tinselt-blog

[tinselt-blog]

#metoo

I’ve written this story at least 30 times. I will never be satisfied with how I tell my story. I am still scared to tell it, scared of how people will look at me. Everyone I tell this too suddenly starts to treat me like I’m damaged and I’m sick of living like that. Yes, it affects me daily in every aspect. It most affects relationships that are romantic in nature, but also can affect friendships. My trust is 100% altered as a result of this and yet I fall into patterns that hurt me just the same because of this. I’m living in the #metoo movement, I might as well be able to speak up on what happened. I may one day also make the decision to share how this has affected my life currently, if anyone is interested- maybe after this story. This story comes prior to my last post “Liar or Lyle”, I thought that may be important to point out and it might help give some background on why I acted the way I did. Anyways, without further ado… here I go.

Disclaimer: This is my sexual assault story

Halloween simultaneously falls into the category of being my least favorite holiday and my favorite holiday all in one. On one hand, the culture and the costumes and the having fun all makes me so happy and warm inside. It brings back good memories between friends and family. It makes me think of fall, pumpkin carving, parties, silly little movies and candy. On the other hand, it brings up a memory that no matter how hard I try, I just can’t forget and I wish I could. You see, Halloween became scary in many real ways about 3 years ago now, not scary as in haunted house, horror movie sort of scary. 

It’s Halloween time in New Orleans, a fantastic place to be during Halloween. I’m 18, freshmen in college and roughly about 1,500 miles away from my home. I knew absolutely nobody before making the big girl decision to move down their all on my own. I made quite a few friends very quickly while I was there. I had a support system there, as well as a girlfriend back at home I could call everyday and life was seeming to settle perfectly. 

I wasn’t really a party girl, they weren’t my thing and drinking certainly was not my thing. Alcohol scared me for a very long time, because I don’t really enjoy the feeling of being “out of control” the older I get. I was also coming out of being addicted to other things and it seemed like a safe bet to stay far, far away from liquor. Anyways, it’s Halloween time and parties are a given everywhere. You want to dress up and feel nostalgic? Ya, you’re probably ending up at a house party. It wasn’t a big deal to me then. We went to a fe that weekend. Some got busted, some had live music and some had… strippers? Either way, it was a great Halloween weekend, until…

It was the last party of the weekend. A girl we knew was having this house party in her newly rented house and we decided to make an appearance. I was pretty desperate for new costume choices and decided to go as a witch. My outfit was pretty basic. I had on a maxi skirt with a slit, underneath I had spiderweb fishnet tights. I wore a long sleeve cropped sweater that showed the little skull belly ring I put in and of course my hat. I’d say I was fairly covered up, since it was kind of chilly and rainy that night. How covered up I was though, really shouldn’t make any difference for the circumstances I went through that night, it’s completely unrelated and unacceptable, but there are always the people who want to know. 

Besides the point, we go to this house party. When I say we, I mean a group of friends of mine and I. They all had pregamed before heading out to this party and I had not, I was very much sober. I was mom of the group that night, same as any other night, so it didn’t really bother me. We’re at this party, there’s the classic beer pong, jungle juice, mingling and dancing that every other house party has. I’m there with my close friends, we’re talking and one of my friends decides to play beer pong with shots, let’s call him Don. Don, already drunk decides to participate in this game of beer pong. He wins, meaning he’s completely obliterated at this point. He’s falling on the floor, he’s running around screaming what his costume is (the dick devil, the devil tail was hanging out of his open zipper and he had horns on). This is the point where we all decide we gotta go.

I, as well as one very helpful other sober being manage to wrangle up all the people in my party and get us all to the nearest streetcar stop, so we can wait for the street car. It’s approximately 2am at this point, it’s cold and damp outside and the streetcar is nowhere in sight, which is unusual. 

We wait for 30 minutes and Don becomes really impatient, he has to go to the bathroom and I’m the only person in this party of people sober enough to walk him back inside, into the house, to make sure he doesn’t stumble all the way to the bathroom. Don starts running off, behaving really inappropriately again and I can’t get a grip on him. He manages to pull me to the side, head into the restroom and lean on me for support as he goes, which was weird on it’s own but it was whatever.

Background on Don, I met him my first week at school, we hit it off great. He had a girlfriend, I had a girlfriend. I never had any feelings towards him, but was always suspicious that he might have feelings for me, despite having a girlfriend. I told my girlfriend at the time, this. I also promised to never, ever let him act on his feelings, because I was 95% sure he had a fat crush on me and it was uncomfortable. I never wanted to bring it up, because if I was wrong, that just makes things very awkward.

Anyways, it made it really uncomfortable for me to be in the bathroom with him as a result, because I knew how he felt about me on some level, although it was never confirmed. Nonetheless, I was just there to help a friend and if it was any friend, I’d be there to help. When Don finishes up, I help lead him back outside to the group of people still waiting for the streetcar to make an appearance and it still has not yet made one.

Don is still very antsy at this point and he’s kind of still acting very inappropriately. I did my best to ignore it, until I guess he thought it would be funny to run around the group giving each person a hug and to tell them how much he loved them. People found this hilarious and soon enough people were pulling out phones to record all of this. Don continued playing along with it, especially now that he was being filmed. He went from one person, to the next person and finally he reached me. He looked me dead in the eye, reached his hand through the slit of my skirt and between the strands of my tights, where he shoved his burning, grimy fingers into my vagina for the whole world to see and whispered to me “Go fuck yourself.”

In that moment, the world around me stopped. I felt numb, I also felt burning, searing pain leaping through my bottom half. I made a quick jolt back, pushing him. He laughed, the same way he had been laughing that whole night before continuing to hug each person, one by one down the line, every once in awhile turning to glare up at me. 

Now, I knew I had to get the fuck out of there. I pulled out my phone and immediately dialed for a taxi to come and get me, but my friends kept ripping the phone out of my hand, never letting me finish the whole call, because it was dangerous for a girl to ride in a taxi alone. Didn’t they already know I was in danger? Did anybody know? When I finally got on the line with a service, they sent a car out to my location. I felt hands holding me back from traveling alone, not letting me go. Another group of drunk people filled up the taxi. They took my taxi and I got left behind. Every once in awhile, Don would come up behind me, touch my hip, whisper in my ear. I wanted to scream, I wanted to run away.

Another taxi came, I forced my way into it… but so did the rest of my group. Suddenly there are 5 people shoved into the back bench, two in the passenger seat and Don lying on top of everyone in the back. He would look at me, moving his ass, clenching it, so I would have to feel it the entire way home. The ride felt like a million years, but right as I saw the lights of my building, I pushed Don out of the way, crawled across the people sitting beside me and I ran out of the car and as fast as I could back to my room.

The smart person would have got new friends. The smart person also would have said something. Did I? No. You’re probably reading this and asking why not. Well, because I was young and naive and ignorant I guess. I assumed alcohol played a huge role in their behavior. I hadn’t been around drunk people all that much, never had been drunk myself and so I convinced myself that when you’re drunk it alters your behavior, not enhances it. I forgave him, like an idiot.

Life went on for a few days, a few weeks even. It went back to “normal”, but fake normal. I always knew what happened was wrong, but I also thought if I pretended it never happened, then it would all go away. It never went away and I never got rid of that feeling in my stomach that made me feel disgusting about myself. So, after a few weeks, Don asks if I can help him with this favor, if I could help him get stains out of his sheets. He apparently had white sheets and puked on them one night and couldn’t get the stain out. I happily agreed to aid him with getting out this stain. 

I go up to his room and begin to strip off the sheets, but I make a realization… they’re black and there’s no stain in sight. I felt my heart start to race and I looked over at him as he came from behind and pinned me against the side of the bed frame. He slipped my pants down, then my underwear. I fought, but he restrained me. From there he took me, bent me over and began pounding me. Over and over. I stayed silent, but I felt the tears slide down my cheeks. I did everything to distract myself from what was happening. I looked at the photos of him and his girlfriend on the wall. It burned. It stabbed. It killed me. I wanted to die in that exact moment. I wanted to die when it was over too.

He finished, pleased with himself. I was numb. So, so, so numb from all of it. I stumbled back to my room, not saying a word, not letting any more tears slip. I called my girlfriend and I sat on the phone with her and I said nothing, she said nothing. I wanted her comfort, so that I could sleep and not feel so alone and distant from the world. I didn’t want to think about it, I wanted to make excuses for it, but I couldn’t. He hurt me. He took something from me I never fucking gave him.

A few days later, I met up with a few friends for the first time in a long time. Don, being one of them was there. I tried to keep my distance away from him and tried to push him off for as long as I could. He came up behind me and pinched my butt. Startled, I turned around and threw my phone into his face. Everyone saw this, everyone. I nervously laughed as he screamed at me that it wasn’t funny. It was though. I just hit him. I started screaming back, telling him to fuck off, not to touch me. He stormed off, furious.

When it all subsided, the anger, the fear, I realized I had just made a huge mistake. This didn’t guarantee an end to my suffering, it probably made it worse. I ran out of the building and straight to campus police to file something, anything. I was there for what seemed like hours. As everything set in, so did the numbness. I was never going to be anyone that meant anything. I was just a joke, a piece to be played. The police didn’t help anymore. They told me that “Nice boys don’t do things like that.”

My body changed. It went through stages. I lost a lot of weight, I began getting sick all the time. My brain wasn’t functioning the same way. I was paranoid and psychotic. I felt nothing, nothing at all. Tell me, why do some doors in dorms not lock behind you? I wish they had. I would come back home from class and he’s be there. I’d be sitting in my room alone and he’d come in. I hated him. I hated everything about him. I could never get away, he was stronger than I was. 

I stopped doing things I loved doing, like going out or meeting up with friends. Classes were not my priority. I would black out sometimes and wake up in the middle of things. I one time showed up to a test in my boxer sleep shorts, no bra and a sweater I’m pretty sure wasn’t even mine. I had no idea what was on the test. If I felt anything, it would be in the shower. I would sob, quietly enough not to disturb anyone else in the communal restrooms, but sob enough to feel something, anything. I would sometimes sit in the moldy showers for hours. Sometimes I would sit in their long enough, with the water hot enough to cause blisters to break out all over my back.

There was one day though, where I didn’t feel anything in the shower. I decided that was it. I was done. My relationships and my life had all completely fallen apart. I went back to my room, where I suspended a belt from the bar in my closet. I was hanging there for maybe a few minutes, enough to start drifting, when my roommate came in and saw my dripping wet, naked body suspended from my belt in the closet. She pulled me down and I felt like I could breathe again. Breathe both physically and mentally. 

My case went far beyond that. I lost my relationships with everyone, not like any of it really mattered. I lost my school, good riddance. I lost myself too. I came out of that very different than how I went in. I spent months thinking I was sick, that I was delusional and now it’s all crystal clear. I am a victim of rape and of sexual assault. That will never go away. 

Now, I don’t know how to end this, because it’s too soon still to say what I learned. I learned a lot, obviously, but I also still have a lot of work to do, to be healthy 100% again. Being raped is something I wish upon nobody. It’s dark… really dark in that world when you’re forced into it. The world created by the sick and the twisted, the one that feels as though it is acceptable to perform these acts of unkindness. I used to think why me, why would G-d let this happen to me. It’s a question I will never be able to answer… but I still wish I knew. 

