This is 34

 

For my 34th birthday, someone told me to think about how far I have come in the past 17 years after they wished me a Happy Birthday.  I have to admit that I didn't give it much thought until yesterday when while talking to my husband I ended up pointing out what I had accomplished in just the last decade.  Then I thought, what had happened the 7 years prior to that? And I decided to make a list only because I feel that there are others out there who might be in similar positions as I was and it might help them keep the fight.  Another reason was that it would be a healthy reminder to myself and others that I should never be underestimated. 

So, how far have I come in the past 17 years?  Here it goes...

When I turned 17, I had already graduated high school and I was living with a man who had brought me to this country years prior with the promise that he would pay for my college studies.  That promise never came.  As a matter of fact, once I graduated high school at the young age of 16 he told me that I had to figure out how to pay for my own health insurance and that the only thing he would give me would be room and board along with $500 for college.  During this time I was still waiting for my residency papers so I couldn't start school but I could work, the problem was that I was a minor and minors were supposed to be insured by their parents.  This was a concept he did not understand, but that is part of him being abusive.

The household I lived in consisted of my biological father and his wife.  Both had previous marriages and both had children from those previous marriages.  Every time they fought, which was often because Mario never liked being late for anything and she was always late for everything, the family was divided by him.  He would call on HIS children and take them with him while calling her children HERS and blaming her for how "bad" they behaved.  This happened every single time something fun was planned, as well as every single holiday. 

There were too many instances when I had to walk in the dark through alleys because he refused to get in the car at 10pm and drive two miles to pick me up from work.  I always felt I was already taking care of myself, the only thing that I was not doing was paying rent because I was even buying myself food outside the house every time I worked.  By the time I turned 18, he forced me to buy a car on his terms.  I was going to pay for it, it would be financed under just my name (which was not a bad thing) but he got to tell me what car I would be allowed to purchase.  It had to be certain years old, had a certain amount of miles, and a certain price.  I agreed because he said that he and his wife would help me with a downpayment, they would give me, I believe $1000 for the downpayment with the notion that I had to save too.  I did, but I remember that something happened that I was forced to use some of that money, and guess what? Suddenly they would not give me any money for a down payment cause I didn't save enough, however, I was still to buy a car under their terms.  

My then-boyfriend offered to help me because he knew what had happened was out of my control and said well, if I lend you the money then they will have to give you the full $1000 right? then you can get a better vehicle.  It turned out that no, they would not do it because it was not the money I had saved.  Mind you that up until this point I was a child who didn't get into trouble and was often focused on my studies.  I mean, I would have to do well in school in order to graduate by the age of 16, right?  I ended up buying the car he wanted me to buy, which broke down just a year later because well... it was a Ford.

After getting the car, my boyfriend and I decided to move in together.  At this time, my biological father's wife was pregnant and made the announcement.  When I told him that I was moving out, all hell broke loose.  Suddenly, I would never meet my baby sibling, I was a selfish person for leaving the house, and my boyfriend would realize how terrible of a person I was and he would abandon me because of it.  After that, he told me how I would then come back crawling for a place to stay and he would say no, then went on to throw me out of his house.  I left his house that day but the day I left to move out of the state as planned, I was told to come to say bye.  When I arrived, he pretended that he had said nothing and was "wishing me well."  There was no apology, no acknowledgement that he had done anything wrong only him gaslighting me by now telling me he wished me well and how he was proud of me.  

During this time, I never knew that all he was doing was actual abuse.  I ended up living with that boyfriend for about a year, I went on to buy a brand new car, have different experiences from not having a place to live (mostly cause I didn't really want to), leaving in a hotel room, being raped by a coworker and then being fired because they didn't want their best employee to get into trouble.  By the time I turned 19, after having another altercation with my biological father because my grandmother, who was visiting the United States wanted to be dropped off at his house that night after I had gotten out of work at 9pm.  It was a 3-hour drive and she threatened to grab a cab to his place which I would not let her do.  She couldn't wait until my day off, so there I went... In the middle of the night, driving her to his place.  I didn't have a key and I had to go back because I had to work the next day, he went ballistic again and told me to never ask him for help again.  I was not welcomed at his house.

