resilient-carrot

[resilient-carrot]

Sorry

I just wanted you to apologize. I wanted you to show remorse for what you did. And you wouldn't just tell me you were

s o r r y.

And it was not until I learned what I was asking you to take ownership of that I realized that it was maybe just too

h a r d.

But you could have at least tried.

[resilient-carrot]

On Turning 26

I was so excited to turn 25. It felt like the whole world was changing right before my eyes. I was convinced that the morning of September 27th I would wake up and feel like everything made sense. The world would stop feeling so out of control everywhere I looked. (I know that feeling never goes away. I was so hopelessly optimistic).

I spent my 25th birthday sicker than a dog. I took a few COVID tests that all came back negative, but I could NOT taste my birthday cheesecake from the Cheesecake Factory. I felt robbed. Those tests felt like huge liars. We had just moved into a rental property in Winter Garden that was incredibly dated. I was having a really hard time coping with the fact that 2023 was a year of painful change. I sold my home. We moved back to Florida. It was a hard.

We were doing the darn thing, though. Cam and I both had a lot of growing to do once we got through the move. We took it one day at a time and learned how to be these people that we found ourselves trying to settle into. It was uncomfortable, but we were doing it. All the while, I had some serious demons to face on my own.

I switched therapists in December of 2023 and upped my appointments back to weekly sessions. The last time I was in weekly sessions, I was in survival mode. We were trying to keep me here to fight for another day. This time, I wanted the weekly sessions to not be for survival, but for healing.

"Little Ashley", as my therapist and I call her, needed some grace and love. I had spent little to no time in previous sessions working on healing the trauma of my childhood. Those age-old scars on my soul were still raw, still begging to be paid attention to.

I never gave those scars a chance. I never looked at the pain and confronted it. I think those scars could easily have become faded and unnoticeable had I simply let the pain in. I just... couldn't. The survival skill was to push it down, turn the other way. If you don't look at it, it doesn't exist.

So January 2024 comes around and I meet my new therapist. I also get in to see a psychiatrist. I get the official diagnosis of GAD (Generalized Anxiety Disorder) and some sort of mixed depressive disorder. Previously, I had a counselor unofficially diagnose. The official diagnosis led to me getting the real help that I needed medically to become stable. The psych read me like a book in one session. We discussed my care plan, and off I was. It was time to do the dirty work with my therapist that I had been putting off for so long.

I cried more sessions than not. I cried a lot. Which shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone. I am a crier, through and through. Every session with my new therapist has been hard. Every. Single. One. However, each and every session I walk out feeling a little bit stronger (Sara Evans really killed it with that song).

I lost my final form of communication with my mom. For all these years, I have kept her at an arm's distance. I've checked in on her, wished her happy holidays, and kept tabs on my middle siblings, Kyle and Adrien. She cut me off this Spring. She tried to tell me that everything I have written about, the stories I have shared, they are all a lie. I had it all wrong, she insisted. She wanted to sit down and set the story straight. She blocked me. I couldn't believe it. I still can't, honestly. I had a session with my therapist a few days later. She reminded me that I wouldn't be sobbing over these tales of treachery if they weren't real. I wouldn't be working so hard to heal my heart. So, I had to continue trekking forward. Mom was out of the picture now. Nothing really changed, anyway. We spoke so rarely.

I then had to confront the narcissist in my life. It all but killed me. I tried so hard to tell them that I wanted a relationship. I just had some conditions. I needed to be respected, and I had a whole list of how that could be accomplished. I was honest, I was vulnerable, and I was ignored. I kept getting interrupted and told that "none of those things had ever happened". The body shaming , the nasty remarks about my partner, the belittling... I had made it all up, apparently. I left before I could finish my speech.

Needless to say, 25 was a wild ride. I have never been more proud of myself, though. I feel like though my 25th birthday wasn't life-changing, the whole 25th year of my life was. I tackled some very difficult hurdles in my personal life, and my emotional stability only increased as a result.

I know that on September 27th, 2024, I will not wake up and feel this drastic change. I know that I will wake up and go to work just like I do any other Friday. I'll be surrounded by my students who I adore and my coworkers who I am so incredibly grateful for. I won't hear from my mom. I'll likely hear from the narcissist and not respond. I will, however, go home to an incredible partner and three fur babies who will demand pets. It'll be the start to a new chapter. A chapter that I hope holds so much growth and joy. I’m ready to continue this journey of healing and seek the joy in each day that comes my way.