What’s going on

I know… it’s been a while.  Let me get you up to speed.

In September my husband and I bought a house.  In November my mother was diagnosed with Stage 4 Lung Cancer.  In March my mother passed away.

I’m been contemplating getting back on here.  I was thinking about doing it after she was diagnosed… I just didn’t have the strength.. to talk about it.  Everything was such a whirlwind.  Then we had gotten news that the treatment was working and we would have her longer than we expected.  Then BAM.  My life came to a screeching halt.

I can’t explain to you what my last couple of months have been like.  I don’t have the words.  The amount of pain.  I mean, honest soul crushing pain that I feel is indescribable.

So I started going back to therapy.  I’ve been diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder and I’ll be starting treatment soon.

I also started a hobby.  A friend of mine and I started a podcast.  It’s been something I can focus on.  I need things to focus on.

 

An Accomplishment.

It’s the first day of February and as January comes to a close I’m not sure weather to be happy or sad.  I hoped to accomplish more in January, I feel like I didn’t do much, but when I actually sit down and think about the month, I did a decently good job.  I posted to this blog more than I thought I would.  I downloaded Lightroom and started editing some older photos.  I hung out with a good handful of friends, more than once.  My husband and I bought a bed!  And to top it off, I checked my credit score on Friday, and I’m actually in “Fair Credit”, which is amazing.  I spoke about this a bit before, but when I was 18, I moved out of my parents house, I ran away from my Uncle.  In doing so, I destroyed my credit.  Over 4 years of living on my own when I was not financially capable, destroyed my credit.  But I never blamed him, I could have.  If he would have never did what he did, I would have lived at home with my parents until I was actually ready to move out.  If he would have stopped sooner, maybe I would have felt comfortable at home.  But, I didn’t have to run, there are probably many ways I could have handled the situation, but when a situation like that arises, you don’t always make the best choice.  All I knew was I needed to get away from a threat.

I killed my credit so bad that I couldn’t even open a bank account on my own, no one trusted me with money.  In order to open a bank account, my husband; then boyfriend, had to open an account with me.  He didn’t have bad credit, just didn’t have much of a credit history.  I worked hard for 5 years, paying off debt as I could and if it wasn’t for my husband, I wouldn’t be where I am today.  It was because of him that my name was put on his credit card, that my name was put on a loan for a vehicle, all of which helped build my credit back up.

It’s been even more important to me to get my credit to a good score because we are hoping to buy a house this year.  And as of Friday, my credit score number would be FHA acceptable.  Now, I still have one small thing to pay off, which I’m doing tomorrow, but I made it.  It is an amazing feeling of accomplishment, and I wanted to share it here, because this could be part of someone’s struggle after going through something like I went through.  Honestly, my husband was my saving grace, I wouldn’t be where I am today without him.  And although someone going through a similar thing, may not have that, please don’t give up.  Keep fighting, keep pushing, keep taking one baby step after another and you will get there.  I know it is hard to stay positive, I still struggle with staying positive also but it’s so worth it.

I have a lot of catching up to do, from not being on here in such a while, so you’ll see more posts from me today.

Update.

I want to apologize about being MIA.  The last few weeks have been busy, I haven’t been feeling well.  I have fluid in my left ear, I can’t hear anything and it makes me not want to do much.  I have a few stories I would like to share with you so I’m hoping I can get on here soon to write them up.

I hope everyone is having a lovely week.

The darkness.