A few months later I ended up meeting my second abuser.  He quickly became my first husband and I was easy prey.  I had no support from my biological father, I had trouble at work, and I was ready to just have some stability.  I didn't love him but he looked like he was stable, with his own place and wanting to have a family, which I wanted also so I said: why not? and I married him after I had told him no like 6 times.  A few months into the marriage he was already controlling, he was a slob, and after having my wisdom teeth taken out he decided he would steal my pain killers.  Being raised so sheltered, I had no idea that people could get addicted to those or that they would sell each pill on the streets for $25 to $100 each.  When I found out, he told me that he had sold them because we needed extra money.  I wanted out, but then I find out I am pregnant, so now I had to stay. 

I was very ill during the first few months of pregnancy and lost a lot of weight, therefore I had to quit my job and depend on him solely.  I ended up finding out he was addicted to drugs shortly after because he had taken my car to his work due to his driver's license being suspended and him not having money to get it reinstated.  That day he went off on me because the car wouldn't go over 20 miles an hour, there was an issue with the computer transmission but somehow that was my fault.  According to him, I had gotten under the hood of the car while I was five months pregnant and done something to it so he couldn't use it and now he was late for work.  It was not that he was late for work because he was looking for drugs, it was because his pregnant wife had done something to the car.  His mother had to pick me up to take me to where he had parked the car and asked me what happened.  When I told her, she said that she had given him the money to fix his driver's license... After that, he was forced to tell me he had a drug addiction. 

He was supposedly going to work on that and make sure he did everything the rehab facility told him.  I found another job once I felt better and his mommy gave him a job at an apartment complex she and her then-husband owned.  He ended up stealing from them both, they found out after the baby was born and she threatened to take my child away if I didn't leave her son.  It all went downhill from there, we had already moved three times since I got pregnant and we would end up moving another three times in the first nine months of the baby's life.  I ended up losing my vehicle because he wouldn't pay for it and said I could either make enough to pay for the vehicle (which I knew he would end up taking that money from me, he used to say that he needed me to make $500 a month which was the same amount he would say he spent on drugs each month) or give the vehicle up.  He didn't think I would just give it up, but I know it was the right choice.  I ended up with an eviction on my record because he never told me that the apartment complex we had moved into had started the process and the day we had to go to court, he decided that looking for drugs was more important.

When I finally decided to leave him, I had no money, no job, no phone, no vehicle, we were living in a room that we were renting, he was telling me how much I could eat and would yell if I ate more than that, and he was pawning my computers so I did not have an alternate way of communicating at all.  At this point, the only person who could help me was my abusive biological father.  When you ask why victims do not leave, it is often because the only way they can do so safely is by switching from one abuser to another.  When you ask if he helped? Yes, my biological father did help, he helped because it fed his ego to help, not because of anything else.  I was well aware of that though. 

What would follow? I would end up being gaslighted and emotionally abused for months until the law caught up to my then-husband.  He had committed insurance fraud and they were looking for him.  My biological father had one of his tantrums and ended up hitting me while I was holding my then-18-month-old.  He told me that he would be my worst nightmare while his wife to this day will tell people that I am crazy and threw myself down the stairs.  He didn't know that when I moved in with him, I had already made a plan in case this happened.  A plan that he hated because he couldn't stand that someone else would help me.  During my stay there, I had a job as a nanny and the woman I worked for was the best.  Once I was gone from this other abuser, we found a way to get me to keep working.  Then my mother-in-law offered help.  I didn't know that she was another narcissist and abusive person. 

Ohh the cycle of abuse, the more you are around it, the more you think it is normal and therefore you end up attracting people who behave the same.  My mother-in-law tried to take my child away from me again, this time she decided to call Child Protective Services, she bailed her druggy son out of jail and made a plan to keep my child.  Child Protective Services showed up and saw that it was all a scam.  I ended up having to leave her house in a rush because she threatened to keep me there against my will by using her son and the power of the courts.  More emotional abuse happened from her and him.  Karma is good though because, in her focus on trying to make me the bad guy and trying to hurt me, her son ended up stealing from her and she ended up getting a divorce.  

