*my intentions are not talk ill about anyone, but to share my perspective. I will never use real names, and my intentions are not to reveal the identity of anyone (other than family)*
Okay, so that might be a dramatic title, but to me that was reality. Growing up I always put myself out there (even to an extremely annoying point). I was constantly active on social media, I just had this deep want to share my life with people. I’m not really sure where that came from. Maybe MySpace brought it out of me, but in all honesty I think I’ve just always felt the need to share. It genuinely feels like I’m not living my authentic self if I’m not sharing my life with the world. I don’t know if that’s a relatable feeling, but it was something I craved everyday. I would tell random people I didn’t know intimate facts about me. It made me feel secure and like I wasn’t hiding anything. But it also gave me feelings of validation and really started feeding into my self worth.
Every like, every comment, became a form of self love.
Not just social media likes and comments, real life interactions too...and it got to a point where if I didn’t receive compliments that day, I wondered what was wrong with me. I created this world of constant validation that allowed me to rely on others for my confidence. I could be okay with myself if everyone else is okay with me, right? Well, not exactly.
See, in my opinion, it’s not bad to want or need validation from other people. That’s a completely normal need for a human being to have, but as with everything in life, there’s always a healthy limit as to how much we let those types of things affect us. Do we completely rely on this or do we use it sparingly as a tool to help us self validate? For me, it was the only way I could self validate. I didn’t know how to tell myself it was going to be okay. I didn’t know how to tell myself that I was pretty enough, smart enough, successful enough, just...enough. I didn’t even think it was okay to think those things about myself. I thought it was a form of being conceited. But little did I know, it wasn’t like that at all.
After I got married (and right before) a lot went down. (It’s way too much to completely go into right now, but at some point in the future I’ll give more details. For now I’ll do my best to give enough information for you to hopefully understand!) I lost my best friend and maid of honor. My husband lost his best friends. I was at a bad place in my mental health. I was used and taken advantage of and then been made out to feel like I was a manipulative person trying to control my new husband, when all I wanted was to have my new apartment to myself with my new husband.
For me, I have a hard time processing events and things when I can’t talk them out with the person. In my mind, we just need to have a conversation to come to a mutual understanding so that we can let go of negative emotions and move on. But I’ve learned not everyone works that way. And every time I tried to resolve issues, I was shut down before I could get through my first sentence. And to be honest, Hayden didn’t really handle the situation well, but we’ll get into that a little later.
I just shut down.
For those who know me, stress and me don’t mix well. My depression becomes deeply affected with the slightest bit of stress or turmoil. So the wedding planning and drama that happened before my wedding was already putting me in a terrible mental state. I barely even remember my wedding day, I was in such a weird funk and fog brain. Being in a fragile state was something I didn’t know how to deal with very well. I had never been off my medications as long as I was at that point, I’ve never experienced drama and stress with family and friends like I experienced before my wedding, there were issues with so many different things, so many different people that I couldn’t even fully focus on my wedding and getting to marry the love of my life. So when my character was verbally attacked after that same person took advantage of me, I broke. Completely shattered.
I believed every word. I believed them so much I started calling myself those words.
Hayden unfortunately only made the issue worse trying to force the two of us to try to be friends instead of sticking up for his wife, which he was doing behind the scenes, just not to his friend's face. At the moment, keeping his friendship was more important than what his friend had done to me, which he now realizes was wrong. I can’t even fully repeat what was said to me because it still hurts to hear those words out loud today. I have never had anyone call me such awful, vile things out of nowhere with no proof or legitimate reasons why he felt that way.
Now I realize it wasn’t about me, but then I believed it was. And not only did I start to feel those words about myself and start hating myself deeper than I’ve ever hated anyone ever...but I convinced myself that everyone else in my life, in my past, hated me that much too. And when my friends and family stopped coming around, when I started hearing from them less and less, when I spent 6 months alone with those torturous thoughts and feelings... those thoughts and beliefs became more and more real and I felt like I was going to literally die from a broken heart. I felt more alone than I ever have in my entire life.
I genuinely felt like no one cared about my existence.
