A journal entry…

I hate the fact that I have not had the time to write since starting university this year. I think about it all the time but I always seem to have something that needs to be done. Nevertheless, I am here now writing this post. Better late than never.

A lot has happened since I last wrote and I have reached extremely positive states and dropped back down to low ones. I am feeling very low tonight, which is why I cannot sleep. I have started my counselling and worked on great tips to help with my anxiety. If you have not done a worry tree before, try it! I hope to share more tips with you very soon. What I have not addressed yet is depression. I thought it may be good for me to read a journal that I wrote back in July when my depression was at its worst to make me reflect on how far I have come and I wanted to share an entry with you.

‘ I don’t know what else I can say . I cant even think straight let alone talk. Its all one big jumbled up mess again in my head. Like a pair of headphones or a necklace that ends up in that awful tangle that can take hours to undo. The last week has been hell and I haven’t even had time to write, or maybe I just didn’t find time. I’ve gone back to wanting to sleep every moment that I don’t have anything important to do. Even then I cant sleep without having nightmares. I thought Angel would be with me everyday to help guide me but maybe they have a limit on how many times they can interfere. I have gone back to square one all over again. I cant understand how my feelings are such a rollercoaster and neither can he. One moment I sit and day dream, about the future, about buying houses, having children. I see a time where I am completely content and no longer feel pain, no longer fear. There are times where I sit or lay in his arms and cant stop smiling. I say I love you so often and kiss him so much that he actually finds it annoying and asks me to chill out. In those moments I have found my passion again. I don’t feel lost, I feel like a happy healthy girl, vibrant with goals, and so set and driven to reach them. But just moments later I can feel the complete opposite. I am lost with no direction, no idea what path I should take, no idea what choices to make , and here I often find myself making the wrong ones. How can this be? How can my thoughts and feelings change in what seems like the flip of a coin by a person playing a game with my life. Sometimes if I am lucky I may land on heads every time he flips it in that one day. More often than not I get my fair share of tails. Even writing this, the choice of words I have used I am beginning to see that I have little belief in having control over my own life. I think I’ve struggled since a little girl to believe that I can decide what happens and whether I can be happy. Why would I choose to be abused? I cant have wanted that, I cant have consciously taken steps to cause that to happen, could I? Maybe now as an adult I need to start realising that I do now have power over my life. Now I do have control over the situations I put myself in. Deep down I know its down to me to find a way to get passed these feelings so that I can live a life. But in moments like this I am not living at all , and all I think about is going to sleep and never waking up.’

I wanted to share this entry because it relates to my counselling session this week. Reading back over this its clear that at the time I was trying to say that my past experiences were controlling my life, and in particular the abuse. My Counsellor told me that I must work on comforting the little girl from my past who lives inside me. I must tell her she is safe now and that she cannot be hurt anymore. I must do what was not done all those years ago so that she can be at peace and let the current me have control back.

Many of my other blog posts focus on gaining control of your own mind. I really do believe that is the key to happiness and success.

Until next time.

Contributing to the future of others…

I have said since my son was born that I want to make a difference in the world. That I wanted have a positive impact on peoples life, to make the hard times just that little bit easier.

It soon occurred to me that there is no plain and simple way to do this. There is not just one act that will help you meet this goal. Instead, you must do little things, all the time. These things add up, and eventually you will have impacted many lives in many ways.

Last night I was sat in my car and I wasn’t even paying attention to the radio until a phrase caught my attention. “Childhood Sexual Abuse”. Automatically I tuned in. The Truth Project were advertising for people to share their stories of CSA. So this evening I had a look on their website and read about what they do. They are working on the Independent Inquiry into Child Sex Abuse. All they are asking for is victims or survivors to share their stories with them so that they can gain an understanding of what is working well and what is failing in the current system. Their aim is to provide better protection for the children of the future, and of course have a better system to receive those who have been unfortunate enough to be a victim.

As difficult as it is to sit down and tell your story to someone, I signed myself up. This is one thing that I can do, to try to help the children of the future. One thing that I can do to help make the world a better place, for my sons generation and the generation to come. There are so many little things, that we could all do daily, that together, will make a difference.

If you are a CSA victim or survivor, please have a look at their page and see if you can help too!

Ps. I haven’t had much time to write lately, but I have set up a new Instagram with regular positive, inspirational posts.. Please follow it @beyourowninspiration_

Thank you!!

Until next time.

The greatest strength lies inside your mind.

If your reading this blog it is probably because your mind currently, or at some point during your life, seems to have taken control of itself and your life, and you feel like you can’t stop yourself from feeling a certain way or doing certain things.