What happened next? I got another job as a nanny, it lasted a year until I had a disagreement with my boss.  Then I decided that it was time for me to find a way to get myself back on my feet, get a job that would offer me benefits, and would let me work from home.  I found one in less than a week after I had already put that in my head.  I would make enough to rent an apartment for my daughter and I, and eventually would allow me to possibly do other things.  During this time, I had other altercations with Mario (my biological father), but I was still not clear on how abusive that man was.  My grandmother would always tell me he was just a little crazy and she didn't know why he was that way since she never treated him that way.

Oh well... We finally moved into our own place and to a different city.  Shortly after, I decided to completely cut ties with Mario and his family and things became a lot better.  This is when I started to meet some of the best people in my life.  My adoptive moms, adoptive dads, adoptive uncles, sisters, grandmas, etc... The abuse still haunted me but it was not something that was constant.  My first husband was in and out of jail, his mother was trying to get on my good side and I was giving her a second chance only because I felt that most people deserve that after they apologize and change their behavior.  I was wrong to do that... but that's a lesson learned. 

I ended up moving out of the state of Florida a year later with the promise to never go back to live there.  I was making my way out, my goal was to live by the mountains and get a car.  The specific car? A Pathfinder! I didn't want anything different, I had sold me on the idea when I realized that American made vehicles (after having two that had too many issues and one of them was brand new) were just not made to last.  My first husband kept telling me how the Pathfinder was not put together in America and how good the car was.  My daughter and I ended up in NC, not the place I wanted to stay for sure, but the place that for now would work.  Three years later I received an offer to work with the Colorado Crisis Intervention program.  By then, I had been working as an independent contractor for a company that dealt with non-profits.  This was my first experience of building a business.  I was able to go from just taking calls, to doing quality assurance for several clients and training new agents.  With this new project, I would be able to make enough to find a better place to live and eventually get a car.  All I had to do was move to where the time zone worked in a way that I could match the full-time hours that the group was opened. 

My now ex-husband and his mommy couldn't have that and it was not a surprise being that several times she always said she would not stop until I was destitute.  So, after I moved, what did they do? They joined forces again to force me to live near them and take my child from me.  They succeeded, they succeeded because we have a very corrupt justice system that works for those who have money to give to judicial campaigns and that favors abusers over protective mothers.  This guy had never been involved in my daughter's life (yes, she is my daughter, I raised her without his help and when he showed up to taker her from me, he told the judge he was still not ready to be a father). 

After she was taken away, I continued to do what I had set out to do.  I met my now-husband, who is not perfect but I adore him.  This man has the ability to learn from his mistakes and while we don't agree on everything, but when we disagree is done in a respectful way and we come to a happy medium.  I bought my brand-new pathfinder, no my husband did not help me.  You see, I had learned that what I had gone through was domestic abuse and I was still learning to deal with what were my triggers, what were my needs.  One of them was that I needed to accomplish a lot of what I wanted on my own and guess what? I did.  I was living in a place that is 20 min away from the mountains, I had gotten the car I wanted, and I had started my own business separate from what I was doing before... Less work, more pay, and work that I really enjoyed doing.  

A little over a year ago: got the bigger place, a year before that we got a dog (which was part of what I wanted), I started to write my story in the form of a book which will contain more details of what I have written here, and I started the process of forming a non-profit that would tell my story along with the story of other women who have been victims of the family court system in the United States. The non-profit will help empower them by helping them file grievances against judges who ignore evidence and refuse to take abuse into consideration when making custody decisions.  It will also empower them to speak up and help defend themselves from civil rights violations that happen on a daily basis due to these corrupt judges.  That non-profit is still a work in progress but make no mistake, it will be big and well-known... I can already see it. 