My depression tends to get the best of me.  I haven’t been feeling well lately, and not in the sense of, I have a cold or I’m sick.  Depression takes a toll on your body.  I just don’t feel well.  I’m tired,  I want to sleep, my body hurts, my head hurts.  Along with that, I don’t want to do anything.  I’m content just staring at a wall for a few hours.  This gets in the way of things I want, or have to do.  It’s a lot easier for me to convince my self to get up and do something that I need to do, but not the things I want to do.  I want to write, but picking up the computer and typing, just seems like a feat.  Yesterday I wanted to upload my photos from vacation from back in October, then I wanted to finally download lightroom and start editing them.  I got as far and downloading the photos onto the computer.  People uneducated about depression would see me as lazy.  I’m not lazy but it’s hard to explain the lack of interest in anything sometimes.  Now, what I’m feeling, the depression I have at this moment, isn’t anything compared to a few years ago, and I am thankfully, pretty aware of when I start feeling like this.  My lows aren’t as low as they used to be, and I am grateful for that.  I assume that my brain is healthier now than it was.  Or a least that is the only thing that I can assume on why my depression doesn’t get as bad anymore.  But it’s still a hindrance.  I wish I had a normal brain.

When my depression kicks up, so does my paranoid thoughts and my anxiety.  My mind wanders to the worst thoughts sometimes.  For example, while sitting downstairs last night, watching a movie with my parents.  Which it was an animated movie, nothing that would have put bad thoughts in my mind.  My parents have nice couches that recline electronically.  My dog likes to lay under the leg rests when they are up.  And a random though popped into my head, if she was under one of the leg rests and someone put the let rest down, would she move, and if she didn’t move, would she at least make a loud enough noise to announce that part of her body was under the leg rest.  That though quickly turned into, if she was a puppy, and she was all the way under there, would anyone even notice that she was caught, would it kill her?  I then got very anxious and very sad, just thinking about that.  I love my dog so much, she is my child, and I often have these terrible thoughts, what if this happened, and could this happen, then I get anxious and sad.  To the point of almost crying.  And as I’m having these thoughts I ask my self, why are you thinking about this, why is this upsetting you so much?  It didn’t happen, and it probably wouldn’t, why are you so worried?  I don’t know…  I don’t know why my brain does this, but it happens all the time, and not just about my dog, it can be about the people I love the most, or my self.  And it makes it hard to function, to go do things.

I had a really bad week at work, and I’m not sure if it contributed to the depression or not, maybe this was a long time coming.  Depression is a slow spiral, and before I know it, I’m sitting in a room staring at a wall with no desire to do anything.  That is the moment, most of the time, that I realize I’m back in a low.  I don’t realize it right away, if I did, I would do something to stop it, if that is at all possible.  Now that I notice it, I have to try to figure out where it came from, I have to talk to someone, my husband, my best friend, my blog.  And if that doesn’t help, I’ll need to call my therapist.  Because, even though I said my lows aren’t as low as they used to be, I still have a fear of going to that place again.  To the place where self harm and suicide are an option.  And I wish it was as easy as saying, “I’m not going to be depressed, I’m going to be happy.”  Because I can put on that smile, and pretend I’m not depressed, but if I ignore it for long enough, I fall right back down into that hole, and I fought so hard to get out of  that hole.

Last weekend, a family member told me they believed me about my sexual abuse.  That moment felt so good, I don’t understand why I’m so depressed.  I thought that moment would be a turning point, a new chapter.  But as good as it felt to have someone believe me, it made me think of all the other people who don’t.  It made me think about the terrible things they have said to and about me.  Retelling my story opened up old wounds that I thought were healed, but they weren’t, they weren’t even scares yet, they were just scabs that got ripped off and I feel like they are bleeding again.

There is such a darkness inside of me that I hide, that I ignore exists.  I just want it to go away.

“I believe you.”

I’ve mentioned before that I am a survivor of child sexual abuse.  My attacker was my uncle, more specifically, my mother’s brother.  The sexual abuse started when I was around 6 or 7, and continued on and off until I was 12.  The worst part of it was between ages 11 and 12.  My uncle has 3 children, 2 boys, and the youngest is a girl.  She is a year younger than me, and when we were little, we were best friends.  We used to live about 45 minutes away from each other, so I would spend a lot of nights and their house.  When I was 10 we moved to the same town as them.  After moving to the same town as them, her and I got much closer, but the sexual abuse got worse.  After a particular incident on my 12th birthday, I stopped hanging around there, I would only visit for holidays, more so just to make my parents happy, but I didn’t tell anyone what happened until I was 18.  I was very embarrassed about what happened, and I know that is a common thing for sexual abuse survivors to feel.