I know when I was feeling my lowest that I thought there was no way out. I thought that the only way I could escape my mind, which had run free and messed up so many things in my life, was to take my life. It seemed impossible at the time, that the very tool which was destroying my life was also the only tool that could build up the life that I want to live. The mind is key to success. Whether that be setting up a business, pulling yourself out of depression or climbing mount Everest. You can’t do any of those things without your mind, a positive mind-set is a catalyst for success.

There are so many things that I do or don’t do in my life, that I want to do or to not do. Let me give you some examples. I have got much better at managing my money, ensuring that I am not left with absolutely nothing for any period of time but I’d really like to save and I’m not hitting my savings goals at this moment in time. There is only one reason why. I haven’t got the right mindset yet. I know what I want to save for, but I do not have the determination to fully commit. I have stopped myself from buying expensive things that I don’t need, but I still end up spending unnecessarily, usually on food. If I want to save money, I need to have the willpower or it will never happen and willpower comes from the mind.

Let me tell you where I have practiced this successfully. In some of my other posts I mention the break up that happened almost 2 months ago with my ex boyfriend. I kept saying, and kept thinking that I wouldn’t ever be able to love again. And, if I am to be completely honest I am still not sure that I will. However, what I have done is changed my mind-set, and I am using my emotions and heartbreak to my advantage. Let me tell you how. I am very afraid, to let anyone else in after all of the past experiences that I have had, but, it is my dream to have a loving relationship, to settle down and it always has been. I am a really family orientated girl, very maternal, and my idea of happiness sits comfortably in the family life regime. So why should I remain a single parent, with only one child, when my dream is to have more than one child and to marry? I shouldn’t. Just because I have had my heart broken, I shouldn’t run away from my dreams because if I don’t then at least I have a chance of reaching them right? Okay so this is what I have been doing…

In the 2 months that I have been single I have only felt well enough to talk to another male in the last two weeks. I discussed it with my councillor and she and I developed a few things that we should do in order to help me get back into the world of dating, but protect myself from making the wrong choices. One thing that I mentioned to her was doing things too soon, from getting intimate, to becoming in a relationship and introducing my child. So I have created a list of 5 questions that I must ask any man that I am seeking that kind of relationship with. It is not an interview so they will not be word for word, and I will be slipping them into natural conversations where they are applicable. This is to help me to identify at an early stage whether the person has the traits and personality that I am looking for, before things start to get to complicated.

Now I feel myself drifting away from my actual intended point here, the power of the mind, but methodology is important too. So basically what I am doing is taking things very slowly, and ensuring that I am finding out the important things sooner rather than later. If you have read my earlier blogs you may know that I am a survivor of childhood sexual abuse. I want to explain a little bit about how that has affected my relationships, and particularly my sex life so that you can understand why I feel I have made great progress over the last 2 weeks. My experiences as a child made me grow up feeling like no more than a sex doll, sad, but its true. Now some survivors go the opposite way, they have a fear of people going anywhere near them or touching them physically and so become afraid of sex following the trauma. For me, the experience was very different. Due to re-victimisation very shortly after the first spate of abuse I entered my teenage to adult years feeling as though I was worth nothing more than sex. Like that was the only thing I was good at, the only purpose that I had. My brain had also programmed itself into believing that my opinions, my desires, what I wanted, had no significance. Therefore, if a male wanted me, I would often consent even if I didn’t truly want to. Many will say that this makes me a slut, but I am not offended by their thoughts or comments because they don’t understand what I went through and what it did to my head. I no longer have to be ashamed because I have discovered the issue, and I have addressed it and now I have put my plans into action using nothing but my mind. On every occasion that I have seen this one guy over the last two weeks I have gone no further than to kiss him. I regret to say that this an achievement for me. No matter that I had alcohol in my system, no matter that he was trying to persuade me to change my mind. I went into his company telling myself that I was not going to give any sexual contact and I stuck to my guns every single time. Part of this is to see if he respects my wishes, or whether sex is all he wants. Part of it is to make him chase and see him put in the effort. But do you know what the most important part of it has been? Showing myself that I CAN do anything that I set my mind to. I don’t have to be a slave to sex as the males of the past made my mind believe. I can be whoever I want to be. I deserve more than giving myself up straight away, I deserve to grafted for, but I have to make that happen.

The above example may be un-relatable to many of you reading it, but the point that I want to get across is that you can change lifetime habits, you can change habitual thinking patterns, cognitive distortions that have been instilled in you since a very young age. The key is the mind. You must use your mind, you must adapt your mind-set. The behaviours and everything else required for your success will follow once your mind has found the right path.

