Awake and Alive

I realize that I really haven't posted anything since last September other than my one post recently so I thought I would give a bit of an update on what's been going on since then since life has changed quite a lot, thankfully for the better.  So back in September I was dealing with a lot of personal issues.  I was severely depressed, even suicidal.  I was cutting again and just generally in a very dark place.  I had hoped to return to school during the fall semester but didn't get everything done in time so unfortunately was unable to take any classes.  I ended up just working.  Honestly, it's a bit of a blur, but I was not doing well during that time.  I tried going to counseling which didn't end up working out but towards the end of December I finally got myself together enough to apply to CNM.  I was accepted and started looking at classes.

It was at this point that for whatever reason I kind of stepped out of the dark zone I'd been in.  Maybe it was just the fact that I was actually making steps towards doing something more with my life, I'm not sure, but I enrolled in six classes which turned out to be a bit ambitious.  Most importantly though, I finally settled on a major.  I've been jumping around with my major since I first went to college in 2009.  I wanted to do photojournalism, then wildlife biology, theatre, and vocal performance, to name a few.  When I was a little girl, I wanted to be a vet because I loved animals so much.  Well, I guess some childhood dreams aren't totally crazy because I'm working my way towards a degree as a veterinary technologist with the goal of graduating in two years.  From there I'd like to hope that I'll go on to pursue my doctorate in veterinary medicine but as that will require going out of state, that's up in the air.  My long term goal is to be able to focus on horses/farm animals.  For now though I'm focusing on just getting the courses done that are required to just get into the vet tech program.

I Found the Perfect Man...But It's Not Romantic

I gave up on finding the "perfect" man years ago.  I don't have any hopes of finding a guy who'd want to date or marry me.  I've learned not to expect any kind of compliments from men, because they don't normally compliment the fat girls.  I basically gave up on men altogether, aside from my dad and my best friend.  I remember talking with a girl friend of mine last year about how "men are pigs."  We were joking, mostly, but there was a part of us that believed that was the case with the vast majority of men.  And then I decided to go back to college this spring and take a Theater Appreciation class and I met him.  A man I barely knew who actually talked to me, listened to me, joked with me, teased me, and told me more than once that I looked really nice or pretty on a particular day.  And there's absolutely nothing romantic or sexual about it, he's just genuinely nice.  I can't tell you how refreshing that is or how much it means to have someone say that to me.  I don't get a lot of compliments on my looks, rarely from girls and never from guys.

I remember being younger and sometimes fishing for compliments when I'd put extra effort into how I looked.  I wanted so badly to be noticed, to be told that I was beautiful because I didn't think I was beautiful, I needed someone else to tell me that I was.  I don't care so much about my looks these days, I don't generally put in any extra effort to look nice.  I'm not trying to impress anybody anymore.  At this point I'm pretty much like, if you don't like the way I look or who I am, you can take a hike cause I don't give a crap what you think about me.  Okay, so not entirely true but I've gotten much better about just being myself and not trying to be someone else or trying to impress others.

Just Be Held

So this is going to be a brutally honest post about myself, so word to the wise that it's going to be a bit dark and depressing and weird because that's basically my life.  So here goes.

So lately I've been struggling with a lot of stuff with life and just personally with my depression.  I've been feeling very stuck in life, not knowing where I'm going and just feeling like I'm really going nowhere and feeling very hopeless.  It's gotten to the point where I started cutting again a couple weeks ago and actually did some research on suicide methods.  I always end up realizing that I'm too much of a coward to actually go through with it which in some ways makes me more depressed.  So nobody panic, I'm not going to go kill myself or anything, so no worries.  Basically though I've felt like my life is just going to pieces.