As for the words I never, ever got to say to Don, fuck you. Fuck you. You deserve nothing. You stripped me away from happiness and freedom. You linger in my fucking brain now every time I open up to someone I ACTUALLY trust. You linger in my pain. It will never feel the same for me. I will forever push people away, forever feel a burn, forever be lost because of you. You don’t care though, you still get your happy ending. I will get mine one day too, but at least I deserve mine.

[tinselt-blog]

Liar or Lyle?

Hi,

Disclaimer: So this will probably be one of the hardest things I have to write about, as well as one of the most recent things to have happened to me. It occurred between December of last year, to the beginning of this month. I am putting on a warning, saying this topic is a hard one to read about and so if you are sensitive to topics like abuse, I kindly ask that you maybe go read one of my other entries rather than read this one.

I was in an abusive relationship… for about 9-10 months. For anyone else who has been in an abusive relationship, you know how hard those words were for me to say and to admit. Let’s be real, I was lucky to have gotten out of it and I am lucky to feel that I can finally share this story after all this time, despite still having the fear that this will cause major consequences in my life somehow. That unfortunately, is the sad reality of abusive relationships, the reality that despite knowing that I’m not at fault, but rather he is, I still feel guilt for even sharing this.

This story is about a guy, let’s call him Lyle for the sake of this story. I met Lyle at the beginning of the year, I had been at this new school for about a semester, but I was mostly a commuter before this new school year. I didn’t really have time to make new friends, with my not being on campus all the time, with work, with visiting friends at other colleges, etc. This was not a school far from home, however I had gone to another university before attending the school I am currently at and I had to refamiliarize myself with the area. I met a whole bunch of amazing people my first week really being at this new school through a few roommates of mine. One of these people happened to be Lyle. Now, Lyle was stereotypically a white boy. There was nothing to differentiate him from the rest of the white boys. I, am quite weird, I guess? I hate using that term, but it’s the easiest way to explain that I am a tattooed female with lots of piercings and an eclectic sense of style. 

Lyle was not someone I would typically care about. My roommates on the other hand, all found him rather attractive and every time we ended up at events that Lyle was also attending, they would get sloppy drunk and flirt with him all night. This caused him to gravitate towards me as a way of getting away from them, since I really did not care about him one way or another. Lyle and I got close through those minor interactions though and soon it blossomed into a strange friendship between the two of us, a friendship based on total polar opposites. 

Lyle would come over to my apartment everyday. We would watch stupid shows, get high, talk about life, the normal things you do. After a few months I noticed that he suddenly was getting closer to me, inviting himself to events he wouldn’t typically attend to hang out with me, flirting a little and I took the bait. It was confusing. It confused me and my sexual identity and I wondered to myself, ‘Why Lyle?’ Why Lyle then turned into very distinct flirting, until one night after a party, we rode the bus back home together and there he started telling me about his life. We even got off a few stops early so that he could walk me back home and have time to tell me the story of his life. It wasn’t the typical woe is me story, but rather the in depth, this could get me arrested story, while also leaving himself very vulnerable. It was the first time I felt like I really knew him. We made it back to my room, where he left, then came back to drop something off, left again, came back again and then I finally said, “I’m going home for the break, I’ll see you after the new year.” He walked me to the elevators, where I felt him try and pull towards me before the door shut in our face and rather than go back to give him the kiss I know he wanted, I went to my car and drove home.

Once home, I messaged him, informing him I got home safely. He messaged back saying he wished I hadn’t left, that I hadn’t driven home, that he missed me. My stomach felt like it was tied up in knots and I went to bed rather than respond immediately. I mulled it over, thought about him for the next few days. He was my best friend, a person I trusted and a good person to figure out my sexuality with and so I messaged him meekly and said that I wished I had gone back too. The second the message sent, I lost the Lyle I knew. The conversation quickly became super sexualized. Was this normal for boys, to push me like this? As quickly as I had agreed, I tried to disagree, trying to say maybe I was mistaken, that I had understood our terms wrong. But, he didn’t listen. He pushed for me to say something sexual back, to give him anything, a photo, tell him I wanted his dick. I obeyed, because I thought it was normal and I thought I was just getting in my head too much. I refused to send photos for a little bit, it wasn’t something I would typically do. He told me he never typically sent photos to a girl either, (Later I realized this was a lie). I would cover myself, hide portions of my body under stickers or my hand, trying to protect any bit of decency I had left for myself if I was to send any image at all. I would get called a tease, be told I was too pussy. Again, I gave in because maybe I was being stuck up, just like he said.

Comments about my body started pouring in. You know what I’m sick of? Being called little, it isn’t flattering. Maybe it was once, but now hearing it reminds me of him. Him telling how nice my hips were, how he wanted to hold them while I rode his fucking cock, saying it gave great ass he has ever seen. Lyle’s only problem: my boobs need a little work, maybe a boob job. I should embody a porn star, since to him I was his porn star. I became “Daddy’s Little Girl”. Lyle loved saying that, he owned me, he owned my pussy and he made that very clear to me.

Before him, I had decided to be celibate for a year, because of my past and because it was a good way of learning about myself. That means, he was the first person I slept with in over a year. I gave him that. I hadn’t had sex with a guy in about 5 years, so it was painful. It was like being a virgin all over again. I bled, it was awkward, I even cried. He told me to relax and so I’d try. Sex between us because somewhat regular. When he wanted it, he got it and when I wanted it, I didn’t get it. We had an agreement to tell one another about our other hookups. I would inform him of the females I would hookup with, and he would tell me about his. At this point, he was the only male I had sex with. He loved that, he thought he was special and superior. Quickly I realized that me informing him of my other partners was for him. He would get off on it. He would try to get me to film my sexual acts with my other partners to proudly show him, or it was an excuse to tell me that nobody loved my ass more than he did, or to remind me that I was his toy and nobody else could have me other than in that moment.

I do have to mention very quickly, I always said yes to him. It was consensual between us, because yet again I thought it was normal and that I couldn’t do any better. Manipulation? Probably. Soon, I had collected a folder filled with disgusting nudes of me, all at his fingertips. Videos of me doing what he wanted, me wearing things that made me uncomfortable. I would obey to him. He used to tell me that I would be perfect for porn. I would tell him all I wanted to be in life was a doctor, he would simply say “Drop out, you’ll make the same amount of money doing porn. Best part, I can be your manager.” I felt dirty, I hated myself every time I looked in the mirror. I convinced myself that I was nothing more than a tool and there was no getting around this conversation.

Every time I was intimate with him, it hurt. I would also pay the price after with UTI’s and yeast infections from him using his dirty fingers on me. I continued with him though, thinking that it was great, that I could have sex with my best friend and learn about myself. It was so unhealthy though. Lyle and I’s friendship was totally abolished at this point. We had nothing together but dirty messages and sex. He stopped viewing me as his friend, and more like his object. He would call me his toy, tell me that I would never get away from him. He’d tell me that if I ever tried to get away, ever found someone else, that he would find me and fuck me in front of them, because the only cock I could love was his cock. Because of this, I felt the need to please him in other ways, to converse in other ways. It drove me mad. One night I was giving him what he wanted, or so I thought and when he decided he had enough, he told me to go fuck myself and then told me about how unattractive I was when I was acting like a whore. I stopped responding, which resulted in him making his way up to my room, before I let him in, allowed him to apologize. The worst part, he spent the night that night. 

Now, this is where things get really, really bad between Lyle and I. We sleep together and I look down at the condom and notice the cum everywhere as it’s half off of his penis. I look back up and say, “Is that mine or yours?”, to which he responds “Yours.” The condom had been half off though, slipped during sex and was oozing from the sides. I agreed with him though, as a way not worry myself and continued about my business. That is, until a few weeks passed and I suddenly noticed I was 6 days late for my period. I freaked out, ran to the store and bought a pregnancy test. The test came out negative and so I settled for a bit. At 4am the next morning, it became clear that it was a false negative. I had severe stomach cramping and I was bleeding all over the toilet and the white rug in the bathroom. I laid there knowing why, knowing the pain was not my period starting late after a week, but rather a miscarriage. Lyle, was the only guy I had slept with. I laid across the cold bathroom floor, sobbing until I felt a drop and suddenly the pain subsided. 

My roommate found the blood soaked rug the next day and saw me in a t-shirt where blood had now stained the bottom hem line. She looked at me and I explained to her what had happened that morning. I made my way to the doctor, for it to be confirmed that my suspicions were right, that I had in fact just gone through a miscarriage. I begged for my roommate not tell him, knowing his reaction would be bad, knowing he would blame me for not being more careful. She kept it to herself until the moment came where he and I had our falling out and suddenly he knew. He refused to believe it was also his fault. Screaming at me saying we used condoms always, saying that I was a whore who slept around with people I hadn’t told him about. Rather than fight him, I lied and told him I had gotten knocked up by someone else. It wasn’t worth explaining the 11% fail rate to someone who would never understand it was his fault. He called me a liar the rest of the night. Saying I lied, pretending he was the only male in my life, saying that I didn’t want to admit I was a prostitute. 

He was now upset that people also knew about our intimate relationship. I remember him telling me, “keep my name out of your goddamn fucking mouth, or there will be consequences.” I wanted my friend back so badly, I took his side in everything. I even made him a promise I never wanted to make, a promise that said I was his and he could use me for whatever he wanted to use me for. He called me a liar and a whore for months, because I never told him of “the mystery man” …or “mystery men”. I did everything I could to make it better. His first plan of business? To make me get a dating app so I could find him another girl to have a threesome with us. I didn’t want a threesome and I sure as hell didn’t want to involve another female into our lives that he could hurt. I went with it though, because as long as he was happy… right?

I had convinced myself through all of this that I owed him. He made me feel like I had actually slept with another male throughout all of this. I questioned myself and questioned if maybe I was delusional. Was the miscarriage real? Did I sleep with another man drunk, one I don’t remember about? Maybe the doctor was wrong, maybe it was my period. No… I couldn’t have been that drunk, I’ve never been that drunk. Yet, I was still convinced he was right, because he was hurt.

I wasn’t doing a good enough job on the dating apps. I wasn’t finding a girl fast enough. He would call me a liar and a whore, tell me I wasn’t trying, tell me I was using the app all for myself. When he would find women, I would be thrown into group chats with them, expected to flirt with them and send nudes right off the bat. I was his slut. When I would fail to do this, he would send me a private message and tell me I was doing a bad job and I should be more easy. I would flirt with women I didn’t want to flirt with. I would feel awful about it too, I would want to tell them ‘run away, just run.’ I never did though, because I never wanted him to be disappointed in me.

Then I meet a guy. He came into my work one day and we really hit it off. He was charming, polite and everything Lyle wasn’t. We opened up to each other really quickly and things got serious very fast. Let’s call him, Danny. Danny and I would sleep over each other’s house all the time, go on little dates. He would make me feel pretty and special. Meanwhile, Lyle is sending me texts requesting pornos of the two of us and to let him join in- that it wasn’t fair I was keeping Danny all to myself.