Believe in yourself, challenge yourself. You are your best supporter and your worst enemy. Once you unlock the full potential of your mind, you can be unstoppable.

I hope this post inspires you to test the powers of your own mind, success is like dominoes! Once you achieve one goal, you believe, and once you believe, you can begin to smash all of your goals one after the other in succession.

Good luck.

Until next time.

Off Guard

Its 3am in the morning, I have an early start, I should be fast asleep. Instead my emotions have been caught off guard and I’m stuck thinking about my ex, everything about him.

As I lay here in my bed I close my eyes and try to imagine the feeling of his mattress beneath me, the heaviness of his duvet. The smell of his room, of this aftershave. The feeling of his soft skin against my cheek as I lay with my head on his chest. I used to do that every weekend. That was my home. See the truth is, nowhere has ever really felt like home to me before.

My first house, where I grew up, was ruined by memories of my first abuser. I can’t think back and picture my bedroom without picturing him there with me. No matter what memory I have, it always ends up coming back to him. I remember being in the front attick room of our house, I had always shared with my brother on the floor below but the lodger had moved out and I could finally have my own room. All girly. I remember that room, one Christmas Eve, I thought I would be able to hear santa land on my roof because I was so close. A little girl excited for Christmas. But then I remember that same room, that same bed. I remember being completely naked laying on the bed beneath him completely naked. I didn’t have that room for long, so now that I think about it, my sexual journey started before I stopped believing in Santa Claus. What kind of a childhood is that?

The next house I lived in he also visited once or twice, and whilst not much happened there it was were I was living when I first spoke up about what had happened. My memories of that house are surrounded by police interviews and interrogation and upset within my family. It seems like all of the good memories I ever had in either house only come back very rarely but these ones I could relive every moment, every fine detail at any point.

The house I lived in after that, during my teenage years, where my mum still lives now. That was where I was living during my second episode of abuse. The bed that I layed in when I was 13 years old, with a man who was 24. The convincing rapist, the groomer. It’s no wonder I have no self esteem, and no ability to believe in myself when I let that happen to me. Why didn’t I stop it? Why didn’t I see that it was wrong?

I moved to my father’s house for a little while, which is where I currently live now. It doesn’t feel like home, not one bit. I think that’s just because I am not close to anyone here, apart from my son, but he will be with me wherever I go. It’s not mine, I’ve not been able to decorate my room, I’m bound by rules, I don’t feel free. More than anything I feel lonely, and when I’m lonely, like this very moment, my thoughts consume me. And I cry, I cry until I fall asleep.

Before returning here, I lived in a flat with my ex and my baby. It would have felt like home if it wasn’t the very place that I was attacked whilst pregnant. Full of raging arguments, a place where I often felt low and didn’t want to live anymore.

My ex’s house started to feel like home. Whilst we bickered about things and had disagreements we never had a fight, he never physically hurt me, he never raped me. It was the only bed that I layed my head to sleep on where I was safe. Whilst I never felt safe mentally, because I felt like the whole world was attacking me, him included. Compared to the rest of my life this was a safe haven. With more happy memories than bad ones. With more positives than negatives. One place that I actually felt loved and welcomed. I felt like I was actually wanted there.

I think of the feeling of his teeny tight curls between my fingers. I loved playing with his hair, it felt so different to any other head I’d touched. That’s why I liked it so much. As I squished the strands in my fingers I dreamt of having little babies with the same hair, that I would play with in the same way until it wasn’t cool for me to do it anymore. I think of how our lips met when we kissed, his were like a big soft cushion. Never had a kiss that felt so right before.

Now I can’t even reply to a text. Every time I engage in conversation with him I feel at rock bottom, and I don’t want to live anymore. I’ve had a long time to work out why my head is so messed up, and I know the causes of most of my struggles and emotions, but not this one. The only thing I know is that not talking to him at all has helped me to start seeing a future for myself, but clearly it does not mean that I do not think about him. It does not mean that I do not miss him. My councillor asked me last week what I wanted and I said I don’t know. She likes to remind me that I may well find someone else who treats me better than I have ever been treated before. Fills me with optimism. It’s true, I could. But how do I know? I’m afraid. I’m afraid to ever let anyone in again. I’m afraid to date, I’m afraid to let anyone fall in love with me because they may no longer want me when they find out what I’ve been through and how it affects my life. I’m afraid of abondonment. My ex felt like I caught him under false pretences. Clearly the way I was acting when he fell for me, the person I was then, I am not able to manage all the time. How long can it last? I may find someone else, I may be able to be the good me for a week, a month, a year. Long enough to attract them. But what happens if I come back to this place, what happens when I’m struggling, when I’m hurting. Even though it’s not their fault, they may leave me, again, because I’m not the person they thought I was. How will I ever attract someone if I’m honest with them at the start? How do you say to someone.. oh by the way, before you fall in love with me, i was abused as a child, as a teenager, subject to domestic violence when I was just an adult and that has made me fragile. I have issues with trust and sometimes i just may not want to be alive. Be lucky if they even pay half the bill and don’t run from the restaurant before finishing their food.