When I told my parents what happened, they didn’t do anything about it, I’m not sure they really knew what to do, so they continued on with life like I hadn’t even said anything.  That hurt me.  My life went drastically down hill until I was 22 and I tried to kill my self.  My parents finally stepped up to take responsibly for what happened, but no one else did, no one in the whole family believed me.  My parents cut ties with my uncle, but unfortunately, when cutting ties with him, we cut ties with my cousins as well.  For the last 5 years, the family has shunned us, like we were the ones that did something wrong.

In October of 2014 my uncle died in a car accident.  This news to me, wasn’t bad news.  I wasn’t jumping for joy that the man was dead, I of course thought about his kids, and his wife.  But it was a huge weight lifted off of my shoulders.  I had done a pretty god job of healing, but with him gone, I finally had the closer that I needed for my life to get even better.  Since his death, communication with my cousins has been a bit easier.  There is no longer an elephant in the room that we have to try to ignore, we can just carry on.

Yesterday I got a message from my cousin, the one that I used to be really close with, my uncles daughter.  She, of course knew of the accusations and refused to believe me, like the rest of the family.  She told me that I ruined her father, that in the last 5 years he became a heavy drinker and very suicidal.  That the family had shunned him.  She went on to tell me that she wanted to know my side of the story, she wanted to know if her father was the monster that I made him out to be.  I think she wanted to know that if his suffering that past few years was really my fault or was it his own fault.  So because I didn’t have anything to lose, I sat down and wrote her a very detailed description of what had happened to me when I was little.  What I shared with her was very hard to do, there were things that I told her that I haven’t told anyone but my therapist.  I also told her about the terrible things other family members have said to and about me over the past couple years.  My one aunt telling me that unless I was raped, he didn’t do anything to me.  Another aunt told my mother that I was a flirty little girl, and I probably deserved what ever my uncle did to me.  Not to mention I was manipulating and a drama queen, that I didn’t actually try to commit suicide, I faked it as a way to get my parents attention.  It took her a couple hours to respond, but she did.  Her response wasn’t something that I expected.  She told me that she was sorry, and that she believed me 100%.  I have to say, no one has told me that they believe me.  My parents haven’t even uttered those words, and although I know they believe me, I didn’t know how good it would be to hear those words, or to read them.  My cousin didn’t know that we were the ones that had been shunned, and that her father had more support from the family than she thought.

We went on to talk about all the fun and silly things that we used to do together when we were little.  And I feel like I got an old friend back that I missed so much.

I haven’t had a family member believe me in so long, I didn’t even realize how much I wanted them to believe me.  Of course my friends believe me, why would I tell them something like that, if it hadn’t really happened.  But his own daughter believes me now, and I can’t express how amazing that feels.  Now if only the rest of my family can be as big of a person as she was yesterday.  But I won’t hold my breath for that, I’m just going to relish in the fact that someone believes me.

Birthday Blues.

I’m sorry I haven’t written in a while.  I have wanted to, but my god, can life get in the way.