I leave the country for a month, Danny and I aren’t anything official yet and so while I’m away, he tells me I’m allowed to have a good time. I wasn’t pressuring myself into having a good time though, however Lyle was. He didn’t understand why I didn’t want to have sex, why I didn’t want to flirt around. Eventually I did sleep with someone on that trip (for me) and Lyle acted like I waited forever to have sex while I was away, when in reality it was maybe 2 weeks. He wanted me to flirt more, to be more of a whore and finally I decided to block him for the first time.

I came back home to Danny, a boy I finally could get serious with and we decided that we liked being boyfriend/girlfriend. Lyle, when he found this out, made a second account and I stupidly accepted his request. He bombarded me with dick pics, saying I was a slut and I only wanted Danny in my life because I was desperate. After all, I was still confused about my sexuality, how dare I decide to date someone in the middle of all of that. 

Danny was supposed to help me move in for school, it was going to be perfect. My parents were away that weekend and Danny was prepared to help save me from the bullshit called Lyle. It’s two days before move in day and Danny asks for my move in information and I give it to him and next thing I know I’m being blocked by him on everything. Danny and I haven’t spoken since, which hurts, but also is what it is. I know why though, I know Lyle stuck his fat head into the whole mess because I didn’t want him anymore and after all, he still owned me. I confronted Lyle about the situation, he acted as if he had no idea what I was talking about and I was ignorant enough to believe him. Pathetic of me. Next thing I know, I’m being swooped back into my nightmare with Lyle, being added into groups with women I don’t know, forced to flirt while simultaneously being referred to as a whore and a slut.

The one thing about Danny, that I have to thank him for, is that without him this summer, I would have never realized I was being treated poorly. It weighed heavily on my mind. It gave me confidence to talk about my situation with a few people and that’s when I realized I needed to get the fuck out of there. So, I told Lyle that I wanted to go back to just being friends. He refused that as an answer and told me “You owe me, but na I get it. Fuck you.”

That was the end of Lyle… for a week, until he crawled back into my life. In this particular week, I learned my mom had cancer and suddenly it seemed like any morals I had were suddenly gone. I didn’t care anymore about the good or the bad, I just was angry and I wanted to feel something. So Lyle crawls right back into the picture and comforts me in his way. I send photos, he responds and the night ends in sex. I was frustrated with everything else in my life and this seemed like an out. I felt nothing that night as he pounded me. No emotion, just raw irritation at the shit hole that was now my life. 

I was back in my cycle with Lyle, back into feeling like shit and like I owed someone some grand fucking favor. That is, until someone came to talk to me, to tell me that he was even worse than I thought. He had a girlfriend back home, a girl he vowed to be faithful to. That’s when the world stopped. All that anger, frustration, irritation just came pouring out of me and all over him. He lied to me, the man who called me a liar for months, lied to me. He lied to other girls too, many of them in fact, but he still lied to me. I finally told him to fuck off, finally got to tell him that he hurt me, that he didn’t own my body, that he treated me like shit for months and still expected sex from me like I was some animal. It felt really fucking good.

I’m telling you all of this, because Lyle tried to contact me tonight. I don’t know why, either to scream at me or because he was horny. It’s not my problem anymore though. He’s gone. Now, I sit here contemplating my next action. Will you read this, will you not… I’m sick of hiding behind the shadows, sick of losing people over him. I want my fucking life back. 

I tell you all this, without knowing what I’ve learned from all of this quite yet, because I’m sick of pretending like this wasn’t wrong. I spent months feeling like nothing better than a piece of trash. I almost dropped out of school because he had convinced me I was nothing more than a common whore. I would never be appreciated, never be loved. He would always have a grip over me. The worst part about all of this, is we live down the hall from one another. I walk by him sometimes and I feel as his eyes stare at me as I pass by him. I feel his anger radiating out of him. He’s angry because I’m not obeying. I’m happy though, because I’m free. So, Lyle if you’re reading this, you know who you are. I will tell you the same thing I told you last time, fuck off, you really hurt me.

[tinselt-blog]

I’m Going to Make you and Mold You, Make You Perfect and Mine

I felt my soul sputter out recently and I am so goddamn confused. I thought I was over that part of my life where nothing made sense, where I didn’t have to ask myself who I was constantly or ask why those people weren’t in my life anymore. I thought I could stop asking why she was gone, why she had died and why G-d had made life so confusing. At least this time feels… different, or so I think. Sometimes I get so caught up in figuring out the answer that I lose all confidence in myself and my mind. Confidence to me isn’t looking in the mirror and being content with what I see or having this fat ego, it’s about understanding. When I was 15, I got high and saw something on the tv screen that changed everything. I saw a woman, a girl I thought was breathtaking and suddenly every thought came clouding into my head. Holy shit, I was attracted to her. I was attracted to the girl I kissed when I was 13, I was attracted to my best friend at 15, I was attracted to women my whole life and that was when this puzzle piece was discovered. It made me cocky, it made me want to have this weird sense of power, not authority, but someone who could protect someone else. Like I was holding out my hands to heal the wing of the broken bird, and my g-d, it was weird, but it made so much sense. Every guy in my life up until that point was nothing to me. Every cock I had rode made me feel nothing, every text I left on read, nothing. But also the same for women, until I met someone I trusted. I had never felt heartbreak until one girl and one incident and suddenly my mind was made on who I was. After I was raped, I ruled every relationship out of my life. I guess not every because I still lead myself into the flames of hell after that, only to be resurfacing now. I want to know myself. I don’t know myself. I slapped a label on my forehead because one dumb hookup at age 14 and one really fucked up period of my life. I was bisexual when I met my first serious girlfriend. I never really wanted to even slap a label on myself. I’ve never seen myself getting married, or starting the picture-perfect family, so why did it matter who I slept with? And then I learned love and fuck, it made me want to do everything I vowed not to do. Then she cheated, and I got raped, and I started something with someone else and suddenly all my confidence was gone, and I labeled myself as a promise that I would never, ever get hurt the way I did again. So, here I am 20 years old and confused as fuck. I’m sorry but my health textbook and all my high school teachers told me I would have my whole life figured out by now, and why the fuck would anyone ever say that because I have not met a single 20-year-old that has their brain stuff figured out yet. I’m still confused; however, I don’t care anymore. I’m not going to let my emotions shatter me the way I was shattered once before. I refuse to not feel good enough, not worthy enough, like a tool, I’m done. I’m done. I’m sick of waiting for the magic answer to arrive on my front door step and I’m sick of waiting for G-d to rain light down, and make the world sunshine and roses, because it’s fucking pathetic. I want to breathe, to taste the air with people I trust, and to learn what I really like and not what my fears tell me I can and cannot like. I want to feel the heat of the water in the shower as it runs over my skin and not this numbness. I want to walk into a situation that makes my heart boom in all those brilliant ways. I’m done living in this cage that I made myself. I’m done. So hello world, I’m going to make you and mold you, make you perfect and mine.

[tinselt-blog]

Who The Fuck Even Am I?

So, it hasn’t been a year since I made this page, but it feels like it has. A year ago last July is when I made the decision to work for myself and nobody else after spending too much time being depressed. I needed something in my life to change and I started a very personal blog with very personal things and then I moved to a public blog when I said why not just overshare with the world if it could potentially help someone else. So let’s back track. Last year, I had a rough year. It started with me moving farther away then I could handle, then I met this guy who wasn’t too nice to me, my ex cheated, my mom was sick, I was sick and I had just learned that I had technically flunked out of my first year at school. I lost any sense of touch with who I was, because suddenly I enter adulthood and God did not hold back. My life before moving was ok I guess, looking back I held back a lot more than I wish I had. College started out ok, I was dating long distance and their was a lot of strain starting to get put on the relationship. I noticed she was losing herself as I was losing myself and things started to go very sour. She moved on before we had moved on I believe as a way to ground herself. It was something that hurt me a year ago, but now I am ok with it. I was at the time dealing with a kid who had sexually abused me at a house party. There was video evidence as well as my roommate at the time telling police that he was in fact creepy and would just kind of show up in the middle of the night looking for me. The worst part is only remembering the one incident and then later on remembering the rest. I didn’t want to tell anyone what was going on because 1. my “friends” were the ones filming and believing it to be a joke and 2. I was afraid because I wasn’t claiming a sexuality title at the time that they may have thought I wanted it and regretted it because I was in a relationship. The second one actually happened between me and a friend and now I know they were a shitty person for not believing me. Anyways, boy grabs my ass in public and I finally get the nerve to slap him. He files a claim against me and now everything is very public. He drops the subject with the school security and I continue forward with claiming rape. My school denied my claim, because “We are a Catholic institution and that just doesn’t happen”. I at this point begin to think of transferring. Next morning I cry to my girlfriend at the time, who is kind of reluctant to listen. It’s a sign because that evening I get a video of her kissing someone else and that relationship dies very quickly. I’m a mess at this point. I’m not getting out of bed and I’m uncomfortable with myself, like I just start to hate myself because I’m like why me? I get really sick during this period of time and there is this mumps outbreak so they quarantine me just in case. At this time I get a call from my dad saying my moms surgery went well and I’m like what surgery? I’m very close to my mom so this was weird. It turns out she got a massive tumor removed and I had no idea. Within 7 days, my life completely just takes a 180 and people still to this day ask me why I shut down and started having mood swings. I couldn’t cope with everything. My PTSD was coming back into full swing with that 13 reasons why show and my brain had never really gone back to how it was before my friend died. I wasn’t getting any sort of help and hadn’t for over a year at that point because I had randomly become terrified of therapists. I would wake up and not do anything, I wouldn’t feel anything. My body was so numb, I would just walk through the day and not retain anything. My conversations would veer off topic and it was bad. I began using drugs again and drinking a lot when I could and then I remember the only private place I could cry would be our showers because nobody could hear me under the water. I would just feel again under the fucking shower and everything would spill out in those moments. As soon as I got out I was a zombie again. I was begging for forgiveness for everyone and calling everyone because I went one day to having so many people surrounding me to the next getting threats on my life for filing a rape case and then later on for my ex’s cover up lies. Since she couldn’t admit to cheating on me, she made me into a monster and people believed her because I was too weak to stand up for myself and I let people believe it. I wasn’t around to show who I truly show who the hell I was and it killed me. Then school called said I should take a break because my hospital, no class, depression period made my grades collapse. A blessing in disguise.

A year ago last July, I attempted to redo everything and start over which was my first mistake. I was over what I had done and who I had lost in that process, but those who tried to forgive me couldn’t because they couldn’t look past that nightmare I had made myself into. No hard feelings on anyone (except the rapist) and no old feelings either. I just wanted a sense of of normalcy. When I was alone again is when I realized that what ever mixture my life had turned into was doomed to fail repeatedly if I couldn’t fully let go of my past, and so I did. I said goodbye to childhood friends, ex’s, school friends- everyone. It was the first time that I didn’t need to rely on someone else to make me happy and even though I was lonely, I just felt so fucking good. I really had a clean slate.My only rough patch this year was me being my biggest insecurity, me trying to relearn myself and forgive myself for my flaws and moving past the inflow of newer, harsher memories of the trauma I went through a year ago. I had a minor setback with some friendships as I began to act out, but I resolved it and move past it and I feel like I have finally surrounded myself with people who understand for once or maybe they don’t and that’s why it works. Either way, I have an amazing job with amazing people, I love my new school and my new friends and I finally feel like I know who I am for the first time in a year and a half and it’s so weird to know that ya, this is me, but it is. I spent a whole year and a half trying to figure that out and now here I am ladies and gentleman and whoever you so desire to be. That was my year (written very smoothly after a year long worth of attempts I might add).