And so, here I am at age 34 and I have gone from being an abuse victim who didn't know she was being abused, to learning so much about abuse and mental illness that sometimes even the people who have studied in the field get new information from just speaking to me.  Going from being an abuse victim to helping other people through my work, because that is what I do when I coach others.  Going from being an abuse victim without a place to live, to having a nice house with a yard big enough that we even planted a garden.  Going from having people who would often doubt my abilities, to being surrounded by people who know that as soon as I say I want to do something they know that it might take me a little bit, but that I will surely get it done. Going from having to ask for help to being able to cover all our (I say our because I can cover my husband's expenses too if I want to) expenses with just what I make.  No, I am not money rich yet, but I am rich! I have good people by my side and let me tell you something while there was a time when I would be looked at as someone who everyone would step on, as someone who was not as sure of herself as she should have been, that person does not really exist anymore.  The person that all my troubles helped shaped is the one who now says: DO NOT underestimate me, I might take a little while to get there, but I will get there because I don't go back down the stairs, I just keep going up. 

Let's talk about depression...

I have to admit that until about a few months ago, I had no idea what depression really was.  As a matter of fact I would be one of those persons who used the word depression very lightly.  I was also one of those persons who thought that depression was something you could just snap out of if you just started to think more positively.

I have to admit I was so very wrong!  And now that I have learned more about depression, I feel the need to apologize to those who suffer from it.  So here it goes: I am sorry guys.  I didn't know how an ill brain worked until I started reading about it.  I have to admit that I did not start involving myself in learning about depression until after I found out that someone I love very much suffers from a mental illness that has cycles of depression.  I decided to learn because I wanted to understand them as much as I could.  I figured that understanding them would better equip me to help them. 

What did I find out once I started learning about depression?  I found out that every time I have said "I am depressed" I really wasn't.  I was sad and I can say that I have had many periods where I have been sad, but being sad is not the same as being depressed.  I can tell you that because the depressed brain does not really snap out of the thought process.  The depressed brain is constantly thinking about what the person did wrong and how they did it wrong.  The depressed brain has an extremely hard time finding the good even when there is nothing bad happening.  The depressed brain does not like any kind of interaction, not because it is trying to sort things out but more because it does not feel like it deserves it. 

With that said, I have not ever been depressed.  The times I have been sad and wanted to stay in bed all day without any contact at all was because I needed to sort through my own emotions and thoughts.  It was because I needed to recharge myself before going back out there and talking to people again.  Each time I have been sad and have taken time for myself I have come back with solutions to whatever issue was the one that made me sad.  Each time I have been sad I didn't get stuck in feeling like I always do something wrong.  Each of the times that I have taken a time out from people, each of the times I take a time out from people is because I need to sort through my own thoughts and feelings and not because my thoughts and feelings are taking over my entire life.  

That's the difference with depression.  A depressed brain is an ill brain that takes over an otherwise healthy person.  The depressed person does not just simply snap out of the depression; if they force themselves to do things, they do so while constantly thinking that whatever it is they are doing is not good enough.  The depressed person cannot just simply grab a self-help book, follow its guidance and suddenly see life differently.  I know that they will want to and that when they can't often times they feel more of a failure.  I cannot possibly imagine how that must feel to someone because to me is very easy to find the positive in any situation.  I know that if I am not finding it, then all I have to do is stop talking to people about it and sort through my brain on my own.  A depressed person can't really do that... Being alone trying to sort things out only makes depression worse, not better. 

So, why did I want to talk about this today?  This is simple really... Because of stigma.  There is so much stigma out there about mental illness and there are too many people suffering from it.  The stigma we have about mental illness and our lack of education on it is making people not seek help for it.  The stigma we have about mental illness is making people suffer in pain alone.  The stigma we have about it is making us treat those who have a mental illness without kindness and compassion.  

Now, I am not saying that a person with mental illness does not have some responsibility in seeking help and learning to manage their illness, what I am saying is that a person with mental illness has a harder time seeking help because we stigmatize their illness.  In this sense, we also have a responsibility to educate ourselves and to talk about mental illness in a different light. 