Wednesday was my birthday.  The day was pretty normal, I got up and went to work.  People wished me happy birthday, and my boss was kind enough to buy me lunch.  The work day was fine, busy but fine.  I got home and my mom made me exactly what I wanted for dinner. (My husband and I are living with my parents for the time being, we are in the process of saving up and buying a house this year.) After dinner I have a few birthday presents to open up, from my parents and my husband.  My little brother was home, but he gave me my birthday present on Christmas, this happens a lot which my birthday being so close to Christmas.  I used to mind it, I don’t anymore.  After I opened presents my brother ran out for a few minutes.  I went through my gifts and said thank you for everyone.  My brother came back about 15 minutes later, and my dad stared to get my cake ready.  My brother an up stairs really quick then came back down asking if anyone had seen his cat, and mentioned that the cat and peed under his computer desk.  Which was odd because normally when the cat got upset about something, he would pee on my brothers bed.  I went up stairs to help him look for the cat.  There is a large TV cabinet in the loft up stairs, that the cat likes to hide behind.  When I opened up the bottom doors, I found the cat dead.  I had to tell my brother that I didn’t think his cat was alive.  He pulled his cat out and started to cry.  It was incredibly sad.  The cat was 20 years old, we got him and his sister at the same time with they were just little kittens.  My brother was 4 and I was 6.  We had to put my cat down a little over a year ago.  She had broken a tooth that got really infected and she was just too old to fight the infection.  My mom took care of taking her to the vet for me, because I just couldn’t.  Now my brothers cat dies, on my birthday.  I was so sad for my brother, I’m pretty sure he doesn’t have very many memories of life, without that cat.  And it was my first time ever seeing a dead family pet before.  The cat was perfectly fine when my brother left 20 minutes earlier to go out.  I’m really sad that he is gone.

What I’m also sad about, and this wasn’t my first thought, is that my birthday is cursed.  It’s just a bad day.  Nothing good every happens to me on my birthday.  I was sexually molested on my 12th birthday.  My mother forgot about my 16th birthday.  I was forced to go to a school dance on my 18th birthday, (A class I was in planned this winter formal in high school, and anyone in the class who didn’t go was going to get an F).  On my 21st birthday I found out that the guy I had been dating was cheating on me for over a year.  My birthday party has been blown off more times than I can count by numerous friends.  Now on my 27th, I find my brothers cat dead.  I’m one of those people that believes your birthday party should be a fun day.  I think from now on I’m going to travel somewhere warm for my birthday.  Being in the Midwest, and having my birthday so close to Christmas, people have always said that my Christmas present was also my birthday present.  And it’s always so cold on my birthday, last year we had record breaking lows on my birthday, this year was also hard to handle.  No one wants to do anything when it’s that cold, they don’t want to leave their warm house to hang out with someone on their birthday.  Damn my January Birthday!

The top photo is Nala, my kitty: 1995-2013

The bottom photo is Simba, my brothers kitty 1995-2015

Rest in piece sweet kitties, I hope Nala was there to greet Simba when he past away.  I hope they are some place where they are young again.  They can play around with all of the other lost pets and that are missed every day.

Guilt.

Last night my family and I went out for a nice dinner to celebrate my birthweek.  If you didn’t read my last post, my birthday is the week of my birthday, a tradition in my family to celebrate the whole week.  After dinner, my mom mentioned that she needed to stop at walmart, since we all car pooled, we accompanied her to walmart.  James (my husband) decided to go in with her, said he wanted to grab poop bags for Moxxi, our dog.  Dad and I stayed in the truck, he just pulled up to the front of the store and waited.  I sat in the back watching some videos on youtube when after a few minutes my dad rolled down his window and I hear a voice say “You wouldn’t happened to have a dollar so I could get home would you?”  I instantly grabbed my purse and started to pull out my wallet when my dad responded “No sorry.”  I opened my mouth to tell my dad that I had money to give to the man when both my mother and my husband opened the doors to the truck and started to get in.  Before I could do anything the man was already walking to the other car that was pulled up by the front of walmart, dad put it in drive and drove away.  I didn’t even get to see his face.