[tinselt-blog]

Hey There Delilah

So, that show came back with a second season and it’s a show I feel like I don’t have to address the name of, mainly because it doesn’t deserve the credit. I don’t remember what I’ve talked about and what I haven’t talked about- but now felt like a good time to tell this story as it is the first time I think I can fully comprehend the situation. My best friend killed herself almost 3 years ago now and I felt responsible for a large part of those 3 years. The day I had gotten the call, I was informed the suicide note listed names for being her reason why, and at the time I was a minor, so the note was never something I could view. On my 18th birthday, I was emailed a link of it, which I deleted. I didn’t want to know if I was on the list, because would it really bring relief to know I wasn’t or what would I do to myself is I was.

To understand this story, I’m going to make myself vulnerable and literally tell the world (if they so choose to read this), my deepest darkest secret. At one point, I was afraid of the backlash and being ridiculed, but it took so many years to realize it doesn’t matter. The last year my friend was alive, let’s call her Delilah, she was all over the place. I know that can mean a number of things, but the way I mean it is, she was Delilah and then she wasn’t. Something happened that year and she basically snapped. Delilah had been in and out of treatment for a few years, but never lost herself in those moments. Then suddenly it was like the whole world was involved into this collective of trying to understand her. It all started one weekend, a weekend I had spent with her and her boyfriend. I saw nothing odd, I had spent all weekend with her and then we went home. The next day I get a text from her begging to come over and at the time I was out, so I quickly ended my plans and was like yes of course. She never came and I sent back a message asking how she was. She replied hours later just to say her boyfriend had come over and she was fine now and I trusted that she was being truthful. She wasn’t even home when she sent the message, she had run away to another state. I found out the next day when the police called to ask a few questions and having police officers in my family, urged them to send out some sort of alert early because I got a strange feeling. In the meantime, I’m texting her, telling her that whoever she’s meeting up with just isn’t a good person. Basically, she had a mental breakdown that resulted from another person bullying her and she didn’t know how to act so she panicked.

A couple months go by and her behavior is very odd, she seems almost like a zombie. There is no emotion coming from her and when she’s ‘passionate’ about something, she’s not. I can tell you this looking back, but at the time I just didn’t see the signs. We were supposed to go camping that summer and I ended up cancelling the reservations because I didn’t know how stable she was, and I was honest with her about that- because I cared about her. Instead I substituted a lot of time to being with her and it felt like she was maybe getting better. During this time, she had turned 18 and decided to stop taking her meds at her own will. I went into her room and saw 2 and a half bottles of anti-depressants and mentioned it in passing conversation with her mom. At that point, Delilah was I guess old enough to make her own decisions. Her mom, a very kind, loving, devoted, hard working mom said she was thankful for mentioning it and beyond that it was out of my control.

I never had a single fight with Delilah, until this one day. It was over something so stupid, just her forgetting I was coming over and leaving me locked out- twice in one day. I was upset and decided to talk to her and that when things kind of happened. She mentioned wanting to die everyday and that she felt as though nobody cared about her and that if she were to die, she hoped I’d feel responsible. Ignorance got the better of me, because let’s be real, in a big fight we’d all say things like that. Nobody would actually go as far as to kill themselves, right? Anyways, we made up and I spent a few more days with her before I had to leave for a trip. We were fine again, but something was different. The last night we hung out, she was like “Don’t you want to take your extra clothes home?” and I had spent almost every night there mind you and just left a change of clothes. I told her I was too tired, and I would do it tomorrow and left by saying the words “Bye bitch, see you tomorrow.” Tomorrow came and turns out my work had this random pop up event they told nobody about and so I had to stay late. I sent Delilah a message and said I wasn’t going to be able to make it and I would only be away that weekend for one night. I could feel she was sad and at the time there was nothing I could do.

I went on my trip and noticed she stopped texting the day I was coming home. I had a feeling about it and texted a mutual friend of our who said she thought she ran away again but had an odd feeling she wouldn’t be coming back. I remembered the conversation of suicide from a few days before and was like, no that could never happen. I get home and two hours later, I decide to go for a walk with my dog. As I’m leaving, the phone rings and mind you it’s late. I go anyways and I come back to see my dad standing on the porch pacing and I’m like, huh, that’s odd. But then, my mom comes out behind him and I just knew. I was screaming so much that my dad carried me in. The rest of that night was a blur.

Next day, I get the confirmation on how she died and that there was a note. Mutual friend mentioned, let’s call her Beth and the other mutual friend, Linda both start fighting. All of us are just fighting. They were aware of the note, even though they HADN’T read it and the fight. They came to the conclusion that I was probably one of the names. I don’t talk to them anymore, I don’t plan on keeping a relationship with them, because no matter how many times they say they regret it now, they continue to say that if I had been a better friend maybe she wouldn’t be dead. My friends, also told the priest that she had not good people and I even got yelled at. Delilah’s mom however hugged me and told me I was good, having read the letter. At one point in my life, I never saw how she was fine with me and how my friends weren’t as meaning anything.

I became very, very, very sick as a result of everything. You hear stories of PTSD and think only soldiers can get it and then you yourself gets it. It started the night of the funeral. The wake, was messy and something I should have thought about more. I wanted to be there until the casket closed and that was maybe not a great idea. Her body came a week and a half later and it had already showed signs of decay. It also showed how she died and it hit me that this was real when I peered down and saw a girl with blue lips looking back at me. Her mom, was a wreck and hugging me and holding her dead girl in her arms. At some point Beth, Linda and I were all together and her mom pulled out 4 pink bracelets with elephants. She bought them at some spiritual shop that said they connect us as family if we wear them. She wanted one of us to put one on her girl. Beth and Linda quickly grabbed the bracelets and backed away and there I was holding a dead girls black, cold fingers in my hands slipping a 50 cent bracelet on to her wrist. Then the casket had to be closed and I watched as her mom nearly toppled the casket trying to hold her little girl in her arms again one last time before she would never see her again.

I named her Delilah after my bizarre way of coping. For those of you who do not know, PTSD begins with a lot of visual perception, we’ll call them. Meaning that sometimes I would see a little girl that looked like her and as a way to make it less a fear, I named her Delilah. I haven’t seen her in a few years, for the best I am sure because it means I’m healing- but listen- I chose not to read a letter that would ultimately break me somehow. I will never know why she killed herself and I’m ok with that. When I watch this show I see my biggest fear on a tv screen and while yes I chose to watch it and I am ok with watching it, young influential people also do the same. I am 20 and old enough to understand- but I am still pretty fucked up. I lost a lot of people because once upon a time I was cool headed and now my emotions are all over the place because I feel like I have to explain myself or apologize a million times because what if it happens again. I cannot imagine for the life of me what I would feel if I was a reason. I cannot imagine what the kids in the copycat scenarios feel like. The show knows a piece of what it feels like to loose someone to suicide, not the whole story.

[tinselt-blog]

The Three Rules to Eternal Happiness

DISCLAIMER: Omg I think I kind of wrote both of these things already but I guess that’s what I get for only posting once a month? Ok. cool. Also this ends at a weird place for a reason because I want to continue this as I go through my year, because so far it’s been four months and I keep planning on writing this and I kept trying and discarding them, idk. BUT, here it is now and it isn’t my favorite but I’m sticking to it as a challenge to myself and I’m afraid of people reading this more than anything else I post so lol- this one is for my 3 followers- hey... ok. Alright. Tah-dah!

I’m on a mission to make 2018 the best year of my life both mental and physically. I know this will be my hardest journey yet and as I transition out of my last year as a teenager, I’m determined to figure out how to begin the most important and stressful years of my life in the most positive and empowering ways possible. With lots of ups and downs, it has been confusing what path I should take to complete this goal, as other attempts have been very unsuccessful in the past. I want to dare myself to do the things that scare me and work on the things I gave up on those many years ago. My mission: ultimate happiness.

This was a challenge of rules and standards I had to complete to fill any given task I gave myself. Without rules, there would be no structure in my self-proposed experiment. Each rule is not to be broken, no matter how fucking hard I want to break it and each standard has to be an average standard, so I never felt as though I couldn’t reach it. This is the easiest part of creating my goal, and funny enough, the hardest.

The first rule I made for myself, never say no. It was a crucial part of my journey that I don’t give up opportunities that I fear won’t make me happy. What this means, is have you ever been to a party or a social gathering where you felt like the odd man out? That was a feeling I was afraid of for the longest time. I had been put in scenarios where I was out somewhere I didn’t want to be, and by the end of the night I found myself walking in the city alone back to my place of comfort. Those experiences were all very mixed and every once in awhile you stumble along an event that just wasn’t worth your time. Whether the event had something to make it bad, or you yourself made the mood feel bad through negative thinking, it’s important not to let those opportunities down, because 9 out of 10 times, you’ll smile and thank yourself for those experiences. The only exception to this rule is danger. If you feel in danger, don’t stick around to figure out the trouble it will bring.

The second rule, was to put yourself in awkward situations. I know that sounds a bit odd, but when I explain it, I hope it will click. Basically, there are the things you have always wanted to try or cross off a bucket list that you’re too afraid will get you put in an awkward situation. I know for a fact there is fashion I’ve always wanted to try, but have been too nervous to pull off or a song I wanted to sing to a crowd or just that one someone that I was always afraid to sing. So, I wore a onesie in public and got a comment or two and I sang my heart out at a karaoke bar on the corner of busy and central and guess what? I’m still breathing, aren’t I? The exception I gave to this rule, don’t do something that will get you into long term trouble like meth or one too many one-night stands.

My last rule, but not my final, is keep to yourself. No matter the situation, or who you’re with, whether you’re surrounded by friends, strangers or you’re alone- be yourself. We all have those moments where we look down at what we are and who we’ve become and ask ourselves “are we worth it?” And the answer is yes, yes, yes, a million times yes. To be true to yourself, is to stick by your beliefs. Getting embarrassed in my pajamas could have been a lot worse if I wasn’t confident in who I was as a person. Of course, even to this day I get embarrassed, but it’s nothing compared to that girl I once was.  The exception to this rule… there isn’t one. There is no excuse not to be you.

With those rules, I built my standards and I would tell you them, but everyone has different ones. I told you they were simple, and that was that. Because of this plan I have created, I have experienced the best 4 months of my life, even if I cried a lot along the way. This goal started last year in September of 2017, but I didn’t fully implement it until 2018. With that comes a lot of history behind why I chose this goal and describing those who influenced me to do this, whether they even realized it or not.

