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“If you’re going through Hell, keep going.” ~Winston Churchill

We all have those things in our past that we keep hidden and locked away, things we were told growing up, things we observed and thought to be true, but regardless they helped shape who we are today, they influence us on a daily and minute by minute bases. We have learned how to cope and how to deal with this on an individual basis. Sometimes we react in a way that is appropriate and sometimes we completely lose it.

The reason I wrote this, has a lot to do with defining what I have learned about myself and evaluating how I handled my life, and sharing what I did right, and sharing what I did wrong. For a long time I thought locking up the bad things and burying them deep down inside, was how to handle emotions that hurt me. I really thought that by hiding them and locking them away, that I would be able to function normally as an Adult.

Yea that didn’t work so well, for a time I was alright but little things would set me off. Or I would react in a way that was completely inappropriate to the situation. My friends thought I was just weird and thought that was just me. In reality it wasn’t the real me, the real me was too scared to admit I had a problem. The real me, was too scared to ask for help. For me the normal I created was like a Random Number generator, depending on what was happening at the time, my response could be all over the place.

Then one day I got sick of being like this, I could not take it anymore. So I decided I had to change. So I started facing my demons. I faced the things that terrified me one by one until I understood them and understood what they made me feel. This was not a fast process. It took time, as it should. Don’t rush this part as it is critical to face you demons.

What I overcame

“Start by doing what’s necessary; then do what’s possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible.” ~St. Francis of Assisi

To make a Long Story short. I lost my Wife, my Kids and my Parents in a Span of one year. It doesn’t matter how, the results of this are the same no matter the cause, and I was a wreck emotionally. I felt Dead inside and I closed myself off and locked everything up deep down inside, I lived by making myself believe I was OK. I did not share my emotions our thoughts. I truly believed that if no one saw my demons and my fear, that I would be alright, and that I could live a normal life.

With everything locked up so tight, all the things that could hurt me I buried them so deep that they could never be found again (I was wrong). I became a Functioning Adult again but with a Past I locked inside. I found love and I dated, but none of them lasted, because I couldn’t share my Pain. I was always distant with everyone I knew, to include my Family, I would not really let anyone in and see the real me. That horrified me beyond belief. I thought I was a Monster that didn’t deserve love or attention (I was wrong).

Living like this is not living at all. It is one step away from the cliff, one short step to breaking down. I had to learn the hard way that I wasn’t living at all. I was just existing. I could not take understand Joy and Happiness. I knew what that was but had forgotten how to experience it. By taking my control back and taking the responsibility back for my life and how I react. I regained that control, I regained that life I had lost in my heart. And today I am able to smile and laugh again. It has been a very long road for me, and I have had detours and bumps in the road, I have had my ups and I have had my downs. But I am here today, and I am now happy that I let myself take that first step, and every other step after. You are worth it, you are worth caring for and you are worth being loved. So go for it. Take the Step that will change your life forever.

Overcoming depression and Grief

“When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.” ~ Kahlil Gibran

Overcoming Depression is not an easy task, it is a long road that you will walk, and sometime crawl, but it is worth it. So please take the time to understand what is hurting you, understand how you respond, and why you respond the way you do. In the long run this will be the most helpful thing you can do for yourself and for the people around you.

In my opinion Depression is a result of the choice’s that Most People make, but not all, some are truly in need of more than this Blog can offer them, and for them please seek Professional help.

Either way you can do it.

The first step in overcoming Depression is to make a Choice to Change, for me this choice came when I sat down and tried to figure out why I thought I wasn’t worth being loved. This slowly led me down a path of rediscovering my Pain and my Past over the next few years. Maybe if I hadn’t been so scared of the Pain it would not have taken so long. But that is now my past. And I want to help someone else not have to go through what I put myself through.

At first I did all of this in my head, I thought about what was hurting me and why it was hurting me, in my head. I was unable to write them down at first because I would just get mad and scrunch the paper up and throw it away. By starting this in my head I could not throw the progress I had made away, I had it locked inside my head so I could think about it. And build on that progress a step at a time. Eventually you will want to write your thoughts down on paper, but you first have to allow yourself to get to that point.

Eventually I found that writing it down on a piece of paper, helped me in expressing the turmoil that was going on inside of me, it helped me identify what the pain was and why it was so painful, it allowed me to organize the pain, and then think about what caused it and why. It allowed me to think and process the Pain, I slowly learned that my Pain even though it was real lasted way longer do to the choice I made to hide from the Pain.

This is not to say some Pain will ever go away, sometimes it doesn’t. But what you can do is except it and learn a healthy way to live with it. That’s what I did with some of my Pain.