Why I say this?  Because the person I love has tried to seek help in the past and was confronted with that stigma and with very little support.  Once I found out that they were suffering from a mental illness and I started to learn more about it, a lot made more sense to me.  I have to say that I offered help and I offered support.  I offered to be there... My offer was not taken and in turn what I have seen is a decline in their mental health.  I know that I cannot force them to seek help.  I know that I cannot make them accept my support and I know that seeing the path they were taking (as much as it pained me to do so) I had to do what they were asking of me (even though I didn't want to) and walk away.  This didn't make me love them any less, but it made me think about how society views mental illness and how stigmatizing mental illness is not helping many people. 

In learning about mental illness, I found that those who had good support from family members and friends have been the ones who have successfully learned to manage their illness.  Those whose families didn't stigmatize mental illness and whose families were open to learning about it are the ones who have had more success than others who did not have the same support.  It seemed like even though it was hard for them to get up and seek help, once they did (because they had the support of others) they stuck it out and led as normal a life as they could.  

So maybe we all need to make a little change in our lives.  We should all talk about mental illness like we talk about any other illness, because that's all it is an illness.  We should talk about it openly and focus on educating ourselves and others about it.  We should learn to separate the illness from the person.  Mental illness is the only illness that is used to describe someone.  I don't know how many times I hear people say "she/he is just depressed" or "she/he is bipolar" or "she/he is anxious."  Imagine what would happen if we separated the illness from the person, what would happen if instead we said: "he/she has depression" or "he/she has anxiety."  How different does that sound?  How easier it is to then see that it is not that the person is that way but that the person has an illness that they are dealing with and need to learn to manage.  If we did that, the person would be looked at with more compassion and more support. 

I imagine that if my loved one would have had more support.  If more understanding about the illness would have been there, then my loved one would have an easier time dealing with it.  Then maybe they would have an easier time seeking help, accepting their illness, taking responsibility and learning how to manage it.  They would have an easier time accepting help and support when it is offered and would not be suffering in silence and alone.  Yes, I am fully aware that once they have been offered support and help that it is their responsibility to take it and no one can force them to... but I am also aware that an ill brain that has constantly seen the stigma of mental illness being used against them has a harder time accepting the illness and taking the necessary steps to seek help and support.

It is time we stopped looking at mental illness with fear and looking down at people who have it.  It is time we stopped stigmatizing it.  It is time we stopped making it controversial.  All we are doing by that is making things worse for everyone who suffers from it and making it worse for those who have a genetic predisposition to it.  There are great things that can happen when you are open about it and educated on it, therefore it is time we all learn about mental illness and became more educated about it. 

Knowledge Is Power

I realized how much power knowledge can give an individual the day I found out my then husband was a drug addict.  I had missed all the signs because I was ignorant about drugs, their effects on people, and even drugs that people could get addicted to.  My ignorance was so big that I always passed the hydrocodone he had in a ziploc bag for aspirins that he was supposedly given by his orthodontist.   I laugh at that now because it sounds so silly and dumb, but that was my reality then.

After I left him, he would use my ignorance to scare me.  The torturous texts and calls about what he supposedly could do to me took a huge toll on me.  Eventually I learned that he could only scare me because I really didn't know whether or not what he was saying was true.  That is when I then decided to acquire knowledge of the law and that is when his words had less effect on me.  The more I learned, the more fears I conquered.

Today I was reminded of this again because I have shared a period of my life with someone who has bipolar disorder.  It is a disorder I had absolutely no knowledge of and something I did not know they had until things got too out of control for my taste.  When things had begun to spiral out of control I was scared, I was scared because I had no idea what was going on.  It had been in the past that I could sit down and talk things out with my partner and we were able to work things out, but when things were so out of control I felt so scared of saying something because I thought I would make it worse.  The truth is that looking back now, I know that if I would have remained calm like I usually did, I wouldn't have.

