Slice up a cucumber, slightly crush some mint leaves. Put everything in a big jug, add slices of lime, some lemon juice and fill with water. Detox water. Delicious too. But it's not the kind of detox that I've done over the last few weeks.
I started taking steps away from some people in my life. Some very close to me. I had to make a decision. Do I keep pleasing them or will I start doing something for myself? Will I do what will be good for them? Or will I do what is good for me? I decided to be selfish and chose for myself. Something I hadn’t done before. Ever! I always wanted to do what was best for me, as long as it was also good for everybody around me. Looking out for their happiness didn’t make me happy. One person made me feel like I was being slowed down. For as long as I can remember, I have had dreams and plans for my future. I’ve always wanted to be someone GREAT! Someone people would look up to. I want to be on top and look back at my life and say to myself ‘Look where I started and look where I am today.’ I know I can be great. But for some reason I kept looking at someone else to see if they thought I was ready. I want to do things, fast. I know I can do it. I have the drive but I always keep that person in the corner of my eye to see their opinion. Only to see them looking in a different direction. It makes me feel like what I'm doing, isn't worth looking at. It's not interesting enough. So I switch up what I really wanted to do something that might give me their approval. It's been like that for years. So I decided to detox. I have been living so many days without them already. Now that it's my decision I just realize how much pain it's causing me. I've been living in a shadow. Afraid to step into the light. Afraid that that person wouldn't like the way I would take that step. Every decision and step I have taken, I've taken with them in the corner of my eye. Making sure I got their approval. But that approval has been missing for a long time. Because we're so close I felt guilty but I didn't want to fake being happy around them. Their opinion mattered most to me and not getting it, felt like rejection. I read something the other day. 'A toxic environment will literally make you sick. If it doesn't feel right, if it makes you tired or fills you with dread, cut yourself loose'. That's exactly what I had to do. It didn't feel right. I even started feeling uncomfortable around them. When I made the decision to start ‘detoxing’, I cried, a lot. But now I finally did what I had to do to be able to grow in life, I feel liberated and relieved. I prayed about it, asked God what I had to do and I let it go. At first I still wanted to call them and tell them what I wanted to do next, but then I thought about all the times I had before and all the things I got from telling them, which hadn’t been a lot. So I kept my mouth shut. All the times I told them about my plan, I felt like my idea was stupid. Impossible. I even felt that I couldn’t ever get there; everybody else could, except me. They have been holding me back. This morning I was on Pinterest and I saw a picture with the quote: 'take other people’s opinions lightly, very lightly'. I have done everything but take their opinion lightly. Their opinion would make or break my idea. Not anymore. I need someone next to me that pushes me to start. When I've started, I can take it from there but I need that push to get over the threshold. Removing every toxic out of your body of life is never easy. But you need to be healthy. I'm sick of being hold back. I want to move forward. So that's what I will do. I refuse to let anybody hold me back from today on. It might have taken a while for me to figure out what was holding me back, but the people in my life that were holding me back, are going to where they want to be. So why don’t I? I’ve noticed that the people I’ve cut off miss me now I stopped calling. I get random phone calls and text messages, asking me where I’ve been. I’ve been busy. I’ve been working on myself. I’m doing a lot better, because of myself. Because of the choices I made. Choices that weren’t always easy. But choices I had to make. Believe me when I say this: I am going places and you can either come with me and support me along the way, or get out of my way. I may have started in a hole but I’m climbing and I’m not planning on stopping for anything or anyone. Sometimes, detoxing is the best thing to do. It probably is one of the hardest things, but believe me, it’s OK to be selfish once in a while. If you keep making decisions based off what others have to say, you won’t get anywhere in life. There’s a special place reserved for you up there. Don’t stay down here where others can control you. Go up there and shine like the star you are! Be great. We’re all destined to be great so why not do everything we can to be as successful as possible? The whole world can believe in you but if you don’t believe in yourself, nothing will happen. So start believing in yourself! Have you ever had to end a relationship with someone because the relationship you had wasn't healthy? How did you deal with it? Please let me know your thoughts and experiences in the comments.