I even got anxiety liking or commenting on people’s social media because I thought they would have negative thoughts about me just seeing my name on their feed. My body genuinely started feeling pains, aches, nausea, jittery, on edge all day everyday. I was starting to become physically sick every single day. It was no longer just mental pain, or emotional pain. Everything hurt. All at once. Physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, every single part of me was broken. I completely lost myself. I mourned over my past life. I mourned that I wasn’t her anymore. I mourned so deeply, I actually felt like I experienced a death. Those beliefs that everyone hated me started to affect my interactions with people, with my friends, my family. I had to literally relearn social skills, and to be honest I’m still relearning social skills and how to not let those things affect every part of my life. Every time I did end up getting together with a friend or family, I felt like I needed to talk about what I was going through.
I felt like what I was going through was invisible, like I was invisible, if someone didn’t acknowledge and validate that what I was going through was hard. Because I couldn’t do that for myself and I didn’t know how. I needed others to tell me I was heard.
Instead of a listening ear and supportive words, I got redirected, talked over, and made to feel like my problems weren’t that bad. I was never trying to invalidate others feeling similar emotions, but I wanted someone to acknowledge the fact that these weren’t just emotions I felt, but these were ailments that stopped me from living a functioning life. I’ve struggled with depression since I was a child. I know the feelings of struggling with a mental illness, but still being able to function. And I know the feelings of not being able to function because of it. And let me tell you, they are two totally different beasts. I never understood depression in such an intimate way. But over the last few years, I dove into the darkness and drown myself in it. My life became my depression.
There was no distinction in my mind anymore, I WAS my depression and my depression was me.
I know now that I handled a lot of the situations badly, but to be fair to myself, I did try to talk about it and explain myself only to be shut down and made to feel like I was a downer. I shouldn’t have to be in a good place in my life to have supportive friends and family. That's when I need support the most. However, in their defense, every time I saw them I was reminded of all of the negative emotions I had been feeling, because of lot of my anxiety was whether they hated me or not, so I did tend to word vomit about what I was going through a lot because it was all I could focus on. I am genuinely sorry to my friends and family that I was negative and that that’s all I could talk about for a while. But that was my life at that moment.
I wasn’t going to put on a mask because I didn’t think I had to to be loved by my friends and family.
The idea that movies and shows give you where your friends and family come drag you out of your apartment when you’re in a tough spot isn’t reality. Because in reality, people don’t want to deal with that. I don’t completely blame them, but I guess my question is: what is a good friend or family member to you? Is it someone you just have fun with and talk about light-hearted topics or is it someone you can bare your soul to and feel loved & supported? And maybe it was my fault, but I feel I was never given the opportunity of being told where I went wrong and having the chance to fix things. I think after years of friendships and relationships and being there for my friends and family, that I would be allowed the grace to right my wrongs instead of being slowly ghosted and shoved to the side. I felt like I was always ready to be there for my friends and family, but when it was my turn to be cared for, it was too much. I think for a long time I tried to make excuses that it’s just too much for people to handle and that not everyone has the skills to handle these situations. Which can sometimes be the case, but when a new friend came along that was more supportive to me in the few months we knew each other than the friends and family I have had for years on end, I started questioning why I was holding on to these relationships. I think not being in a position to make a lot of new friends made me hold on to toxic relationships that weren’t good for me.
I really had to learn to become okay with myself.
To love myself without anyone else’s approval. I’m not mad at anyone. I don’t blame anyone for my problems. I know I’m not the only one dealing with this. But I do believe that a support system is one of the most important parts of healing and getting better. And for a long time I didn’t have that, because I relied on the wrong people. And that’s not 100% their fault. It was my fault for trying to make them the ones who cared, when it was clear they couldn’t be those people for me. I just didn’t have anyone else.
So until next time, I will leave you all with this. I’m in the process of discovering who God is creating me to be. I will probably go through years of trying to find a solid support system, but God has blessed me with this brokenness for a beautiful reason. I realize I don’t want to be my old self anymore. She had a lot of work to be done. The new me that is still being made, she’s a lot more understanding, more full of love, with genuine intentions and a passion for learning how to be the best me possible. I will never be perfect, never even close. I will speak on things now that I screwed up on in the past. But I’m learning that doesn’t mean you can’t speak out against it now. As you live, you learn and grow. I’ve learned, I’ve grown, I’m still learning and I’m still growing. And that process will never stop.
Like I’ve said before on my Instagram:
“How much more loved would we feel if we only gave that love to ourselves?”