I tried to write this two months ago, as an anniversary to the time I broke down and crumpled, but I struggled to find the words. A year ago, my seams ripped open and I unraveled. Using bigger thread to sew up problems, doesn’t mean it’s stronger. Sometimes, more delicate string is needed to put the stitches closer together. But, I didn’t know that. There were nights where I would cry myself to sleep because I didn’t feel tired and I would wake up exhausted. Days where I had the sheets pulled off of me, as a friend carried my sweaty, disgusting body to fill with food. Mornings where the shower would be freezing, and I couldn’t tell I was shivering. I look back on those moments of my life and I see numbness.

I tried to blame other people and as much as I wanted to, as much as maybe they deserved it… I just couldn’t do that. Most of those struggles were my struggles, and I knew it, I just didn’t know how to say it. The people surrounding me were toxic and I was drowning in it. I was becoming sickly and frail, but everything was manifesting itself. I remember on one night, I had just started to get over bronchitis when I had a moment where I felt something for the first time in months. Panicking, I went out for a cigarette to calm my nerves as it had been doing for so many months, but rather than feeling relief, I chocked on the black smoke every time I dragged the cigarette.

I didn’t know who I was or where I was going.

This story isn’t sad though. I just needed you to know where I was compared to where I am now. I had a mental breakdown, something I honestly believe everyone experiences at least once in their life before they die. Without it, do we really have anything to grow from? Or would we just be… there?

During my breakdown I had these two people, who would literally drag me out of bed where I was drenched in my own sweat and tears and pull me to dinner where they would force feed me until I felt sick. There was a lot of hand holding and hugs of warmth to help melt away the numbness. I remember the night I felt like I could breathe again? When I felt as though my emotions weren’t just there, but rather becoming a daily thing versus just the random times with a cigarette in my hand. I remember I couldn’t physically eat a single bite of food without gagging and my adrenaline was so high. It made me sick and I couldn’t hold anything down, not even these emotions and feelings bursting through. Some I had felt and some I had never experienced at all. I felt heartbreak… from the loss of my family back at home, from my friends… from myself. I decided in that moment that where I was and who I was were two things I didn’t want to be and that was the first idea I had about myself in a long time.

Summer came, and I decided not to move far again. That was somewhat by choice, somewhat not. Either way, it was probably the best sign from God that I could have ever gotten, telling me don’t hurt yourself again. Instead of resorting to my comfort zone, aka home, I decided to make it unfamiliar- start fresh again. I painted over my comfort zone, because I could no longer find comfort in the place I had spent so many nights crying. I took my own personal comfort zone, my hair, and decided that morning to chop it all off, because it was just hair. I would grow both into newer memories, happier memories. Purging the old to create room for the new, and my god, it was so liberating to feel that way.

I decided to get to know myself better too and took some really random risks that I still question to this day, like downloading tinder. Not my wisest move, but I actually made some really good friends through it and without them, I don’t know what my random time would be spent doing. I decided to transfer schools, get a cool job and do all those crazy, insane things normal 19-year old’s do. I started this blog a year ago… or I started a blog a year ago. Even if I don’t write that much it’s still amazing to look back on the progress I have made.

Now we get to the point of why I’m writing this (only 1571 words in, wow nice one Anna). I am insecure all of a sudden. Maybe it’s the negative roommate situation I got going on, basically she feels as though she can tell me what she dislikes about me because we live together. Maybe it’s my inability to gain weight or when I do it’s not what I’m used to (not an eating disorder thing, just when your body is all over the place you’re kind of like why). And maybe it’s because now that I’ve finally purged out all the negative energy, I don’t know what to do. I made a bucket list to do over the year and I’ve already done everything on it and now I’m stuck. There is a thing or two I want to do, like do the thing that scares you most in that moment, but like I can’t do that. I don’t know why I can’t do that because it’s literally the only unmarked box…

But it is so crazy to me to know how willing I am to do anything that involves fun now and feel as though I am ‘boring’ or ‘not cool enough’. I started writing this a couple of days ago and I keep taking periodic breaks because it’s a lot to sit down and remember that negative mindset. Since then, I was invited to something I would have said no to and I went, and I had fun and a great time, and I was invited. I didn’t plan it for once in a long time, I was invited.

But I still have that feeling of not feeling complete, even though I’m happy. I want to document every little thing and see it all and say, “that’s amazing!” and so far, I have. I know what scares me most and I don’t think I will ever get past the hurtle to just do it. I know why it terrifies me and what it would take to put in the energy to do it. I know it is something that will crush me and that’s ok. Because when it’s over, I can look back and tell my kids the time I fucked up.

For now, I have never felt this much bliss in my life because of what I’ve done and I’m forever thankful for my friends, family and God. Wow, this sounds bad and cheesy… but it’s true. So thank you.

[tinselt-blog]

Hello, I'm Anna and I'm Unkind

I find myself writing more and more about my emotions as a way to get out what I need to say. I don't write in the best of situations, but I guess that's why I do it. I told you all yesterday about my biggest insecurity being to feeling that I am not good enough, I am not pretty enough and I am not special enough. I elaborated on how I know this conclusion to be true, but I never said why. Feeling vulnerable is hard and it's instinct to want to fight it. We as humans never like putting ourselves in the position that we'll be most judged in or feel as though we are under attack. As someone with low self-esteem, I struggle to fight back the feeling of disappointment. A year ago I was at my lowest and I know why, I just don't know how to talk about it and trust me, I've tried to talk about it over and over again. How are you supposed to understand the world if you can't even understand yourself, because that's how I felt. I felt that I was handed words filled with hate, no reasoning behind it as an excuse for betrayal. Every time I was close to dumping all of the words, I would be left with one lonesome word I didn't understand and in my defeat, I would be presented with a new set. I constantly was getting words spit at me, words I could handle- but one still lingers with me today, unkind. All I have ever wanted to be for people is a giver. I love to give love, happiness and positivity even when I can't do that for myself. To be told that you're unkind when you believe you aren't, destroys you. I sat for months depressed that I would never be anything good for anyone else. It got to a point where I was even led to believe that nobody wanted to be my friend. The only people willing to talk to me had heard those rumors, and gave me one simple task, "kill yourself 😊". During this time it was hard to pull me from my bed, bathe and eat. I lost 25 pounds and my hair matted. My health declined and I found myself sick in that bed with excuses. This word was the only word I could see in my head and it was the only word I knew how to define myself, all because someone I trusted gave it to me. The only thing I knew about myself anymore, were through the opinions of others, because I didn't know who I was and that scared me.didn't know who I was or even what I was doing. I call this my biggest insecurity, because it's my biggest fear for people to believe it was true. I know now after a year that, that word, it doesn't define me. Would I sit there and cry over the emotional pain I believed to have caused someone if I was in fact unkind? Would I still continue to put others first even when I couldn't take care of myself? I didn't even realize how I felt until someone said "There is no love in the friendships you seem to try and maintain with your enemy." I knew it too, there wasn't. So here I am, with my little goal to be a better person. I am happy, I have found success and I have found the most wonderful caring friendships all on my own with people who actually see me for who I am, kind.

[tinselt-blog]

The Confession I Have to Make to Move Ahead

I have a confession to make. I always thought my biggest insecurity came from a secret of my past, when it fact it doesn’t. It’s been in the wide open for practically my whole life and I am just coming to terms with it. As someone who likes to understand other people, I hate it when people can understand me and make judgements of me before they know me. Part of that comes from the idea of a mystery; the most interesting people are those harder to crack. I achieve this through being so honest with people, they judge me from the stories I tell and not from the secrets I have. The other part is that maybe I am just so nervous to have people make other opinions to the point where it’s easier to close myself up. So, like I just said, I am being honest, I am insecure.

This starts in grade school. I started a new school as the only Jewish kid in my school up until 3rd grade. Curly haired and big nosed, I didn’t fit in, at all. It made me question myself, like I didn’t know who I was. As an only child, I was stuck with nobody to look up to and I was lonely. I became what we all know as the weird girl. Yeah, I was my school’s weird girl and if you’re my friend reading this, you know. Things happened as I got older and when middle school approached, I became more conscious of myself. I started to wear training bras I didn’t need and deodorant that had no effect and write boys names in my diary because other girls had their names in their diaries. Good news, still didn’t gain any friends. Middle school was interesting through, maybe. Three schools merged into one. New faces, new places and then there was little old me. I remember my first day all the blonde soccer girls from one of the other schools all had sweatshirts that read “the blondes”. I also remember running up to the people that maybe I thought were my friends and them ignoring me, so that was pretty cool I guess. The one good thing about middle school was meeting the other school’s weird girls. I finally had people to sit at lunch with, yay. It was a bit weird at first, I didn’t really know what was going on. It was a lot of fake gossip of things we thought we heard but didn’t actually hear. We thought we were cool, sometimes. Ok fine, never. When the changes started happening to other people’s bodies and not to mine, I sort of panicked and had a whole weird phase that I don’t talk about and so when I finally like grew tits or whatever I was 13 and very confused. I had more voice cracks than a 12-year-old boy and my silky, Shirley Temple curls were now looking more like pubes. I also decided to get bangs, which when you have curly hair that you don’t straighten, it’s never a good idea. I would get laughed at a lot for everything and it made me feel as though I had to cover myself up. I never thought I was beautiful and now with everything going on, I didn’t feel it either. It was too much and one day I ironed out the kinks in my hair and bought mascara. Overnight it seemed as though I had become someone people wanted to get to know. Granted, most of those people were horny 7th grade boys, but none the less people. It still didn’t feel like me though. It was gossip this, gossip that and I had enough. I switched tables one morning and met some of the best, weird people. A week later I dyed my hair fiery red. High school was a journey, most of that is documented in another post, the one labeled “The Day I Became a Snake and Shed My Skin”.

This brings me to today, two years post high school. I am feeling sort of lost and I don’t know why. A year ago, I was hurt by someone I trusted, and the walls of my self-confidence were ripped down. It was so hard to figure out who I was and why I was there. Everything in my life had felt like a façade and like it was built to be this perfect empire, yet I didn’t even know who I was anymore. I knew who I wanted to be though, and I guess that was enough. I asked someone a couple months ago is they thought my ego was strong and they said yes. At first, I was offended, but I knew why I had asked. I asked because, I was trying to figure myself out and I was playing the role of a character I wasn’t, so that maybe I would wake up one day and be happy. Turns out, the world doesn’t actually work that way and I am now realizing that the false ego is now crashing down. I’m not upset, just trying to figure out what will work and won’t. A much better place than the one I was in a year ago, that’s for sure. I’ve written a lot on the things I need to break down and recycle to fight my insecurity and it seems to be working. Look forward to a few deep, deep posts into the world of my head.

[tinselt-blog]

The Short Story I Wrote

When I look at my hands, I see dry lines peeling across them into creases and swirls. Each of these lines created through a memory, a puzzle piece of my life. One line represents the first time I got a splinter and my father held my petite thumb and wrapped in a Donald duck casing. Another represents walking up the steps to receive my high school diploma and feeling so elated, because I had done it. Lines represent the most beautiful things, like staring into the eyes of your dogs and seeing eternal devotion and love. The memories that exist behind these lines are powerful, yet simple and never once can it be recreated, they are each your own. Not every line is beautiful, some might be ugly, man-made with fear and hurt. The time I used a blade against myself just to feel something, anything. The time I held a flower too hard in my hand and felt the thorns prick the skin open and the blood painted the stem with heartbreak. When I look at my hands now, I see me. I see the wisdom behind each and every line. I see my story.