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OK, so you started taking down bricks. Now what? That pile of bricks behind you is getting bigger and it's becoming a mess if you leave it there. In order to keep your walls down and keep that open view of what's ahead you need to get rid of those bricks. Look at the reasons and attack them. Find a way to get rid of the brick, the under laying problem. It might seem like I know exactly how to deal with it, but I'm still trying to figure out how to deal with every problem. I'm still trying and I think as long as you're trying and as long as you keep going, you will eventually make that pile become less and less and less.
Each problem needs to be attacked in its own way. You can't expect to use the same tactic on every enemy. It's not going to work. You need to try different ways to deal with it. Don't give up. It might seem like forever and it might seem to get harder and more difficult to deal with but you need to keep in mind that there's a sun hiding behind these clouds. No matter how dark it might get. The sun will always come out. I had times where it seemed like the sun had disappeared. I didn't think it would ever come back. I prayed to God to help me get out of that situation. I asked for guidance and strength. I noticed that in order to receive his help, I had to trust him. It took me some time to grow that trust, but when I started trusting him I saw the ways to change the situations I was in. What I'm trying to say is, you need to be open to change. Say you're stuck in a burning building. You can scream for help and the firemen will come. But if you hold on to something they won't be able to help you out. Your past made you who you are today. It made you look at life the way you do. Your future is what will make you who you are then. Don't follow the same unsatisfying routine because that's all you know. Do what makes you happy. Become who you want to be. Growing as a person means dealing with your problems and learning from them. Someone gave me the advice once to ask myself 'why is this bothering me so much?' And if I knew the answer say 'interesting, now how can I fix it?' If you look at it that way, it becomes a little easier. If you don’t deal with your problems, your walls will just rebuild themselves with the bricks you never got rid of. You don’t want to stay in this position, right? You want to grow and leave your trust issues behind. In order to be happy we’ll always have to work on ourselves. We can’t stop because we feel good. If we do, the good feeling we have then, won’t last. Working on yourself is hard. Because we are constantly criticizing ourselves. We need to find a way around the criticism. We can, if we want to (and there is something that tells me that we all want to). Please, let me know what you think. Share your experiences in the comments. So, we know we have to take that wall down eventually, but we don't have the slightest idea how.
It's hard to let your guard down. Especially if it's been up for a while. Especially if you've been hiding behind it for a while. We all know how it starts. You stop trusting people. At first, you shut out the people you don't know. After that, the people you aren't that close with to begin with. Then come the people you know and then come the people you love. One by one. You keep shutting people out and in the end you feel like there is nobody around that is willing and capable of supporting you. You feel alone. You are. Breaking down the first wall is most difficult. You don't know how to, yet. But once you do, it gets easier. First, you have to find a way to knock it over. It won't go down in once. It will take some time but you have to start somewhere. I know it feels like climbing the Mount Everest. But you have to do it. Take a step, sit down with someone you know and love, allow yourself to trust again. Push yourself to trust that one person. That's the mot difficult part. But once you regain trust, it'll be easier to trust others. The people around you believe in you. Join them, believe in yourself too. None of it will be easy. But you can get past it. Grow past this point. I started taking down walls myself. Before I could let anybody in, I had to allow myself to think that somebody was good for it. The first person I tried to open up to helped me see that it wasn't all that bad. She pushed me in every good direction when I didn't know where to go. She helped me up after I fell on my butt, every time. She helped me see that I could trust people again. I let more people in. I knocked down a second, a third wall. There's still a part of the walls that aren't down yet. Some are up to ankle height, some up to my knees. But if I just climb a little, I can get over it. It's still there, so it's very easy to get back over it and sit behind it. Getting back over it to hide behind it is so much easier than climbing over to get away from it. It's a constant battle