As I laid in bed last night I couldn’t help but think about the man who was asking for money.  Everyone knows that one dollar would not get him home, and judging by his attire, he wasn’t trying to go home.  He looked homeless, he was hoping asking for a small amount like one dollar would get more of a response than asking for anymore, and by saying he needed to get home, it plays on someones heart strings a little more than if he were to ask for money for food.  The problem is, I’ve been that person.  For 2 months in the dead of summer I lived in the back of a friends Suburban because I didn’t have anywhere to go.  Then for another 4 months I lived in the scariest motel you can ever imagine.  I paid my weekly rent by collecting scrape, in some of the most dangerous neighborhoods in the area, and turning that in at the scrape yard for cash.  That money would pay for my weekly rent, some gas for the truck and the rest for food, if I had anything left.  My next door neighbor to the left of me were crack addicts, the next door neighbor to the right of me was a homeless schizophrenic man, the state was paying for his room at the motel.  There was a family that lived across the parking lot from me, they were also crack addicts, they had a little 7 year old girl, she was adorable.  Their neighbor was a man hiding from his gang, he wanted out, they shot him, he was tending to that wound while he lived there.  I was terrified every night when I went to bed that there would be a drive by, or someone would try to break in.  Although I was scared, it was less scary being there, than it was being at home where my childhood abuser could come over at any time.  At least he didn’t know where I was.

After a few weeks, the owner of the property, a Middle Easter man about 45, offered to pay me a little money to clean the rooms.  Now mind you, he rented rooms by the hour, and if you don’t know what that means, I’m happy for you.  What he paid me wasn’t much, it was under the table but it got me some food and took a little pressure off of me.  I did constantly have to turn down more money, he wasn’t totally accustomed to America, and running a hotel the way he did, I think he just assumed every american women was a prostitute.  I would have long conversations with him about how that isn’t everyone’s way of life, and asking that of random people isn’t appropriate.  I’m not sure if I ever really got through to him but he did eventually stop asking.

In total I lived like this, with no real place to call home, for 6 months.  And I believe I’m one of the lucky ones.  This was all I could think about last night when I was trying to sleep.  Wondering if that man ever found someone to give him a couple dollars.  Knowing how very cold it was going to get last night, and hoping he at least had a warm place to sleep.  I feel so guilty, I was going to give him money, I should have told my dad to wait, but I didn’t.  It really did remind me of how very hard I worked to get to where I am right now though.  And how grateful I am to be where I am.

Follow through.

In an earlier post I mentioned that I wanted to pick my hobbies back up in 2015.  Not only have I been posting to this blog every day, yesterday I actually posted twice, I bought my self a new computer.  Last month my boss was kind enough to give everyone at work a Christmas bonus.  I work for a small company and for the time being, he has the capability of doing something that generous.  I also collected a little more money during the Christmas festivities that I was able to purchase a brand new laptop.  I haven’t had a laptop in a few years, and when I first started the blog, I was posting at work during my lunches.  I know that I won’t always have the opportunity to do a post every day during my lunch so I decided that I would go ahead and get my self a computer.  One of the other hobbies that I mentioned I wanted to pick back up was my photography.  And I need to be able to edit the photos I took, so I figured a new computer would come in handy for that as well.

So of course I have been feeling good today, got my brand new laptop that I get to play around with and I decide, I should buy Photoshop Lightroom to get my self all prepared for when I start taking photos.  Not only was it almost impossible to find, I actually had to google the stand alone version, since adobe wants you to subscribe to their cloud service now, and I would just prefer to have a stand alone copy of Lightroom and noy pay a monthly fee to their cloud server.  Finally after I found it I realize that the full version is 150.00.  This whole time I thought it was only 80, but I had been looking at the upgrade version.  I have never had anything other than trials of Lightroom.  So now I’m kind of bummed that it is so expensive and I’m not sure if I can afford it right now.  I mean, I can afford it, but do I want the money to go to that at this moment.?

So as I’m sitting here contemplating purchasing a photo editor that is really awesome, to continue on with my hobbies for this year, I decided to get my post in for the day.

I’m wondering if I should start writing my book again.  I just don’t think my creativity is up to that challenge yet.  There is nothing more frustrating than sitting in front of a blank word screen on your computer and not knowing what to type.  What do you guys do to help inspire creativity?