I don’t know. It’s all I keep saying, to everyone, to myself. I don’t know what to make of the situation. I don’t know what I want for the future. I don’t know if I’ll ever love again. I’m just stuck here in limbo.

Until next time.

The days we don’t want to talk about…

I’ve been deciding whether to write this post or not, but at this present time I feel stable enough to share it, and I think it’s important for people following my blog to know the truth.

Those of you who suffer with depression all know how your thinking can get to a crucial point quite easily. In the weeks leading up to my breakdown I would not say I was suicidal. I was very, very low. The thoughts that often went through my head were ‘It would be easier if I just died, if a car just happened to hit me head on right now as I drive down this road, and it all be over in an instant”. That’s what I wanted, an instantaneous death, that was no one’s fault, just an accident, too quick for me to feel, that would just end my suffering. I would along with these thoughts think about how it would only take a slight jerk of my hand at 60mph to throw me off the road into the ditch beside it, wondering if that would be enough to kill me and ensure nobody else was injured. These thoughts became more and more common, and whilst I was not making plans to end my life, I didn’t want to live.

After my breakdown, and my break-up, which was the icing on the cake and pretty much caused my break down those thoughts started to change. I continued to feel like I’d be better of dead, but I believed it much more than I did before. Before the break up I felt like I was clinging on to my life, and the rope was cutting my hands and I was considering letting go. After the break up I felt like there was nothing left to hold on for. By that I do not mean that my ex boyfriend was all I had to love for, because I have my son and he is worth more to me than anyone ever could. When I say I felt like I had nothing left to hold on for I was thinking of myself. I already felt undeserving of love, undeserving of friendships, undeserving of anything good in life, and the break up put a x1000 on those feelings. Now I definitely didn’t deserve love because the only person claiming to love me had just left me, why would they leave me unless I didn’t deserve that love? It’s a complicated web of thoughts that go on in there, bit the end result was that I felt even more worthless and I didn’t want to live at all. I felt so bad about myself that I believed my son would be better off without me too. It’s manipulative, depression, it brainwashes you into believing the most awful things. And I apologise to my son now, should you ever read this when you grow up, that I felt like my battle was too hard to fight even to stay by your side.

2 weeks ago I made a plan. It all got way too much and it wasn’t a well thought through plan, it was a quick last minute one that would have been devestating had I not been stopped. I waited for a Friday when I knew my little boy would be safe on the care of his father, I awoke in the morning and I put on a nice dress. I did my make up, and I did my hair nice, just as I did it in Paris because I wanted to do something different for my man. I wanted to look nice, on my last day. I packed my lunch bag for work however not with lunch. I placed a bottle of water and as many packets of paracetamol that I could find, any tablets that I had kept back, antibiotics, steroids, anything. I went to work that day, and I ate nothing. O ended up being sent home early because I was so down, but I didn’t go home. I went straight to the place that I had decided I wanted to be when I ended it. My phone rang over and over but I ignored it. I had arrived far too early, it was only early afternoon and people were about, walking there dogs, watching the birds. So I just slept, I slept in my car on and off for hours. I was waiting for it to get dark. I had so many nightmares, nightmares that I was running away from things, storms, the devil, but I was trapped and each time I couldn’t get away. That’s how my mind felt, I was trapped and everything was telling me to surrender. One of my friends found me just before nightfall, when she arrived I was looking down at my phone. She does not know this, nobody know this. I had already taken all of the pills out of their packets, I picked up my phone, that I had not been on all day, to have one last look through my photos, the memories I had made so that they would be the last thing on my mind. As she found me I was sobbing, looking at a photo of my baby boy in the day he was born. That was going to be the hardest part never seeing him again. She saved my life, had she not have searched for me and night had fallen I do believe I would have taken those pills.