to keep them down. They might only be covering your toes, but they are still there. If you ignore the walls around your feet, they will just build themselves up again with those bricks you haven't gotten rid of yet. Letting your guard down is a process that you have to repeat in order for it to stay down. As soon as somebody does or says something that reminds you of how you got hurt in the first place it will jump back up and you're right at the start. You need to find a way to deal with those things. Sometimes I hear somebody laughing in a certain way and I feel like hiding again. But I try to remind myself that the things that have hurt me are in the past. I'm not the same person. I know I'm stronger than way back then. I'm still working on it. I know it will take some time for it to get easier but I'm finally attacking my problems. One thing you don't want to do is take down the walls and leave the bricks on the floor. You'll constantly look at the floor to make sure you don't hurt your toe or step on it. You'll be avoiding them. You don't want to avoid it, you want to get rid of it. There's a very big difference. Please let me know what you think. Share your experiences in the comments. In my last post I told you about my ex. The reason I got help was because my mother knew something wasn't right and she kept asking until I cracked. I had chairs swung at my head, I've been thrown on the corner of my wooden bed. I could have been dead. I now realize that I should have screamed for help the very first time it happened. I think I was mostly ashamed of myself. For allowing it to ever get to that point. What does it say about me if I let him hurt me? Am I that weak? But I shouldn't have been ashamed. I should have been alarmed. That was his true nature and it didn't matter if he would have had an other girlfriend. It was just his way to deal with things. It said more about him than about me.
If you're in a situation like this, please raise your voice and tell somebody. Someone you trust. You also have to be prepared to break your heart. Because something in you loves him. You want to believe he can change. But when you move on and let your feelings cool down, you'll realize that it probably wasn't love. In my case it wasn't. He came in my life when I had no one else. He listened and he was the one I ran to when I wanted to escape. If I had someone else, I would have been able to go to that person to tell them what was happening in my life. I didn't love him. I was depending on him. He could make me feel on top of the world. But he was also able to take it away in a heartbeat. He controlled me. If he told me he wouldn't come over I would beg him to. I didn't want to be without him. But as soon as he got to my house I hated him and wished he would leave. He controlled me and I believed that I couldn't even be somewhat happy without him. He could really make me happy. He could make me laugh 'till I cried. Nobody ever made me happy. I didn't let anyone make me happy. But when I met him and he listened to me I let my guard down. That's where he took control over me. I let him. I thought I needed him. I had no other place to go. He was my first boyfriend. I didn't know how to be with someone. I didn't know how to be a girlfriend and he took advantage of it in every possible way. Most people think they understand what I went through but don't have the slightest clue of what it's REALLY like. Yes, I was in an abusive relationship. Yes, I had chances to leave and I didn't take them. No, that doesn't make it my own fault. That guy came in my life at a wrong time. My life was a mess. I was a mess and everyone around me saw it. Everyone but me. Could I have prevented it? Probably, but to be honest, I finally felt loved. I didn't want to believe he wasn't good for me. I kept forgiving him because I wanted to believe he had a good heart. He made me believe that he loved me. Maybe he did, at some point, in some weird, twisted way. All I'm really trying to say is, it happens. There are some guys walking around who are just out to get those who they think they can control. If it happened, don't be ashamed. Make a change. Speak up and help yourself. Think about this: - If he loves me, wouldn't he do everything in his power to prevent me from getting hurt? - If he loves me, shouldn't he be treating me like his queen? - Would anyone who loves me ever make me feel bad about myself? You know what the answers should be. If you failed to answer all three questions correctly, your relationship isn't healthy. Abuse is not only physical. Remember that! You are the only one who can change this situation. What I'm about to say sounds really insensitive, I know that. But believe me, it's the only thing you can do. Just leave. You have to make sure that you have people around you that are there to help you. Protect you. But all you can do is leave. Do everything you can because being in a relationship like