True Confessions

Alright, interweb adventures; it’s time for some true confessions. I recently fell off the sobriety band wagon. I wasn’t addicted to anything trendy like heroin or crack. No, I am addicted to something most people don’t view as an addiction. I am addicted to hurting myself.

I know that some think that this isn’t a form of addiction. That it is just a cry for attention. That isn’t always the case. Of course there are those out there that do it simply for attention. Then there are those, like me, who do it because we are addicted to the sensation. There are also many different methods of self-harm. Some cut, some purge (throwing up food), some burn themselves, some bruise themselves…honestly the list is endless. I am a cutter. I cut because when the human body is punctured the brain releases endorphins. Cutting produces a high. That was what I got addicted to. The high.

The reasons behind self-harm are almost as vast as the methods of self-harm. For me it started as emotional release. To be honest it was easier to bleed on the outside than it was to acknowledge the pain on the inside. When I hurt myself I got to control the pain and the blood. I controlled everything about it. When I couldn’t control what was going on in my life. There were a lot of little reasons, but it all came back to old habits for coping.

I have been self-harming since I was in fifth grade. To date the longest I have managed to stay sober is a little more than eight months. It’s been my coping mechanism for so long. It is my automatic response whenever something negative happens in my life. I promise there is a point to all of this not just me complaining about my life.

The lesson I want you to take away from this is that you never know how much pain someone is in, and therefore be perceptive. If my aunt hadn’t been paying attention to the bloodstains on my jacket sleeves it could have been months before I got into recovery. If you have never self-harmed you have no idea how much pain someone has to be in to take a blade to their wrist, or to put a finger down their throat.  One in six American’s self-harm in some way. There are signs. Please pay attention! Most self-harmers aren’t trying to kill themselves, but as the cuts get more numerous and deeper…well accidents happen. Be understanding if you do discover someone has this terrible habit. You could be the only thing standing between surviving and death for a loved one.

Be kind. 

WTF America?

Alright, I had every intention of writing this week’s blog about a Pentatonix song, but I am far to upset about something else entirely. As I have mentioned before, I have a few members of my family that are LDS (Latter Day Saints). I was in the car with a few of these family members yesterday, and they said something that really bothered me. They were talking about how their church is passing a new rule saying that they will excommunicate any member who isn’t heterosexual. This really bothers me.

                The LDS church teaches quite a bit about Christ. In one of their meetings they even asked all of their members to be more Christ-like. What I don’t understand is how it is Christ-like to tell someone they are unworthy of the love of Christ. That’s ridiculous. It’s often the people who deserve help the least that need it the most, and this goes beyond just one religion’s tolerance, or intolerance I should say.

                I hate prejudice in any of its ugly forms. I don’t care if it’s based on sexual orientation, skin color, hair color, or sock color. It just isn’t right. You can’t discriminate for any reason. You don’t see people with blonde hair throwing fits about being in the same room as someone who has brown hair. You can’t discriminate based on something that people were born with. Now, some will argue that gay people weren’t born that way. That it was a choice or that something/someone made them gay. Codswallop. I don’t ever remember deciding that I liked boys over girls. It was just something that made sense to me from the beginning. Same could be said for others that fall somewhere on the sexuality spectrum. I am a God fearing woman, and I don’t believe that God makes a wrong person. He made you the exact way he wanted you. You are beautifully, wonderfully, and fearfully made. So, why is it acceptable for these people to deny others their religion based entirely on their sexual orientation? I’m at a loss here. Help me to understand the twisted logic, internet viewers. As I have said earlier, I doubt anyone cares what I have to say, and I am festively certain that no one other than my grandparents read this anymore, but I had to get this out. I had to cry out at the injustice, and I’m not even Mormon.

                I don’t even know that the lesson from all of this is. I just want to ask you guys…no to beg you guys to stand up for any injustice that you see. There that’s the lesson. Don’t sit idly by while others are being discriminated against. After all if Martin Luther King Jr. had sat on his hands we would live in a very different world. We need to fight for the world we want to leave behind for future generations, and I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to leave this world broken and bleeding. 

Pardon My Past

                People are like dice. Each person has multiple sides. I don’t mean they have multiple personalities, but they do have different parts that make them whole. There are different parts that may seem incompatible, but they all come together in some form to make an entire being. One of my favorite shows as a kid, and even as an adult, was the show Charmed. I’ve mentioned it in some of my earlier blogs.