I am nowhere near happy, I am not even reaching neutral yet, but I do feel like at present I am out of the danger zone. For how long, I do not know. There is one thing that sets me off, and I instantly start thinking on a very negative trail and that’s my ex. I am doing everything i can to try to avoid him, because I do not understand as of yet why seeing him, hearing him, talking to him is doing this to me so I don’t know how to control it. The more we talk the more I want to die. It’s horrible to say but it’s true. So I am trying my best to avoid all contact, but I have not mastered it yet and sometimes I slip up and start a conversation that never ends well for me.

Looking at the positives, and I hope o do not jinx this… 2 weeks later I am still alive. The nightmares are beginning to ease, although I’m still not sleeping well. But I guess my brain is starting to feel some relief, o have taken actions to reduce the things that were causing me to feel that way and there is much less pressure, which is allowing me to start to recover, very slowly. I have hope now, that I will get better someday.

If you have found yourself in that position, or you are in that position now. Please know that you can get past it. You will not pass it and be magically back to normal, but you will be able to see a future again instead of only seeing a wooden box. My heart goes out to you all, you are not alone.

Until next time.

Dead when your alive.

Does anyone get the feeling that they are already dead, just trapped in a working, breathing body, but lifeless in the heart and soul?

People must not believe me when I say that I feel like I am already dead. They see me walking, and talking, sometimes they will see me smiling and they think that because my body is completing those actions I am alive. But I don’t feel alive, I feel like I’m just existing. Like im wasting the air that I breathe and the body that I live in. I was thinking today about everyone that’s fighting a terminal illness right now and I just wish I could swap places with them. I wish I could give them my body to enjoy and I could take their loss of life.

People say it will get better, but it’s easy to feel like it’s already too late. I feel like the place that you go when you leave this world, it’s pulling me in. Day by Day that little bit closer. I try to think about my little boy, and that he needs me to be here to raise him and then I think about the little baby that I lost, there all alone, without a mummy or a daddy, without anyone that knows her or him because I was the closest person that they ever had. I have two babies and they are both in different worlds. I don’t want to leave either of them and I feel pained every single time I think about this. I am so very lost.

I have listened to this song since I was about 11, I always related it to what I went through even though it talks more about physical abuse. Each time I listen to I feel closer to becoming a concrete angel. https://youtu.be/KtNYA4pAGjI

Until next time.

Understanding Self-Esteem

When thinking about problems that one may have with their mental health I used to think only of anxiety and depression, and forget that there are other things that contribute to mental health such as stress, anger and self-esteem.

“self–esteem reflects a person’s overall subjective emotional evaluation of his or her own worth. It is a judgment of oneself as well as an attitude toward the self.”

Search the word on the internet and you will come across many definitions like the one above. When I used to think about self-esteem I thought it was solely about appearance, are you happy with what you look like, are you comfortable with your weight, do you consider yourself to be attractive. But I have come to realise that there is much more to self-esteem than anyone thinks at first glance, and that it has a major impact on my life and the things that I do every single day. My ex boyfriend used to ask me a question such as “what would you like for dinner?” and then follow it up almost immediately with ” don’t even say you don’t mind”. I always used to say you know how indecisive I am, I like it when other people make choices for me. Only in the last few days have I actually learnt that my indecisiveness is a result of my low self-esteem. Having no confidence and belief in yourself, fearing that you will make the wrong choice, makes you not want to be responsible for the choice at all. Whether its just going to affect yourself of whether its going to impact others, and that is even scarier. You don’t want to suggest somewhere to eat, just in-case the person you go with doesn’t like it, and then associates that experience with you and blames you for it. Decisions, they occur numerous times on a daily basis, and being indecisive is something that I do automatically every time and would never have thought it had anything to do with my self-esteem!

So what are the signs that you have low self-esteem? You may be well aware that you have a struggle at the moment but you may not have thought that self-esteem was something that you need to work on to help you fight. Here are some common signs that you have low self-esteem:-

Feelings of hate or dislike to yourself
Feeling worthless or not good enough
Being unable to make decisions or assert yourself
Feeling like no one likes you
blaming yourself for things that aren’t your fault
Feeling guilty for spending time or money on yourself
Being unable to recognise your strengths
Feeling undeserving of happiness
Having a negative outlook
Lack of confidence
Inability to express your needs
Focusing on your weaknesses
Feelings of shame, depression, or anxiety
Belief that others are better than you
Trouble accepting positive feedback
Fear of failure

How many of these do you experience? I think I suffer with all of them. Damn that’s pretty scary! No wonder I don’t believe anyone loves me, no wonder I always feel like I cant trust anyone, not boyfriend nor friend, and sometimes not even family. How can I possibly believe that anything will be good when I think this way?