-Tinselt

[tinselt-blog]

The Way I Discovered Where Positivity Comes From

That moment when you keep opening up new word documents and hope some new content sticks. I swear y’all have about 8 stories coming your way that are a little… eh. So, with that being said, I thought now would be the perfect time to sit down and write something positive to help balance the hard places I put myself in, vs. the one’s I have learned over time to get to.

Today is a snowy day. I am currently trapped in my room with a fluffy blanket encasing me and I am totally ok with that. I realized the secret answer to the one problem I haven’t understood, and I felt like I had to whip out my laptop and write it asap. It’s not like a magical secret or even a long secret, in fact I wouldn’t be shocked if this little update was less than 500 words short. Positivity is the answer. I know it’s lame to say when you’re stuck in a hard place and the things around you suck, I’ve been there, to be honest I am probably still there. The formula to the secret isn’t positivity to yourself though and I know how weird that sounds, but it’s positivity to those around you. You don’t have to know someone to smile even when you don’t want to, you don’t have to know someone to listen to them and tell them good luck even if you struggle. Making someone’s day even when it’s hard, is the most positive, emotionally lifting feeling. If you are constantly positive to someone else, you begin to feel it too, because happiness is contagious and that’s the best part about it. So, go out there and say, “have a good day!” or say, “you look nice today!”, because you can do it if you put your mind to it. You can do anything you put your mind to, including being a happier person.

I will try to think more about this, but it just felt right to include you in my journey to self-discovery since that is what this blog is about and also share my process of how I get there and where my theories lie. Until next time, hopefully soon, I will talk to you.

(P.s. words:379)

[tinselt-blog]

The Shirt I Never Wear Anymore

I’m having a weird conflicting type evening in my life and I have tried to write a few different stories a few different times and I just got too emotional in the process. My life over the past 2 weeks has changed so beyond what I planned for, but I also kind of planned for a surprise, like I just keep moving and I don’t stop to worry about a future I know nothing about yet. It’s been nice to be that stress free and I honestly never thought it was possible to be that stress free, but it happened somehow and now I am back to those lovely daily panic attacks and I thought I would share my life the last two weeks in hopes that it solves some of these internal demons I am having. This post also might help get one less thing off my chest as I try and move forward with the rest of my life.

I have talked about this in every post I have made, and this is no different. My year, my 2018 is about self-recovery and being able to pick myself up from the ashes of my past. When I refer to my past as ashes, I mean I burned my old self in the process to get better. It’s like having that one shirt in your closet that does fit with you anymore, but you feel like you have to keep it and one day you realize you’ll never wear it again and that it’s time to make room for the new. It doesn’t mean the shirt won’t be missed or that it wasn’t loved, it just doesn’t fit with you anymore. I am basically the shirt in a way. A year ago I was so depressed, I barely left my bed and at some point, I didn’t shower for 3 days. My biggest fear is to be in that place again of disappointment. I don’t know how else to explain it. It was like a mixture of all my worst nightmares, some I have no idea if I will ever want to relive. Look at it this way, my year of the shirt, or shirts should I say, is going into the wardrobe and picking out each shirt individually. We avoid some shirts so that there is no question of “keep or discard”, it’s simply “forgotten”. However, for it to even have been “forgotten”, it must have popped up in your brain at some point. My year is going through each shirt individually as I am strong. I call this my best year yet, but I have also done some of the most painful things to myself in a way. I have let myself go into those deep, dark places to deal with my past so that I will never be hurt by it again; because the longer you take to throw out the shirt, the harder it becomes to do so. I had to give some background information on my little situation going on here, because I don’t really know what demon I am fighting as of right now, but I know I have a reason. Confusing, I know. I have always been really good at reading people, paying attention to words, to facial movements, body language and the way their voice flows. I can tell when someone is going through a rough patch simply by the way a sentence is worded, because the thought process behind it has changed. The one person I can’t read, is myself. I have no clue what I am doing or what I am thinking and it’s crazy to know how well I understand people, and yet I can’t understand myself. I believe I am getting the winter blues right now and as the anniversaries of my painful past come up, I think the mixture is something I want to be ignorant of. I am doing so well that I am afraid that I have a healthy reaction to a seasonal change, to a lack of sunlight. At the same time, these past two weeks have been crazy because I finally transferred schools. I went to a school that I didn’t get along with, didn’t feel like home. I made a slow decision to transfer closer to home and it happened so quickly. I didn’t worry so that I wouldn’t be hurt if the time to change wasn’t going to happen this year. (My upstairs neighbors are having really loud sex, I am so sorry for anyone reading this. If my sentences don’t make sense, noises make me distracted and I am so like ahhhh when writing this, so I am sorry!) Anyways, I found out I got in on a Friday, got my classes on Saturday and moved in on Sunday. It was a little crazy. My last school experience was rough, I was far away, and it seemed like my home life was crashing and I was too far to do anything about it. I hated who I lived with, she wasn’t a bad person but something about that room was just, rough. I hated when people would leave me behind and tell me they were “studying” because maybe I had a sad day. I hated when I got sick for the very first time and my dog couldn’t sit in my lap and I couldn’t lie my head on my mother’s shoulder. I hated when someone I trusted violated my body and nobody wanted to help me. I hated it. Everything. I am afraid of repeats. I am afraid that I won’t be a good person, because when this was all happening, it seemed as though the world was against me. Nobody wanted to believe what I said, because I was alone in saying it. I don’t lie, I don’t like to lie. I wouldn’t be lying and yet I felt like I had because so many people just attacked me at my weakest point. Listen, I am aware I am in a fantastic state and that even though the winter blues are here, that I can handle it. I tell people my biggest fears include, puppets, vomiting, death of a loved one, when in fact it’s loneliness. I solemnly believe that the reasons connecting my defeat last year were due to just that, that I was never able to have enough confidence in myself to keep myself upright. I am scared.

This post isn’t some desperate cry for help, or sadness. I am just in a new place with a fear of an old one that I have to learn to let go of. Letting go of this past means letting go of things I don’t necessarily care about, but still remind me of how destroyed I was. Remind me of how broken I felt. I know what I have written about and I know that it’s important. My struggle will be the release of these “shirts”, whether it will be something I talk about or not. We’ll just have to wait and see. For now, I am happy, I am doing just fine, and I am not one of those girls who says that when they aren’t. I am. I have a little of the seasonal sadness, but I am fine. I’m sure I’ll update sooner than I think, follow if you want to keep up. I love y’all, thank you.

[tinselt-blog]

The Letter I Wrote That I Should Never Have Written

This is what you need to know about me, I am the best friend of a suicide victim.

I wanted to make this post in a couple of months, but after the Logan Paul controversy, now felt like the right time. I lost someone very important to me on 8/15/2015, nearly two and a half years ago. As a result of this lost I developed something called Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or PTSD. Basically, I couldn’t cope with her loss and felt responsible for not speaking up on her behalf and being a better friend. She had once or twice briefly mentioned suicide, but me being ignorant thought that possibility was out of the question. If your best friend told you something like that in passing conversation, you wouldn’t necessarily want to believe it. After all, the joke I want to die, or I want to kill myself is so commonly used, the line between figuratively and reality mesh. I found out the news the following evening. I noticed she had been silent all day and that was very unlike her. I spent everyday with her leading up to this moment. The last night I had seen her she begged me to take random items home with me and I just kept saying next time, next time. My final words to her were, “bye bitch, see you tomorrow” and when tomorrow had come, an unexpected work event had come too. Going back to the day I had found out, I decided I was bored and went out for a walk with my dog. Something didn’t feel right and I had mentioned this to a mutual friend of ours who had agreed. As I was walking out the door, I could hear the house phone ringing and I didn’t really expect it to be anyone. As I turned into my driveway while coming home from the walk, I saw my parents standing by the front door and I just knew. I began to scream, and my dad had to pick me up and pull me into the house where he laid me on the couch. The night became so dark, everything became blurry. I don’t know how I made it to bed, I just knew I didn’t want to shut the light off. The moments leading up to her death were rocky. She had run away from home a couple months prior right before she turned 18. My uncle being state police, was able to issue an immediate amber alert and if you aren’t from the U.S., it’s an alert that goes out to all police in the area, sends out a text, basically for people to start looking. The issue with amber alerts is that you have to wait 72 hours for one to be issued, that’s just in case it was the child went over a friend’s house and didn’t call mom or dad, that sort of thing. I managed to get one out for her in less than 24 hours. It was apparent she had run away, she had left a suicide note at an old friend’s house, she had thrown out some of her artwork. My friend was not well, and I don’t talk about it because I know my part in the story could have been better.

Now to my PTSD. I first want to address that PTSD is a totally normal reaction, something I cannot help. It doesn’t not make me any less like you, it does not make me crazy, it does make me a bad person. I want anyone reading this to remember that if a solider came back with PTSD, you wouldn’t think it was out of the ordinary. So, with what I am about to openly talk about, I want you to know that I couldn’t prevent any of this from happening. When everything first happened, I became instantly afraid of the dark. I was never afraid of the dark as a child, never had a fear of dying in the middle of the night. For four months, I was so afraid something evil was out to get me and that by shutting off the light, I would see revenge facing me. This worried my family and I went to see someone and I was diagnosed with Acute Stress Disorder, the pre-PTSD. I, an ignorant soul once again, thought I was fine, but it kept spiraling and spiraling. I would have dreams where I would meet my friend in the waiting room of heaven and she wouldn’t speak, but she would hand me her suicide note and it would have my name scribbled all over it as the cause. I had dreams where her soul became a kraken and I was the ship she pulled underwater to drown. I would begin seeing things, a white rat running, a handkerchief falling, her as a child huddling. I couldn’t sleep, I was consumed. I would stay awake obsessing over why she did it, why she had to leave. I would search for news clippings, morgue documents, anything and I never found one single thing. My life wasn’t my life anymore.

It’s been two and a half years later, and that part of my life is over. I have the occasional nightmare, but beyond that I am doing well. So, to Logan Paul, I will give you some benefit of the doubt, maybe you were nervously laughing, maybe you were thinking you were helping, but know this, when you showed that body, I crumbled. I can go everyday and be fine, I can collect myself a lot faster than I could once, but I still get triggered. When you zoom in on the blue hands, I knew it was just that day, because my friend was found over 24 hours later and her fingers were black, and her lips were blue. When you make jokes about the man, you clearly have never held the hand of a dead girl, cold, lifeless, because her mom wants you to hold it. You have never seen someone’s mom jump in the casket as they tried to close it, because she knew she would never see her daughters face again. You have never had to put a handful of soil on your best friend’s coffin. You have never once, never once had to feel responsible. I see those memories enough, I don’t need to repeat them. Go fuck yourself.