                In season two, one of the main characters, Piper Halliwell, is talking to her boyfriend Dan. She is arguing with him about her pervious love interest. She tells Dan, “I come with a past. We all do. It’s a package. It’s one that I would like to share with you, but you can’t pick and choose.” I really like what she is saying here. You can’t pick and choose what parts of a person to love. Well not if you truly love them. It’s like saying that you love their arms, but not their legs. Both are parts of that person.

                This message really hit home for me this week. I recently had a birthday. On that day I became twenty-one. This is supposed to be a pretty exciting birthday, or so I am told. I’ve been dreading it since I moved back home. I love my family. I really do, but sometimes I feel like they are picking and choosing only certain parts of me to love. They only like the parts of me that fit into their life style. My aunt is a devout Mormon, and she believes that I should behave the way her religion says I should. It’s not really fair because it’s not my religion nor is it my beliefs. It makes me think that she only loves the parts of me that conform to that set of rules, but those aren’t the only parts of me. I love tattoos. I have twelve, and I am still going strong. I also enjoy the occasional alcoholic beverage. I’m always careful. I don’t drink and drive. I don’t get so drunk that I am incapable of taking care of myself. However, if she knew these different sides of me she would probably shun me. Same could be said for my dad. Again I love the guy, but I can never seem to make him happy.

                So I have recently decided to take a page out of dear Piper’s book. It is not okay for my family to pick what parts of me they like and discard the others. They either get all of me or none of me. I have spent most of my life trying to make others happy…even to the point of making myself miserable. Here is the lesson for all of you: be honest with yourself. If you are attempting to change yourself to fit others vision of who you should be…knock it off. You are who you are. Be that person and own it. 

We Define Labels...They Do Not Define Us

                YouTube is the greatest invention ever gifted to man. I, like so many, was looking at a funny video on this glorious site. As I was looking through my favorite Alx James’, hilarious YouTube extraordinaire, videos I ran across an old youtuber. He’s not old years, but he is someone I have watched since I was a confused junior high student. His name is Shane Dawson. He is also a comedian by trade.

This video caught my eye though because it was titled “I Am Bisexual.” It was not something I expected from him since all his videos were comedy based. I wondered if it was supposed to be funny, which would have aggravated me, but I decided to check it out anyway. It was a coming out video for him. He was doing something similar to what I do here. He was using it as an outlet to express his feelings, so that they were no longer inside of him. More on that in a minuet.

 In his video he mentioned being depressed. This is something I understand. There are so many more levels to depression than just being sad. A lot of the time is feeling anxious, and disliking an aspect of your personality or life. You have all of these feelings of self-hatred and self-doubt that you don’t know what to do with. They build up until you don’t know if you will survive the sadness or the fear. I just really want you to understand why this blog is important to me, and why Shane’s videos are important to him.

Now, back on topic. In the video he further describes  why he isn’t either 100% gay or 100% straight. In essence he said that we are not defined by labels. He is so right. He is SO RIGHT it hurts, and he is not the first person to say it. My best friend, who is also in the middle of the spectrum of sexuality, spoke very similar words to me over the summer. Words don’t give us meaning, but we do give them meaning. We are the ones that assign weight to labels. WE give them meaning. He chose to not let these words decide his fate. All he wanted to do was share this part of himself with the world without fear of rejection. I understand that more and more people are more accepting toward those who are not heterosexual. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t still people out there that are hurtful with labels, and they are not always understanding to diversity. He was brave to trust us with this part of his life.

The lesson I desperately hope you take away from this: we define labels. This can go two ways. Either I want you not to use labels to define other people, or I want you not to use labels to define yourself. I suffer from depression, but I am not defined by it. Shane happens to be bisexual, but he isn’t only that. He really spoke to me by saying that we aren’t what other people see in us, or even what we see in ourselves. 

Price to be Paid

                Music is one of the greatest things on the planet. It’s something that can connect people across the world. I listen to a wide spectrum of different genres. If you were to take a look at my iPod you would see anything from country to heavy metal to show tunes. Music is like air to me.  I need it to breathe. One of my favorite bands, Five Finger Death Punch, recently released an album called Got Your Six. I have been listening to it obsessively. One of the songs, Hell to Pay, really stuck out to me. At one point in the song Ivan sings, “…the hell I had to pay, everything comes at a price.”  He really speaks to my soul here.