Update with my progress- I have had my assessment and I have been put on to a wellbeing course with the opportunity to have some one-to-one counselling after I have completed it. Bad news is- there is a waiting list for the course, and its going to take a little while to complete it so I could still be a very long way from the help that I need. So in the meantime I am doing my best to self-help, I have brought a CBT book and I am just about to get to the practical part where I will learn things that I can put into practice and share them with you here. My goal for this week is to research and practice methods of raising my self-esteem, I think its a great place to start and will have a domino effect with both my anxiety and depression. Fingers crossed.

One very important thing that I have learnt this week is that to start feeling better, you need to take away the things that are having a negative impact on your health. As hard as it is to do that, you will only feed off of these things and they can very easily reverse any progress that you have made.

In my last post Is love the answer? I talked about wanting to have someone beside me through the journey, how people have caused me to feel this way and I feel like I need people to help me feel better. I do hope that there are currently people in my life, and that I will in the future meet people who will hold my hand through this struggle, but I have learnt that you are better off doing it alone than turning to someone who is unreliable, and causes your head more confusion. If they cant decide whether they want to be there for you or not, don’t accept their help at all. You need support that is concrete, people who you can turn to no matter what.

Until next time.

My trust issues – In a nutshell

If you have already read some of my blog posts you will already know about the first part of my story, if you haven’t then you can read The first trigger for a more detailed explanation of that part of my life.

So at 8 years old I had my first sexual experience, abused by a teenager over a the period of 1-2 years. I never appreciated at the time how much this would affect my adult life and you will see references to this throughout my posts.

When I was 11 or 12 I started experimenting with boys my own age, in line with all of my friends. You know, the relationship in the school playground where a kiss was a big deal and it lasted a day or a week at most.

Then when I was 13 it happened again. I started having a relationship with a man 11 years older than myself, and I admit that at the time I consented. But as I have matured I have come to understand that a 13 year old does not truly know what they are consenting to and more so should never be put in the situation where they are given the option to consent. He then, was older than I am now and I do not look at 13 year olds and see anything other than an innocent child, a little annoying at times but that’s a stage of life. He tricked and manipulated me into believing it was love and that it was right. But oh how wrong it was. Not only that but he was mentally abusive and controlling. He used to sit at the top of my road and wait for me to come home, I barely went to school and spent most of my time with him for two years. I have spent alot of time blaming myself for this, asking myself how I let this happen to me, again. I have recently learnt that revictimisation is a thing and I will come on to that in another post.

After that relationship I started going out with another boy, much closer to my age. It started well and he had a great family that treated me well but he too was not a great person. He was a drug user and he didn’t work. I found myself having to pay for his habits. He treated me with nothing but disrespect and threatened me with violence on numerous occasions and pushed me about.

I remained single for a while after this, then I met the father of my child. This story is a long one and requires its own post. He abused me mentally throughout the relationship and physically whilst I was pregnant. Not to mention the lies and the cheating.

The next relationship I had after that is my last relationship,Mystery Man . He was nothing like any of these men, but I pushed him away because my head wouldn’t let me believe he was good. Every experience that I had with relationships had been bad, so why would this one be any different right?

I don’t blame myself for having trust issues, for not believing that there is good in the world and that if there is I’m not deserving of it. It is perfectly okay for me to feel that way with everything that I have been through. What is not okay, is letting those bad experiences stop me from having any good ones. Okay, so me and life did get off on the wrong foot. I didn’t have a great childhood, if you can even call it one at all. People often use the saying ‘ start as you mean to go on ‘. That’s how I have been living inside my mind, believing that my life will go on in the same way that my childhood did, that it will continue how it started. It doesn’t have to be that way, I don’t have to give up on myself, I can choose to have an adult life that is far from the life I experienced as a child. Some people will have no idea what I have been through in life, some people will know and hold my hand as I battle my mind for this change and others will give up on me.

It doesn’t really matter who or how many people fight with me, and how many desert, as long as I believe in myself, and I continue fighting for myself. I love the history of the Tudors and I feel kind of reminded of an uprising right now. Some of the men that would go to fight would originally form part of the kings army, but if they felt that he was more likely to loose they would switch sides so that the potential new king would favour them in future. The people that are truly loyal to me, that want to see me come out of this battle with my head alive, that love me enough to go through anything with me, they are the ones by my side. The ones that give up on me, or that half-heartedly offer to be beside me, those that will only choose their side as the side that’s winning. Your army is stronger without those people, those that may turn on their own.