Bipolar disorder is one of the most misunderstood mental health disorders out there.  It is the toughest to diagnose because usually providers only see patients when they are depressed and they don't mention the times they are or were manic.   Anti-depressants can make bipolar disorder worse, they can send that mania into hyper drive.  Certain drugs and foods will do exactly the same, but I was not aware of this.  Now that I am, I look back at our lives and a lot makes sense to me.  I am writing this because it helps me and because I know that there are people out there who have a loved one diagnosed with bipolar disorder.  I know how crazy life can seem with their ups and downs, and I know how much it can affect you not only emotionally but physically.  I want you to know that you are not alone and that if the person is willing to learn to manage their illness, you can have a successful relationship with them.  You can communicate well with them and be able to get your needs and theirs met in a healthy manner.  If they don't want to work on learning to manage it though, or they don't want to talk about it with you openly, then there is not much you can do but walk away.  This illness is hard to manage on their own, and I have learned from speaking to many people who have bipolar and have learned to manage the illness that they could not have done it without the support of those who love them.  It requires a great deal of patience, understanding, and sacrifice but I feel that when there is love, the rest just falls into place.

He never told me he had this illness, and I understand why now.  There were a lot of things that did not make sense then, but in hindsight they make sense now.  A person with bipolar disorder does not want to have bipolar disorder, they don't really like the instability it brings.  When we moved in together, he made it a point that he wanted to ensure we only ate certain foods.  I didn't know why this was so important, it was too important to him... It seemed something trivial for me, because I am the type of person that says hey if you don't like certain foods then you don't eat them and if I don't like them then I don't eat them.  If I want fast food, I can get fast food and if you want something different we can go get that for you, come home and we each eat what we want.  I mean the point was that we each ate what we liked.  In looking back, I realize now that it was not about that.  It was not that he did not like the foods I ate, it was that he knew diet played an important role in managing his bipolar, more so when he was not medicated.  He was trying to manage it, he was trying to stay away from things he did like but that would make his mood swings worse.

I wish he would have told me though, because looking back now, the most stable periods of time he had were when we were eating at home.  I was the one cooking and making food in the most natural way possible.  During this time he was also sleeping well, which plays a huge role on managing bipolar disorder.  We hardly ever went out to eat and at times I missed that, but now I know that not only outside food would play a role on his mood but also the busyness and noise of a restaurant could have an effect on his mood swings.  It is amazing what I can see now that I look back and that I have more knowledge about the disorder.

Summer kicked in and I was not aware of what summer can do to a bipolar brain.  From reading hundreds of articles, it seems like summer is a trigger for mania.  I am a spiritual advisor and I read energies in order to help my clients, during the summer the energies are super high and daylight is longer.  Everyone is wanting to go out, be with friends and family, and all of it can be erratic.  There was an added twist to this, the work he did.  His work is the busiest during the summer and that alone can trigger manic episodes.  I didn't know this and thinking back I feel that was one of the reasons he wanted to leave that work behind.  He was looking for stability for himself and in a way at that point he was looking to remain stable.  Whether he did it consciously or unconsciously, wanting his stability is one of the main things he always looked for.  He knew what triggering a manic episode would do to him and the relationships he had.  He also knew that we needed to make some money, and because of this he decided to go into it full force.

It was also during the summer that I decided to get involved in his work and because of this I stopped cooking at home; we both started to eat out.  Not only that, but usually I would have left overs at home so he would always have food ready to just eat.  Work being so busy also made it impossible to keep a schedule where we were eating regularly.  Not eating regularly in turn made it impossible to sleep well at night.  All of it together made it impossible to prevent a manic episode.  My ignorance about his bipolar combined with my frustration of this new behavior that I did not understand did not allow me to take control of what was happening; instead it made me anxious too.