[tinselt-blog]

The Time I Witnessed The New Year With New Eyes

Hey y’all, I am currently very sick with pneumonia and my writing may jump around everywhere. I might go back and write something new in a couple of days about the same subject to clarify everything. I have a couple of stories I could attach with this story as well that I may write in a few days. I might do on this page something called a photo a day where I share a Polaroid snapshot of my life a day, because I’m clearly a hipster now. Anyways, hope every had a happy and safe holiday for whatever you celebrate! It’s 2018 and I don’t know how that makes me feel. On New Year’s Eve, I was going about my life, I was working, talking, planning and it was great. But there was this feeling inside of me, something holding on to me, something new. A week before that on Christmas Eve I watched as coworkers decided coming to work wasn’t their priority over family time, or the fact that they had been overworked by the holidays and working until 8pm did not appeal to them. It was the first time I realized I felt trapped. I love my job and I love talking to customers and folding clothes, but I realized it was all my life had consisted of. As we get further into winter, my seasonal depression holds on to me. This past week was weird, it almost felt fake. Over my 19 years of life I have learned not to give a fuck, I have the patience of a saint. I was happy where I was until I realized I needed just a bit more; which, brings me back to New Year’s Eve. Imagine having nobody to spend it with for the 3rd year in a row. Imagine the year before not wanting to celebrate because my anxiety in a relationship was too high, and the year before that because it would be the first year in 10 years you didn’t have your best friend with you. It feels lonely. On top of that, I recently made the decision to cut my childhood friends from my life, because we had grown too far apart. I received an angry message from one mom saying how disrespectful I was being for ignoring her daughters text messages, the texts saying how much of an awful person I was. Back story, I got upset they ditched me to hang out with one another rather than wait for me. Mind you this had happened at least a dozen times over the last two years and keeping up a friendship like that is just toxic. I got messages talking about an old friend in my life and her new friends in her life from someone else. I don’t care that there is no friendship between us (though I know other people might beg to differ if I talk about this), I care that they are so focused on hurting me all over again. It makes me sad to believe that people wouldn’t want to weaken me for their own sense of self pride and security.

My 2017 was amazing for my self-confidence, I believe that when people saw me focus on myself for the first time, they felt it was their job to make me feel guilty. I won’t let my sad ending make me feel like shit, this year I have a bucket list. Things that purposefully put me in situations that give me anxiety, like exposure therapy. Things include joining a club, singing in public and even going on a date. I start this journey on Thursday at a tattoo consultation, where I will get a tattoo of something beautiful to help myself love myself just a little more. Last year I started the year by allowing myself to get walked all over. I was forgotten about, cheated on and in a place that didn’t feel like home. 2018 is that year I will force my self-happiness until it becomes natural. It sounds wrong when I say it, but I am sick of feeling stuck in a pit of emptiness and I want to move on and I will move on. I will prove a point and say I can do that no matter how “disgusting” people think I am. And maybe I am disgusting, but at least I will learn to live with that about myself.

[tinselt-blog]

The Decision I Made That Will Talk to Me forever

This is a promised story I have decided to publicly tell in hopes that it is awakening for one of you reading this. I am very fortunate to have an addiction that wasn’t as fatal as many addictions can be, but I wouldn’t read this story and take it as something good. I will use the word is and has towards my addictions, because although I may not be on anything currently, I will always believe I am an addict.

This story dates a little bit. When I was 12, I broke my arm pretty severely. The bone in my wrists had to be reset twice, meaning the bones were broken twice. I broke both my ulna and my radius in one clean sweep in a skating accident, as well as 3 of the teeny tiny ones in the rotational movement, wrist part thing. I’m studying to become a brain doctor, so take what I say with a grain of salt. Basically, after my surgery I was given pain pills. I was 12 and I was given oxycodone. I remember the first night I took the pills and I had severe panic attacks all night. My mom, who was all for natural, holistic medicine, immediately made me consume a shit ton of water to flush it out of my system. I grew up with parents who had me get the bare minimum vaccinations. I have frequent migraines and my medication is basically a strong Tylenol with some sort of anti-anxiety meds that make me loopy. Basically, what I am saying, is that I was never exposed to medications of any type and my body had a pretty harsh reaction to the pain pills. Fast forward to the beginning of high school, I was straight edge. I didn’t like the use of marijuana in any instance, I thought alcohol was bad and that drug use was a choice. That summer came and a made a couple new friends. They were amazing, but then I learned they smoked every day. Everything I had thought about drugs, got replaced by this idea that maybe not all drug users were bad. I was respected for being straight edge and even prompted to keep up with it. Of course, having these friends that I had come to love and cherish made me want to try weed. When sophomore year came around I smoked my first bowl. The ashes were black by the time it was passed to me and I coughed out black smoke, gagging over the burnt rubber taste. I felt sick with myself for allowing myself to do this and told myself I would never again. The urge came back. The few moments of peace that the few hits had given me, was so soothing. I felt warm, wrapped in God’s blanket. I began smoking cigarettes and as lame as I know I sound, smoking a dab pen to hide the weed in my own house so my parents wouldn’t catch me. My lungs slowly turned to shit. I was a singer, I preformed in a national choir for about two and a half years. We would travel the world and all around the country singing. The choir was very hard to get into with a limited number of seats. It was my favorite thing to do, until I started coughing at the end of each song. I had caught mono after drinking out of a cup of a carrier. My health was absolute shit at this point and on top of that I smoked a lot to pass the time. I decided to take cough syrup one night that I couldn’t fall asleep. I had never taken cough syrup before this, never knew how it would affect me. Once again, I had never really had medication before and so the cough syrup hit me very fast. I saw Jimi Hendrix perform a concert, there were floating leprechauns in my room, I had a whole clan of penguins just chilling next to my bed. It felt like a distraction from my anxieties to watch the illusions my brain would create. I would lie there with rosy cheeks, warm with synthetic happiness. My cough didn’t get any better and neither did my habits to get high. I remember my mom taking me to a throat specialist and pretending to have a panic attack, so they couldn’t put a camera into my lungs just to find that they were black. Occasionally if I could shell out the money, I would buy prescription pain pills for an intense high on  my roughest days. My life continued to go in this downwards spiral, where I couldn’t control myself and I couldn’t breathe. It took months before I could finally say stop. I got a job where I didn’t want to be high all the time. I took the steps to get off the medicine, and my head ached for days and I couldn’t stop vomiting randomly, I had a fever for a week, but it was worth it. I hit an all time low, I felt depressed, scared. It was hard to shower and look at myself in the mirror and say look at you. My weight had dropped slightly. It wasn’t until my first day of work that I really felt ok. When the job ended, so did that natural high that came with it. I began to use my old habits again. Another couple of months, blurred from my memory. I remember being in a car one day, realizing how out of it I really was. The conversation was hard to follow, and my memories were memories I would never knew how much I would want, until there came a day that the other person involved in them would be gone. This withdrawal was probably the hardest. It was the one that I wanted to be using the most. I stopped not out of choice, but out of need. I began to mentally collapse after losing someone close to me and the drugs made it worse. It was the first time that the drugs had hurt me. Stopping was painful. I stopped cold turkey and even the thought of doing them made me sick. My body was sore for months after all the vomiting and sweating. I would miss school to stay back for a few days to flush my system. When it was all over, I felt limp, lifeless. I was a walking zombie. My life had revolved around getting high and the people I once loved, were no longer my allies. I created a new world, with clean people. I lived in a world that I wanted to live in and I was so happy. During my use, I was beginning to fail classes, before I was a straight A student. I now had the opportunity to focus. I wish this was the end of the story, but it isn’t. Freshman year came around. I had the worst breakup of my life, I had my school deny that I was sexually assaulted, my mom was sick. I began to panic. I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t hold food down, I couldn’t get out of bed. I went back to the only things I knew, and that was the biggest regret of my life. I had spent over a year sober and now I was returning to things that made me, well, not me. It sent me into a frenzy. I began to act out, get angry, emotions I never had before. This was the first and only psychotic breakdown I have had. I couldn’t control any aspect of my life and it felt as though the grains of sand that I had taken me years to collect, were now slipping through my fingers. Reality wasn’t there. I got better slowly, through care and practice. The biggest moment I can remember is being slipped shrooms. I began to get paranoid. I thought the rainbow was hurting me, people were trying to steal my teeth and worst of all I thought my dead friend was out to get me. I was out in the middle of nowhere and I called my mom to come and get me. I don’t remember how I got home, the last thing I remember is being able to turn on my location tracker. We’ve never talked about it, but I know how she felt. I know she felt sad that I had to put myself through this. At this point I had developed my illness and I was severely underweight. I had lost about 25 pounds and I couldn’t hold food down. Sometimes nothing would stick for 2-3 days, and with that happening, every time I would smoke, I would just fall asleep. After awhile it became embarrassing to be with the people I was with and I knew I was a joke. I stopped smoking all together at that point, but quickly picked the cough syrup up. It wasn’t until recently where I had to tell myself to stop. I have been sober for almost a week now and I hope to God that week turns into years. I’m sick of feeling debilitated by something controlling me, sick of being 19 and stuck. I went through the vomiting, the sweats and now I’m here, making a blog. Making a blog to reflect on when I’m 40.

I want this story to stand how it is. Remember that anyone could be using any substances at any time. As a friend we need to stand by their side and get them the help they need when needed. I reiterate many times that my body is sensitive to doing substances and I am prone to vomiting when my inner balance is thrown off. I don’t want people reading this to freak out or state it wrong, because we all go through different things when it comes to our bodies. I was nervous about writing this, because this was such a private time in my life. People knew I got high, which is fairly normal, I just don’t think they understood what I meant. I have a large year of my life where I can only remember bits and pieces. To anyone that believes these substances have zero effect on you, that’s wrong. I’m not trying to sound like a mom or be a bitch, I just want people to grow up strong and healthy. To me, the occasional joint doesn’t hurt me, but the more I learn about myself, the less I want it. This is a story of warning, not just a story. Please take in to consideration other’s opinions.