As of now, I am putting my trust issues into flames and letting them burn away into ashes. From today I will choose to believe that I have had all of my negative experiences and that the next one will be a positive one. I will continue learning ways to control my own brain, to overcome self-doubt and most importantly to love myself. By the time I choose to allow myself a relationship, I will be the girl that I dream of being, and I will have confidence in believing that I am worth more than the experiences I have already had.

I WILL trust again.

I am so excited, to start choosing to be the girl of my dreams.

Until next time.

Being the Victim

Victim, I’m not sure I like that word…

There is a phrase that has been repeating itself over and over in my head over the past few days. “You always act like the Victim”. I have had a lot of time to think this over and I had never really noticed it before but I guess it is something that I do, subconsciously. See who I am and who I want to be seem to be two very different people separated by a loss of control over my mind. I know who I want to be, how I want to act, and I have all the right intentions. These intentions seem to travel from my heart, into my head, and there they are manipulated into something so far from how they begun. Like a game of Chinese whispers. I always thought that I was a selfless person, that I put others above myself always and that I was a very caring and understanding person. Maybe I still am, but just not to everyone?

Let me give you an example, on mothers day this year I went out to town with a friend who was at the time with child. She was so distressed and upset because her partner hadn’t got her a card or gift from “the bump”. Some people may not believe in this practice, but as a mother I know that parenting begins the moment that you conceive, and I wanted her to feel some sort of recognition for all the sacrifices she has already made. I am a single mum myself, and I didn’t have a lot of money. But I raced around, I bought a card and flowers, and some cookies. I placed them on her doorstep, knocked and hid. I will never know how that made her feel, of course she thanked me a great deal and I think that she appreciated it, as would have I. That’s the me that I feel that I truly am in my heart, and the me that I wish I could be every minute of every day.

Let me give you another example, another very close friend of mine found herself in a similar struggle to that of my current struggle. I wont go into any details because that is not my story to tell. That girl is my life, family that I wasn’t born into, family that chose me. I had a feeling that if I didn’t pull her away from the situation very quickly she would loose herself, and maybe I would loose her forever. I couldn’t bare the thought of my friend suffering any worse than she already was. Without even asking her I booked her a ticket to travel to the country that I live in and I drove 3 hours to pick her up. I took her away from a bad situation, and I knew it wouldn’t fix her, but it would give her time to reflect before making any rash decisions. I barely had any money myself, and I certainly couldn’t afford to do what I did, but I did it anyway. That’s how important she is to me. I would do the same for anyone that is close enough to me.

So why is it that when it comes to men this side of me seems to disappear of the face of the earth? why is it that I feel like I am still being the same person that I want to be, that my friends can see, but to men that’s not how it comes across. I always thought I made compromises in the relationships I have had, but maybe I didn’t. Taking a step back and looking at it, my feelings have always been my number one concern in a relationship and for that reason I have neglected the feelings of the other party. I don’t agree with that, It goes against everything that I stand for. A relationship should work both ways, so why do I feel like only I can set the boundaries? I am starting to see that I don’t always play the Victim, I am always the Victim. Maybe not in reality, but I am in my head. My brain processes all of its thoughts with me as the Victim, always trying to protect me. My brain thinks its self defence, but really its self destruction. Every day in a relationship it is telling me I am the Victim, just like I was all those years ago and that I cannot trust any man. Its not just men, but women too. Anyone new that I meet faces the same barrier, I have no self confidence, no self worth and that affects me with everyone I come across in life.

What I need to do now is focus on building self esteem, building that confidence so that whether I’m walking into a new situation or a new situation arises within a longstanding relationship, I don’t instantly believe I am the victim. I want to be able to be in that moment with no preconceptions, no worries, no paranoia. I don’t want to walk into a room full of new people and think ” why would anyone want to talk to me, I’m not worthy of anyone’s time”. I want to have the confidence to walk into that room and think ” I am going to start a conversation with as many people as I can in this room, because I am a great person to talk to”. It seems so far away, but I know I will get there one day.

I found it very hard to fall asleep last night, thoughts were running wild. But I did come up with something that has given me some excitement in this dark time. I have set myself a goal for the year ahead, and something special to celebrate with when I reach my goal.

Until next time.

Always searching for the truth…

This morning I woke with slightly more energy than I have had over the past few days.