On a completely different note, today is the start of my “birthweek”, something everyone in my family celebrates, the week of your birthday.  It’s really nice, instead of getting just one day, you get the whole week.  Which is nice since my birthday falls on a weekday and I’ll be working this year on my birthday.  Last year I took the whole week off because Elizabeth came into town to celebrate with me.  No vacation this year for my birthday, so we are going out to dinner tonight and my husband is doing laundry for me.  Or at least he was until he started watching football.  I’m sure there is a dry load of laundry just sitting in the dryer at the moment.

Does anyone else celebrate your whole birthweek?  And what are some things you like to do on your birthday?

Maybe I can convince myself to buy Lightroom for my birthday.  I have a little extra cash left over from Christmas that I can put towards it.  I’ll let you know what happens.

My Diagnosis and my path to getting treatment.

I was going to hold off on posting about this.  I was first going to talk about my sexual abuse and my abusive boyfriend but I think I’m going to touch on it now.

My depression started when I was around 12 or 13, it was mild, pretty common I think for a girl that age.  What wasn’t common was how is progressively got worse.  I had always gotten anxiety attacks, since I can remember.  I had always been more of a sensitive person.  Though I think me having anxiety my whole life is what really got my depression to spiral.  I have spoken before about my child sexual abuse, and at the time, not only did I not realize that I was depressed, but I also didn’t realize that a lot of my depression stemmed from that abuse.

Years went on and I got more depressed.  At age 18 I told my parents about my sexual abuse and they didn’t do anything.  No one did anything, and that’s when this uncontrollable black beast sunk it’s fangs in.

I was 19 when I was admitted to the first psych ward.  My boyfriend at the time (High School sweetheart) noticed that I had been self harming and he drove me to the hospital and told me that I had to admit my self.  So I did.  To this day, I don’t even know if my parents know that I was in there.  Shortly before this I had attended a therapist meeting with that same boyfriend.  Her and I had an off the books talk one day.  I told her about my abuse.  She laughed at me.  She told me that if what I claim happened, really happened, I would have reported it, and because I didn’t, she didn’t believe me.  I’ll talk more about that another time.

At the hospital I started talking to a doctor and sitting in group meetings with other people who were just as depressed as I was.  That doctor originally diagnosed me as bipolar.  I don’t know know how I felt about what he told me.  I was so lost at the time, my mind so clouded, plus they had me on a lot of different medication, I don’t remember a lot of my time there.  That particular doctor went on vacation, I don’t remember what holiday it was, memorial day maybe?

I woke up on the 4th morning with a doctor sitting on the wall heater next to my bed, his binder open.  I was extremely groggy from the sleeping medication they gave me the night before.  My insomnia was bad during this time, I wasn’t getting much sleep, and even the sleeping medication was having a hard time getting me to sleep.  I opened my eyes and the doctor looked at me, and the first words out of his mouth were “Why are you here”.  I was annoyed by this question.  I told him that everything should be in his binder.  He told me he wanted to here it from me.  I told him I was tired and I didn’t want to talk.  He slammed his binder shut and told me he was stopping all of my medication until I talked to him, then left my room.  I went to the nurse’s station and requested to talk to the head of the hospital, a few hour later I was in a room with the head of the hospital and I told her how rude the doctor had been, and that I wanted her to let me out, because the doctor wouldn’t sign off.  I think she feared that someone would sue the hospital, so she let me leave.  I never got a bill from them.

I was 20 when I was admitted to the psych ward the second time.  This time by a different guy I was dating, more specifically, the one who was abusive.  Pretty much same story, he noticed I was self harming, brought me to the hospital and told me to admit my self. And again, I did.  It was a different hospital this time, and although I didn’t think they would help me, at least while I was in there, he wouldn’t be around me.  I was there for a full week.  The doctor who saw me refused to diagnose me.  I told him about the doctor who laughed at me, the one who said I was bipolar and the other who stopped my medication.  He said that he wanted me to get more help before he would accept a diagnosis.  I didn’t understand that, but I didn’t question him.  After my week of talking with group therapy and one on one sessions, scheduled meals and medication, I left to continue state funded treatment for a few months until I stopped.

