walked around hating myself for not saving her. That has always been my job with the people I loved, wasn't it, to save them? To heal them?

For two years I had walked around with my head held down, knowing....I failed. I failed several of the people I loved with my inability to save them, from themselves and from life.

One session lifted that off my back. I won't go into full details about that session. Let's just say I ugly a river of tears and lifted my head just a little higher.

Fast forward a month. I've taken several steps on my own to begin healing. Including, switching jobs again. This time to a job I'm a little more comfortable with. It's not my dream job, but that will come with time.

I reconnected with an aunt that has been my emotional strength through most of my life. The last few months though, we hadn't been close and i felt like I had lost her in my life too.  That day five hours of healing tears were cried.

The counselor says my emotions have been like a box. The box was full to overflowing and I couldn't cram anything else into them, but kept trying.

I kept not wanting other people to see what was in that box. I didn't want to burden people with that box. I didn't want to hurt people, or anger people. 

I thought I was supposed to be the strong one. I was supposed to be the one that heals other people and takes care of other  people. I am supposed to be the champion, the dragon fighter, the superhero in other peoples stories.

There's never been a time in my life when I wasn't able to do that, until all of these things.

These days, I look forward  to jumping out of bed  and finding my next adventure. I look forward to meeting new people and hearing their stories, and sometimes they are as interesting as mine.

Speaking of meeting people, as I unpack these old hateful and hurtful emotions, I am unpacking to make room for someone real in my life. To dive with both feet.

I know not who this nameless and faceless person will be, only that I am finally open to real possibilities and opportunities rather than giving it only mouth value with no action.

The pain, the grief, it is still there. There are still certain dates, hearing random phrases, or even not being able to hug my boys and tell them I love them anytime I want, that brings me to tears.

There are moments where there is still an overwhelming sadness, but they are moments, rather than entire days spend underneath a blanket begging for release from this world.

I know not what my next adventure will be, where I will go in this world. I still don't know what this next year will bring as even more changes are underway with my youngest son graduating.

What I now know, is I am my own dragon slayer. I am the superhero of my own stories. My smile is back. My hope and belief that good can overcome the evils of the world. I'm back.

Do you know what my first adventure was? My first adventure is the fact that for the first time in four months, I sat down and wrote these words.