I think partly due to my last post, where I got things off my chest that I have been keeping to myself for a very long time. But also, the nightmares have stopped, for now, at least. Over the last month I have had nightmares every night and I have woke up feeling sad, scared and suffocated by the bad I have seen in my sleep. Mostly surrounding my boyfriend, well, my ex-boyfriend now, and it pains me to say that. My sleep is not good at the moment, I wake every two hours at least, but each time I dream and each time it is about him. He is the first and last thing on my mind every time I wake, only now am I dreaming about the good things. I woke up this morning after dreaming that I took him to my birthplace, something I have been waiting to do and we were happy, like I always wanted us to be. Maybe I feel lighter this morning because my brain is finally allowing me to see him in a good light and I suppose that’s because now that he is no longer mine he is not a threat to me. I like seeing all of the things we could have done, the relationship that I deserve. But I know that these events will only ever occur in my dreams and they are now so far from reality that they will never return. Even now writing this post I look down at my cuts and blisters from the silly heels I wore for our evening out in Paris and I would give anything to go back and change things. I wish I had the strength to not let this illness push away the only person that I love, and I fear that I will never love again.

Back to the abuse.

There is another thing that only those who have access to the files at the police station will know about my abuse. The case never went to court, there was not enough evidence, but there should have been. It was my word against his, and his word won. But there were three words that made up a part of the story, and only mine was true. There was another person involved. This boy was not much older than myself, still a child and probably never before exposed to sexual activities before that day either. I never blamed him, and now that I am old enough to look at it with an educated brain I understand that it would be classed as abuse to him to. Me being the abuser, only not by choice. They were best friends, the two boys. As the older one taught me what to do, and how to please him, he also made me please his friend. I don’t think the younger boy ever wanted that, or maybe he was curious and he did, either way, like myself he was afraid to say no. Nobody would say no to him, that’s the kind of power these people have. I guess that’s why he denied everything in his interviews, he denied any knowledge. Maybe because he feared he would get in trouble for partaking in the activities, maybe he was just trying to protect his friend. Maybe he was threatened by him, I will never know. It must have been a daunting experience for him too being caught up in something like that at such a young age. I still don’t blame him but I do wonder if he carries guilt in his heart to this day knowing that he didn’t tell the truth. His lie cost me my justice. I never have had any justice for what happened, I never had any closure and I accept that I never will.

We three people are the only people that know the truth, but the rest of the world only have what they know from it to judge by. I spoke up, and nothing became of it. I cannot explain how powerless that makes me feel. It has affected me in my adult life in so many ways. My ex-boyfriend and I used to have many disagreements about things, silly little things. Most recently we were having a debate about what would happen if you fell from an aeroplane. They should have just been normal educated discussions but I also took it a step too far and started to wind him up. I was never able to just drop it. I always want my point in an argument to be understood, I want to be listened to and agreed with and I wont stop going until I get that. I tried to explain it to him once before, that I feel as though because I wasn’t listened to before I want it more than ever now. Its funny how the brain works, because I’m not the same in every situation. Sometimes I say nothing at all, I am too afraid to speak up about something or voice my opinion because I have that belief in my brain that my words mean nothing anyway so its pointless using the energy to express it.

Similarly, the younger boys lie has haunted me. I always say that I want people to tell me the truth no matter how much it hurts, because my brain cannot deal with not knowing. I will waste so much energy, and suffocate my brain trying to find the truth myself, trying to come up with the answers. As many of you who suffer from this will know, your brain comes up with the worst case scenario and sticks it there, and doesn’t let you believe anything else. It also causes you to predict worst case scenarios for future matters that haven’t even occurred yet and the sad part is you end up pushing people to do the very things your afraid of. This is where I have gone wrong in my last relationship, I feel like I am constantly being lied too and the truth is always hidden from me. That is something that I need to learn how to control if I ever want to get by in life. Any relationship, whether its intimate, a friendship or a family member. I need to learn to have more trust in people, stop searching for a truth that may not even exist. Just because these two boys lied about the truth, and the world will never know what I went through, and the instigator will never be punished doesn’t mean everyone is hiding the truth. It doesn’t mean everyone is getting away with something without being punished, and that is how I’ve been feeling. I guess that’s why I’m always searching for something, to uncover some truth that’s been hidden, so that they cant get away with it, just like he did.

I am no angel myself, and I must admit that I too in my lifetime have told lies or hidden the truth or part of it. That just makes me hate myself even more. One thing that I will give myself credit for is that If I’m ever asked about something, if I’m accused of lying or hiding something and I have, I will admit to it. And often I will just come out with things that I have hidden without anyone searching for them because the guilt is too much for me to carry.

The day that my brain stops behaving this way, stops wanting answers to everything, stops searching for things that may not even exist, I will be free. I cannot wait to experience a free mind for the first time in life since I can remember.

Until next time.