[tinselt-blog]

This is to go with my last post. If you have no clue about context, I came out as gay and I told my story about how I figured it out. I snapped this picture my first week living in Louisiana after moving down there from the North and it really struck me. Go check out the full story here @tinselt-blog

[tinselt-blog]

The Day I Became A Snake and Shed My Skin

This is probably going to be the toughest thing I have ever written, but that’s why I am going to write it. For those of you who don’t know I came out as lesbian when I was 18, and before that I just went along with whatever and people either knew or they didn’t. Take what you will from it. If you’re confused, then keep reading. This is a topic that I am currently dealing with, I came out before I was even really sure what made me gay and why I was gay, which I know is completely backwards. I normally do not get into my sexuality, it still makes me uncomfortable, which is so beyond dumb, but it does. This is my story. (It’s all over the place, my bad)

I was born a millennial (that is obvious), a generation more accepting of sexuality than any other generation. Realize how I said more and not totally accepting, I do want to get more into that. I grew up in one of those rich white suburban towns that all the TV shows joke about and that I joke about as well. Everyone had money, they all were popular, religious and went to church every Sunday. I was Jewish with hippie parents, so I already didn’t fit into the town model citizen. I was never really popular in school until about my Junior year, where everyone seemed to just suddenly like me, but that also could have been because I got into a music club that was very hard to get into and only 14-20 kids get in per year. Everyone knew me, and I knew everyone. Doesn’t mean I liked everyone, but I knew them. In my free times I would go from group to group saying good morning, having a quick conversation and then moving on to the next group. This year was so strange for me, because it was not like anything I had experienced in years prior. I had come into this year losing all of my friends simply because I realized I didn’t know who the fuck I was. I went into Junior year still not sure of who I was. In this year, I had met a girl, and this girl and I had known each other on and off before, she was younger than me, so we never really hung out, and this girl (this is embarrassing if she’s reading this, but to be honest I’m mature enough not to care at this point) anyways, this girl was very openly bisexual, something I had never even considered myself. Up until this year I thought it was perfectly normal to find a girl sexually attractive and not think twice that a straight girl could look at another girl and find her attractive, but not sexually attractive. I have no clue what the fuck I was thinking, but we are going to roll with it. Let’s give this girl a name, we’ll call her Sam. Sam, was very flirty, she had a boyfriend, but it didn’t stop her from flirting with other people. She would often cuddle with me or kiss me on the cheek between classes and I had no clue why. At some point I realized I would get really nervous all of a sudden, something I had never felt before with a guy and I guess I just assumed it was because I hadn’t found the right guy yet (spoiler alert, I would never feel that with a guy.) This is a point in my life where although I was doing pretty well in every aspect of my life, I had some issues with drugs (I wrote a story on this, so you guys can learn all about it pretty soon. I decided to hold off on it, because this is the biggest thing currently happening in my life.) I would smoke every night and take cough syrup during the day. It became such a habit to take cough syrup to school and take it in the bathroom between classes. Sam was also involved in drugs, she was just starting out on things and I would hang out with her and do these drugs and that was that. One night while I was alone, I got high and today was not a particularly good day. I can’t tell you what happened, but I remembered coming home upset. I smoked like normal, and then I started watching a movie where in the movie someone came out at some point and I realized that the girl in the movie was me. I stopped and thought to myself this isn’t true, I’m straight, I know I’m straight. The more I thought, the more I realized, holy fucking hell, I like her. Fuck I like Sam. I knew I had opened Pandora’s box and what had come out, would never go back in. The following day, I remember so perfectly. I remember what I wore, what my schedule was, what day of the week it was. It was a Tuesday and I was wearing an orange sweater with 4 tank tops underneath because I felt like I had to bind myself together. I felt like I was spilling from all sides and that the skin that had once held me together was gone. I was a snake and I had shed my skin. I remember my math teacher first period yelling at me to pay attention, because I wasn’t paying attention to the board, I was paying attention to whatever the fuck my life was now. What was my life in that moment, I don’t know. I used to have this school guidance counselor, whom I used to see fairly often, like I previously said I struggled a lot with finding myself. He had heard that I wasn’t focused in class and that I should take a breather with him, and so I did. He tried to talk to me a little bit about how I felt and what was possibly going on inside my head. We sat for a long while before the words were able to slip through my lips that I was gay. I began to cry, and he patted me on the shoulder and made sure I knew I wasn’t alone. But I felt alone. The world it had stopped Monday night. It was the first time those words had been said out loud and hearing them from me, made them all the more real. It was scary to realize that the life you had created for the past 16 years was fake and that the future you had planned was just not going to happen. It’s like the ground of reality that you once stood on wasn’t real and the trap door opened. When I first realized this truth about myself, old memories flooded in. They were everywhere, and my thoughts were consumed by this boulder that had hit me out of nowhere. Memories I had never once second guessed, memories that once meant nothing, now meant everything. Some of these memories I hadn’t thought about in years. I remember being 6, in the car with my mom and asking her if I could marry the girl I had a crush on in first grade. I remember her telling me of course. I asked her why you never really saw two ladies as a couple and her reply to me was, “the world just isn’t ready yet.” I remember making my girl Barbie’s marry, as insignificant as that seems. I had a boy Barbie, but I still made the girls marry. That’s because when I would think about marriage to a man, I would feel nauseous, and I had even planned on not getting married at all if that’s what it would feel like, which is a big deal for someone to think before they turn even 10 years old. I remember being 11 when I first saw a girl I was attracted to, but like really attracted to. These memories were forgotten until I woke up from my dream. After this day, I spent the next year feeling this way, the next year feeling confused, the next year asking myself the same damn questions. I could only allow myself to test the waters, I didn’t want to give up on the idea that I wasn’t “normal”. It felt like I had been sentenced with one more thing that made me different and all I could think of was that it would just be another thing people would use as an excuse to hate me. I was afraid this new-found sense of universal belonging would disappear. And it did. Sam was not everything I expected, and I ended that on my own terms. I think she knew I liked her, and that doesn’t bother me. I went all the way up to a certain point and I called it quits, because I didn’t want to be with someone who was just as confused as I was, which now I look back and know how wrong that sounds. I don’t regret not going for it, and here is why. Sam, much like me, was curious about who she was supposed to be. Her unlike me, was able to fit in seamlessly with her sexuality being what it is in my school. I, was not. I thought if I was going to discover myself, that I would do it with someone I found confident, someone I spent the time getting to know. My senior year came along. I had a rough start. A new member was added to my club. I won’t talk much about her, because I don’t really care to, just know she was a large part of this time in my life. Basically, I met her and found her the most confident person in the world. She was comfortable with her sexuality, something I was always jealous of. However, one thing led to another and we were a couple. I was so scared that I had diarrhea for a week. When I finally got the confidence to ask her out, we went out. I remember this one time being on a date and running into people from our school, and they stared at us as we ate our food. It made me feel so sick, I couldn’t finish my meal. But that was it, I was out. Everyone who stared knew, I was assumed gay by a lot of kids in my school and she was very gay and very open. When the two of us were together, it wasn’t even a question of why we were together. The relationship lasted awhile. I learned to be free. To kiss in public and get yelled at by an old man for it. To hold hands in the open and have parents shoot us dirty looks. To ask her to prom publicly and take a million photos with her. It felt better knowing I wasn’t going through this alone. When it ended, it was the first time I had felt hurt at the end of a relationship, and that’s how I knew I was genuine The question still stood of what I was, but I knew for sure that I wasn’t straight. I think I was so scared to come out, because when I was 11 and just realizing that maybe I was gay, someone abused that. Some girl took my innocence away from me and I so desperately did not want to be like her or seem like I liked it, that I pretended that brief moment of question in my life didn’t exist. The idea that any girl touching me the way she had, frustrated me, made me angry. The fear was only overcome when I had changed my thinking with a girl I trusted. Things didn’t stay that way however, when I graduated, I made the decision to move from the beautiful, liberal North, to the deep, deep south in New Orleans, Louisiana. It was the hardest decision I have ever made. Before going to school, I had to recloset myself. People always ask why, and the answer is simple, I would rather not get killed over something I couldn’t control. Before people call me dramatic, understand that unless you have lived there, you haven’t heard the anti-gay rally stories, bullying stories and so forth. New Orleans is known to be quite forward or progressive, meaning it moves a little faster than any other part of the south. It’s still extremely southern and surrounded by a lot of stand still towns, very set in there way. My first weekend there, it was a holiday weekend and I went into the French Quarter, a tourist attraction of Louisiana and was greeted by an anti-gay rally where all the men were holding picket signs of bible quotes and screaming “lynch the fags!” I wish I was joking, but I had included a link to a few photographs for your curiosity (in a seperate post, go check it out on my page @tinselt-blog). The south made it impossible to question myself. I knew very lovely people, whom I love to death to have that ability to be out down there, but I couldn’t handle it. I felt too afraid to say anything. I had to keep asking myself who I was and my parents (forgot to mention coming out to them, they were unphased) were constantly trying to also see who I was, made me push the question away. I held that question down for a very long time. It took a very drunken night at the end of the year with a boy to realize. To get almost all the way there and call it quits, as embarrassing as that was to realize. I realized that even though he was a stranger, that if I felt anything for a man, it would most definitely be drunk. It made me realize that every date with a guy, every boyfriend I had ended up being a throw away. I never felt connected and I felt absolutely nothing when we broke up. So, here I am. Today. I held that fucking question down so long, let the answer slip out and now I have to face reality. I never really came out, and from the little I did I shoved back away.

So, as all over the place as that was, I am writing this simply because I am still confused. Yes, I am the idiot who publicly stated that I was gay before actually realizing why I was gay. I know it’s backwards. I’m shaking as a write this, because like how it felt to say the words out loud for the first time, I feel writing it makes it seem just that bit more real. I know it’s been 3 years, but it’s something I think I will never 100% fully understand, and I believe that as long as I can make it to at least 99.9%, then I will be ok. This is the basic story of my realization, I plan to write about the thoughts and feelings I am currently dealing with that made me want to write this. It took me 3 hours and a lot of tears to write this wordy ass fucking story that a lot of people don’t really know about. But now anyone can know it, so…

[tinselt-blog]

The Goal I Made in Order to Stay Alive

I wanted to start off with a simple post today. The other day I had written one about a significant part of my life, it failed to post and it took me about an hour to write. I decided to be smart today and write something I could save and later upload.

Anyways, today’s topic is my goal for this blog and why I intend to write it. My freshman year of college I was diagnosed with an illness triggered by stress, where pretty much I get sick every time my life is filled with a lot of stress, particularly stress I put on the back burner or stress I have no clue how to deal with. Stress obviously comes up from doing a number of things and it comes up a number of times from day to day. When I was 16, I noticed that my stress was coming into parts of my life that I didn’t want it to be in. I took it upon myself to create a basic goal, something I knew I could complete and it would be almost impossible to fail at. I told myself, be happy. The expectations for happiness can be anywhere, through receiving something as simple as a text message or something bigger like getting the job you wanted. This goal was easy, simply because I could find happiness anywhere and I wasn’t setting this impossibly, massive goal that couldn’t be achievable unless I had specifically 8 ounces of coffee at 7 am and the moon was precisely x feet away, it was a goal I could look at and say ok, I can do that. I am 19 now, I found out I had this disorder about 6 months ago, so as we can all imagine, the goal didn’t last. My biggest failure, was simply that I stopped paying attention. Things happen, outside forces happen, things we don’t expect happen. After I lost someone very close to me when I was 17, I struggled to get back on the horse and go for my goal. I moved far away, I had a relationship that didn’t end well, I lost 3 people very close to me in one year. I had two years of not following this goal and I became sick. I’m not just sick for today and I’ll be better tomorrow, no I am sick for the rest of my life and I have a huge potential of dying young if I don’t correct my behavior. This is an illness that will stick with me until the day that I die, I can make it dormant which would be essential for my future health. The biggest thing I have done since I got this diagnosis is alter my goal. It’s now no longer just to be happy, but it’s also to deal with my stress. Now, you’re probably asking how the fuck I suppose to do that, and the answer is simple, you just do. I have issues that make up so much of my stress, some from yesterday, some from last year, things I have never dealt with before. I am sick and tired of those issues popping up in my weakest hour and involving themselves into my daily stress. I’ve decided to bite the bullet and deal with it. I am so sick as a result right now as I am writing this, but I don’t mind, because I know it will be something that I will never have to deal with again. This sickness is only temporary, because once I am able to get past it and I believe that it’s worth it. The main purpose of creating a blog is to track my history, see where I was when this all started. I feel amazing now, even though I am somewhat dying, but I know I will feel even better when I’ve figured this all out.