I was 22 when I downed a full bottle of xanex and was rushed to the emergency room.  My parents were there this time, they wouldn’t allow my boyfriend, still the abusive one, to see me.  They apologized for not being there, they told me to move back in with them, that I could go back on my fathers insurance, that they wanted me to get real help and that they would do whatever they could to save me.  I was able to go home that night, I slept in my bed for the first time since I was 18.  I found a therapist that I loved, we talked a lot, she diagnosed me with Cyclothymia.  Cyclothymia is pretty much the stage before bipolar I or II.  People with Cyclothymia don’t normally tend to attempt suicide but because of what I had gone through, I was pushed to that point.  I was on proper medication and I saw her at first, 3 times a week.

I tune 27 next week.  I am no longer on medication, because I can recognize my depression and handle it without the need to self harm or any other negative coping mechanism.  I still see my therapist from time to time, to talk and I have my parents and my husband and a few really good friends who help me as well.

I’m not perfect, but I’m surviving.

Chasing creativity.

I’ve been thinking about all of the things I want to blog about, and there are so many.  I mean I have been on this earth for going on 27 years, and during a good portion of those years, so many things have happened to me.  But where do I start?  How do I chose from so many experiences and decide, that’s the one I want to write about today!

So instead of opening up a new post, I’ve been combing through other’s blogs.  Puffing away on my electronic cigarette, because I can’t fully commit to quitting smoking.  And as I read through all these different writer’s words I think to my self, how did they decide to write about that today?  I want to start with the perfect stories in hopes of gaining as many views as possible.  Because if I pick the wrong story, how long will it take for someone to come back and try reading something I wrote again?  But at the same time, I try to remind my self, that that isn’t the reason I’m here.  I’m not here to try and gain as many subscribers as possible.  I mean, as great as it feels to get the notification that so and so started following your blog, that wasn’t why I decided to start blogging in the first place.

So with that said, I’m just going to write today about something that has been bothering me.  I have never been a very popular person.  I’ve never been the person who had a lot of friends.  In elementary school I had one girlfriend who would be nice to me when it was just her and me, but the moment the other girls from class were around, she would pretend like I didn’t just spend the night a few nights ago.  She would treat me so poorly and I never understood why.  I don’t know if that was one of the reasons, but I always ended up getting along better with boys.  It was always so easy with boys, which in turn, made the girls like me even less.  I was avoided because I apparently had cooties from hanging out with the boys.  And even at such a young age, I didn’t understand this “cooties” they spoke about, so I would ignore them and go one with my normal routine of hanging out with the boys, which just added to the lack of girlfriends.