Eventually, not only was I anxious but I was also scared.  The fear of not knowing what the hell was going on made things worse.  His anxiety due to him having to be the sole provider for the household (because now I was working more with him and not working on my own business) pushed him to smoke weed.  The weed made things worse, not better.  It made it so bad that he had hardly slept.  One morning he woke me up with this surge of energy.  He couldn't understand that I had only slept for a couple of hours because I had been working on a report all night and I was exhausted.  I needed to sleep!  Later that day, we got invited to go camping... this was the first time I was going to go and I was exhausted and frustrated.  All I really wanted was to sleep, we didn't really have time to get ready for an overnight camping trip.  I really had no energy to even begin putting things together to go anywhere other than back to bed.  The drive to the campsite was going well until we hit the mountains.  When we hit the mountains, he got even more manic.  I asked to drive the truck but he wouldn't allow it.  He didn't see himself and didn't see the look he had in his eyes as he was driving, it was very scary.  At some point I thought he would not realize that there was a turn and we would end up getting into a bad accident.  I know his intention was not to scare me, I know his intention was not to put me in danger, but at that moment it was not him in control; it was the mania.

By the time we arrived at the campsite, I was crying and he was frustrated.  He was frustrated because he was expecting me to enjoy the crazy ride just as much as he did.  The thing is that I was not manic, he was!  He didn't see what I was seeing, all he saw was "this is fun."  I know that if he would have seen it from my eyes, he would have stopped himself and allowed me to drive.  That was my first camping experience, to me it was absolutely ruined, I just hated it all.  Even when I asked for a moment to get myself together, he was frustrated because he didn't understand.  I didn't understand either and couldn't explain what was happening to anyone which didn't make it any easier.  But now that I do, it all makes sense.

The next morning things were more settled, I had slept and felt a lot better.  That day we actually had fun, but for him the bitter taste of the night before never really went away.  I would have wanted to have another go at it, without the mania at full blast, with more time to prepare.  To tell you the truth being in nature is so grounding and peaceful.  In the mountains of Colorado even during the hottest summer nights, it is never uncomfortable hot, so it is even more perfect.  Eventually I will go ahead and get my chance, on my own more than likely but I will do it.  Years ago one of my moms taught me that even when someone ruins an experience for you, you can find a way to re-do that experience and make the experience a positive one.  You can do it again together, on your own, or with someone new.

For many years my biological father had ruined my experience of going to the beach, then other people added to it.  There was always discord, there was always an argument, and it had stopped being fun.  So, I hated it! I couldn't stand it!!! I have an aversion to conflict and I feel that people should try to listen to each other rather than yell at each other.  But when my mommy told me she wanted to go to the beach with us and that it would be fun, I gave it a try.  She told me at what time she would stop by to pick us up and to be ready then, and so we did.  We got to the beach prepared, not rushing, and when we got there the beach was pretty much empty.  We were talking and building castles on the beach, the kids were having fun, there were no arguments, no conflict, no discord.  It was fun!  That is how she taught me that sometimes you can change things for the better and that previous experiences are just that, an experience that you can learn from.  Once you learn from an experience you can make the next one even better.

As humans we tend to hold on to the bad though, we do it because it keeps us from getting hurt again.  Instead of focusing on what we can change we focus on the things that went wrong and we carry that with us for so long that we end up missing out on great experiences.  I know this now, and because I know this, I have made it a point to not allow that to happen again to me.  I won't allow it to happen to me because if I do, then I will definitely miss out on amazing opportunities that life will send my way.  I won't allow it to happen because knowledge is power, and once you know about something, your fear about it goes away.   It is less scary, it is more manageable.  I wish I had known about bipolar disorder, I wish I had known that he had it, but I also know that I can't change the past.

We went through what we went through for a reason, and now that I know about it, it will help me in the future.  It will help me because I am not scared, because I now understand a lot more than I did before and because of that it won't affect me the way it did before.  Just like when I gained knowledge of the law and of drugs, same way here.  It will help me because now I have friends and clients who have bipolar disorder or have someone they love with bipolar.  Knowing about it helps me help them and guide them the best way I can, so I continue to learn.

The more we know, the more we can be in control, the more we know the better we become.  I guess that is the reason why there is this saying that "readers are leaders" because the more you read, the more you learn.  The more you learn, the more power you gain and the less fear you have.  A leader might have fears, but they know how to overcome them.  A leader knows that whatever they are afraid of, they must learn about it in order to conquer it.  I am glad I learned and I am glad that I appreciate each of my experiences.  Without my experiences I would not be the person I am today and would not be able to become the person I will become in the future.