that will destroy you. It will suck all the life out of you and the longer it takes for you to get away from it, the harder it will be to get yourself back; to get over it and it will be harder and harder to get your physical strength back. So please, do this for yourself and if you have kids, do it for them too. Don't let them believe that it's OK to be treated badly. Because it's not! You don't deserve to be treated like you are less than anyone. You deserve to be treated like the most special part of your partners life. Nothing less. Take action. Now! How do you feel about this subject? Have you been in an abusive relationship? How did you get away from it? Please share your feelings or/and experience in the comments. You might be able to help someone; save a life. Are you in an abusive relationship? Call someone, tell them what's happening and ask them to help you. I'm not ready to talk about all the different events that made me who I am. I'm not ready to face the facts. I've been hiding for so long that I don't know how to face those things. As soon as you hide under a big rock it's very hard to come out from under it. The weight of it keeps you down. You stop believing in your own strength and lifting that weight, dealing with it, seems 50 times harder than it actually is. I realize I can't hide for ever and I know I can deal with it if I try... But I don't believe in myself, yet. How am I going to start believing in my own strength? If I do what I've always done, I'll end up in this position again. What I've always done? Act like it's not a big deal. Even though it is.
Ok, let me tell you something that happened that had the second biggest influence on who I am today. I got in a "relationship" with a guy who I thought was really sweet. He listened to me, he would cuddle with me. He would make me sit on his lap, even with his friends around. I moved out when I had just turned 18. I had a great, big apartment and that guy practically moved in with me. It just happened, without talking about it he started leaving his clothes. I remember the day like it was yesterday. The beginning of January 2011. We had 'lived together' for only 2 months. He didn't get what he wanted and he hit me with his fist, what made me fall on the living room floor. He kicked me for, what felt like an hour. He hit my head and thinking about it, I can still hear the sound his fist made against my skull. My leg had swollen so much my 2XL sweatpants felt like an extra small. I felt paralyzed. I didn't hit him back. I couldn't even fight him off. I was powerless, overwhelmed. I remember laying there for I don't know how long. It seemed like hours. Ashamed and scared, I didn't ask for help. It went on for months. A year. 16 months. My mother divorced around that time and moved a hour away. So I moved with her. Away from it all. Thinking back, most of if is a blur. Why? I wasn't sober at the time. I didn't want to be there so I let my mind take me away. Every time he had a reason to be angry I turned from the strong woman who nobody could mess with into this little girl who closed her eyes in the hope to disappear. His words started hurting more than his fists. I did what he asked from me. But if I didn't, I would suffer the consequences. If I didn't want to cook him another meal at 2 am, even though I had to get up at 6, he would drag me out of bed to beat me up. I was scared that he'd kill me at first. But with time I wished he would just kill me already. I was disappointed in him if he'd leave me on the floor and left. The thought of wanting to be dead was constantly on my mind. What if I get run over by a bus? Or what if I fall in front of a train? What if I just drink to much or what if I start a fight with someone? Just kill me already! Time has gone by and since I left in May 2012 to live with my mom and sister, I hadn't seen him. Until last christmas. I was in the city where I used to live. A place where I shouldn't have been in the first place. I was with my sister, my daughter and her father. They ran out to the store while I went ahead to see what time our train back home would leave. There he was. He had the same nasty grin on his face and he pointed his hand to me and made a gun signal. Pretending to shoot me as he walked by. My heart stopped and I didn't say a word until we sat in the train. I hate that he can still make my heart stop and make me feel powerless. But I never dealt with this. I ignored it and hid under that big rock. Crawled up like a baby. Time to change and deal with this situation. I have to be stronger. I don't want to pretend. I want to be. Because my daughter looks up to me. I have to be someone worthy to look up to. |
AuthorMy passion is writing. I started writing stories when I was only 6 years old and I still do it today. Blogging is something I've been wanting to do for a long time, so here we are. Archives
July 2017
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