My mom, being the intuitive mother that she is, realized that I've been struggling lately and sent me a song by Casting Crowns that she thought would be good for me.  Now here's where things start getting serious.  I don't listen to much Christian music anymore, mainly because I don't feel like I'm really a Christian anymore.  I've never figured that I was a particularly strong Christian.  I always struggled with my faith even when I was younger and was active in church and youth group and about as much of a church kid/teen as is possible.  I struggled with trusting in someone other than myself.  I was bullied and teased a lot when I was younger and I became the strong, tough kid who became a bit of a bully herself.  I learned to swear, to make myself more physically imposing so people would leave me alone, and when someone teased or made fun of me, I responded right back.  I stopped letting people in.  I was a weird kid and was never really accepted by other kids anyway.  At public school I had friends who would suddenly decide they didn't want to be friends with me because the cool kids didn't like me or the cool kids would pretend to accept me into their group and then ditch me.  I learned early on not to trust people.  At church I was also teased and judged and generally left out which could be part of the reason I have so much trouble fitting into a church, because I'm thinking everyone there is judging me and I'm this outsider and don't belong.  So that's the long explanation of why I figure I have so much trouble with trusting in God or anyone else and leaning on Him with things in life, big and small.  I feel like I have to fix myself by myself.  "Conceal, don't feel, don't let them know."  Yeah, I totally get Elsa.

A Pause, Not A Stop

I've been considering getting a tattoo for quite some time, however, I've hesitated because of the cost  and also because a tattoo is so permanent.  I didn't want to get something in a spur of the moment decision that I would regret later.  If I was to get a tattoo, it would be something that had a lot of meaning to me.  There was also the issue of where I would get it since I didn't want it to affect my ability to get or retain a job in the future.  I also knew that I wanted something small.  While I admire the incredible artistry and skill involved in some of the massive tattoos that cover a person's entire back or chest or arm, I personally prefer something much smaller.

I hadn't given it much thought in a good while until today when a young lady I know shared a link on her Facebook page about the 3rd Annual Semicolon Tattoo Project.  I'd heard of the growing popularity of the semicolon tattoos but hadn't really looked into it all that much.  Curious, I finally decided to check it out.  Suffice it to say that I am about 99% sure I have found my first and possibly only tattoo.

For those of you who don't know, the point of Project Semicolon is to "start a conversation that can't be stopped about mental illness, suicide, depression, addiction and self-injury."  A semicolon is a pause, not a stop, a sentence the author could have ended, but chose not to.  As the founder of Project Semicolon stated, "The idea behind the tattoo is to say that your story isn't over yet.  That you are the author of your story and you are choosing to continue."  As someone who has had and still does have major struggles with depression, suicidal thoughts, self-injury, and addiction (to food, not drugs or anything like that!), I can't imagine another tattoo that would so perfectly fit me or have so much meaning and depth.

My first thought was to have the tattoo behind my ear where it would be fairly unnoticeable and easy to hide.  But the more I thought about it and saw pictures other people had posted, I decided that if I do it, I'll get it on my wrist.  My thought was that, 1) I'll actually be able to see it to remind me what it stands for, and 2) weird as it might sound, it just seems an appropriate place considering the scars on my wrists.  So while I haven't decided 100%, I have decided that even if I don't get the permanent tattoo, I will get a temporary tattoo.  I think the movement behind this tattoo is amazing and absolutely awesome.  Creating awareness for certain things can be really difficult, but I hope this one continues to gain more followers and reach even more people.  I don't think I'll ever look at a semicolon the same way again!

Never Take Friendship Personal

So I realize it's been quite some time since I've gotten on here.  My life has simply not been interesting enough to write about (I work at a dry cleaners.  Can you say boring?) and I haven't had any profound thoughts to talk about either.  So I ended up just letting things slide.  As I have often said in the past, we'll see if I can't do better.  Don't hold your breath though, you might be holding it a very long time!

So life really has been fairly boring.  I work mornings, go home, and stay home.  I go out with a select group of friends once or twice a week, but that is literally the extent of my social life.  I'm actually going to see a Christian romance film that's showing for one night only on Monday night and I'm actually kinda terrified because 1) I won't really know anyone there and I don't know the people I do know who are going very well, and 2) it's a romance which is the kind of movie I always avoid because they depress me.  Aaaaah!  Freaking out in 4...3...2...1...days. We'll see how it goes.

In any case, I find my lack of a social life to be rather ironically amusing because I was so much more social when I was younger and I always figured I would have even more of a social life as I got older.  Nope!  How things change.  I think that point has really hit home recently with checking out my Timehop the last couple of weeks and seeing all the friends I used to have and all the people who liked and commented on my various social media posts in years past.  It's just made me realize how much, as I've gotten older, I've fallen out of touch with those people and failed to really make any other lasting friendships.