My family and I ended up moving the summer going from 6th grade into 7th grade.  The first year of Junior High School.  I was pretty upset about the move, I had worked hard to gain what little friendships I had, and leaving them behind meant doing that all over again.  Then I started to think, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, a new school, no one knew me, maybe for once in my life, it wouldn’t be so hard to make friends.  I was wrong.  It quickly grew apparent on the first day of Junior High that everyone had their group of friends from the elementary school that they came from.  A few days went by, when this girl in one of my classes leaned over to me and said “Are you new here?”.  I assume it’s because everyone had at least someone they hung out with at school and me?  I had no one.  I told her I was new, where I had moved from and how I didn’t know anyone here.  And she quickly invited me to sit at the lunch table that she sat I, and I did.  She introduced me to all of her friends and before you knew it, we were attached at the hip.  My very first best friend that didn’t treat me differently when someone she knew came around.  She invited me to things that here family was doing, I spent the night at her house all the time.  We never spent more than a day or two away from each other all through out Junior High…  Then High School came.  She asked me to try out for the pom squad with her, so I did, even through I didn’t want to.  In the few years past, I had gone to a handful of dance classes with her, that was something she loved, and I loved her so I did the things she wanted.  After try outs, she was accepted and I wasn’t, which I was ok with, I didn’t want to be on the team and she did and I was happy for her.  Months went by and she got new friends, but I didn’t throw a fit because they were her Pom Squad friends and I understood, but she had been really my only friend for the past 2 years, and with her so busy, I had no one.  So I started to branch out more, I started to hang out with some of the people that she had introduced me to throughout the years.  And the more distant she became, the more I hung out with these other people.  Well this started to get her mad.  I once mde a comment to my mother that I felt like her toy.  I was a toy that sat on her shelf and no one else was allowed to play with me, but I wasn’t interesting anymore and she didn’t want to play with me anymore.  I was just supposed to sit there, and wait for her.  I stopped waiting for her.  I went to sleep overs with different people, I got a new “best friends”.  So she started spreading rumors about me in school.  Before I knew it a very large Mexican girl confronted me at lunch one day saying that she was supposed to kick my ass.  I was threaten and whispered about all through Freshman year.  My grades dropped and I became depressed.  Then one day I stood up for my self, I refused to take her shit anymore, and she stopped.  I moved on with my life and the rest of my High School career with a very small circle of friends.  4 to be exact, until one of them dropped and started taking night classes because she got pregnant.

After High School, those girls that I was friends with all went different ways, one joined the Army, one had a kid, the other got pretty heavy into partying,  I went through a very depressed time and shortly after High School I found my self in an abusive relationship with a guy that I continued to date for 3 years.  Any other friends I had had, were all gone.  In the past 3 years I have tried to spark some of those old friendships back up.  I’ve been trying to find friends and keep friends again, but I feel like it’s hard at this particular age.  People are getting married, having babies, focusing on their careers, going back to school.  People don’t have time for new friendships, they are doing all they can to maintain the friendships they already have.  All I know is that, it’s making me feel very lonely.

I have my husband and my best friend lives in New Mexico, I will tell you all about how her and I met in the future.  I have another friend from back in elementary school, and of course he’s a guy.  But he lives kind of far away as well.  I have a bunch of facebook friends and I have even been on a website call girlfriend social, where women of all ages can connect with each other to build friendships.  I have met 3 girls from on there.  But for some reason I have a hard time maintaining relationships with people.  I know part of it is my depression.  It’s hard to want to pick up the phone and call someone when the last thing in the world you want to do is talk.  It’s hard to plan get togethers when your anxiety makes it so you don’t want to leave you house.  But it doesn’t mean that I don’t.  Maybe I don’t call my friends every night, but I try to send an “I’m thinking of you text” to let them know that they are on my mind.  And as much as my anxiety is screaming at me that it isn’t safe to leave the house, I go out anyway.  I don’t cancel on people, I don’t stand them up.  What I don’t understand is, I know that there are plenty of people out there that just don’t have the time to keep in contact with all of their friends every single day yet, those people still show up for them when they throw a get together.  So why is it, I have all of these people who claim they like me, claim I am their friend, but when I invite 22 people to a birthday get together next Saturday, I only have 6 people who RSVP’d?  I just don’t understand what is so wrong with me that people choose not to be there, not to hang out.  I make the effort, and it isn’t like I sit there and talk about how hard my life is.  I don’t sit there and talk about my depression.  I have gotten very very good at hiding that side of me.  I’ve asked my husband this question.  Why don’t people like me?  And he can never answer.  All he can ever tell me is that he likes me, and he doesn’t understand why I have such a hard time finding and keeping friends.

And the most ironic part of this is, right after I finished that paragraph, one of my friends just called, out of the clear blue sky asking if he can come hang out.  I’m sitting here shaking my head right now because that is unbelievable.