                There are obvious things you could think of that come at a price. You go to the store, and you buy milk. To purchase the milk you had to pay the price of $1.99 or whatever it was you paid. I’m thinking of the more abstract connotations this lyrics provides. I am a devout Christian, and I do believe in the existence of a soul. I believe every human has one. The soul is a beautiful thing. It provides life to the person who it resides in. The other part to this is that there are some actions that can cost a person a part of their soul. I’m not just talking murder, rape, or any of the other God awful crimes humans commit. There are smaller things that will eventually cost you a part of your soul. I’ve seen it firsthand.  

When I left my home town I moved with my aunt. She was leaving and offered to take me with her as long as I helped her keep up pretenses. She had been lying to her boyfriend about where she lived previously, and she wanted me to help her keep up all these lies. I agreed because I had wanted nothing more than to leave Holbrook. Before I knew it the lies had spiraled out of control. I also was becoming more like my aunt. Not something to be proud of. She had convinced me that I was nothing more than what she gave me. Without her I would still be stuck in rural Arizona. She told me I was unattractive and, “that no man would ever marry me if I dressed like that (my usual jeans and band t-shirt look).” The price that I had to pay for so-called freedom was being abused by someone else. Not a smart move I’ll admit. I gave a part of my soul to follow this person. I lied to people I desperately cared about. By the end of it I realized that I didn’t like the person I was becoming. I didn’t like having a part of myself stripped away.

                The lesson here is to really consider what the price is for something. For all you smart alecks out there I am not talking about the grossly overpriced dairy products of your local store.  The price you need to consider when you take a person into your heart. If they are good for you then by all means let them in. However, I know some of you have a person in your life that does more harm than good. They make you feel insecure. They tell you lies or want you to lie for them. The price for having them there may cost you part of who you are. Consider that before it costs something you can’t get back. 

Egypt

I haven’t written in this blog since I was a senior in high school. I don’t know what possessed me to write in it again. The only explanation that I can give is that I am currently at a cross roads. My life has taken quite the turn since I was a senior. For instance in the last year alone I have been homeless twice. I know that very few people actually care what I have to say, and I’m alright with that. I just need to have somewhere to air my thoughts, or I may possibly lose my mind.

                The title of this post may be a little confusing. “Why Egypt? Is that where she was homeless?” No, children of the internet, it was not. About a month ago I was kicked out of the house I was living in. I was living in Mesa, Arizona. Once I realized I had no place to go that kept me in the city I knew that I had to return to my home town.  This thought made me nauseous. All night, while I waited for my parents to come get me, I cried. I did the only thing that made sense. I had to get spiritual healing. I called my best friend Jasmine. She reminded me of the story of Moses.

                The story of Moses tells us that a young man was adopted into the royal family. He was a prince. That is until he realized he was actually a Hebrew slave. He ran from Egypt trying to find solace in the desert. Eventually, he found a community that accepted him. He worked for years to work past the issues of his past, and he became a wonderful leader. He thought he was complete. However, God had other plans, as He usually does. He sent Moses back to Egypt…back to his adversity.

                I related to this story more than I thought I would. Jasmine reminded me that we all have pasts and hardships. She also reminded me that because of those difficulties we had grown. She told me to think of myself as She-Moses. Holbrook was my Egypt. I had fought so hard to leave this town. Then just when I thought my adult life was becoming manageable God was like, “No, child. You have much to learn. Back to Egypt with ya.” At first I was angry. I didn’t want to go back. Of course there was a lesson to be learned from it.

                My family desperately needed my help, so coming back had a purpose. I was mean to pick up the slack. The lesson for the rest of you interweb adventurers is perseverance.  There are thousands out there that have suffered some sort of adversity. You get past it, or you suppress it. Whichever. I don’t judge.  But the point is that there was some issue that needed getting past. Yet at some point in your life this issue is gonna resurface sometimes with a vengeance. You need to see past the pain or blind anger and remember that you’ve faced this before in some form.  Work through it. Then when you look back at the epic pile of suck you’ll realize that it wasn’t all bad. There was a purpose. Keep on keeping on.