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My story begins about as early as I can remember(obviously lol)... I remember things being normal one second and then completely changing in the opposite direction the next. I have memories of having a good evening with my family and watching a movie while eating dinner but then I have other memories like sitting at the top of the stairs listening to my parents argue until all hours of the night. I quite blatantly remember an incident where my father had cut open his toe in the bathroom and there was blood everywhere. I had no idea what was going on at the time, but I later found out that he had been stumbling around because he was drunk. He continued to struggle with alcohol abuse for many years in the future. After this happened, there were still incidents similar to this one, but I personally did not see them because I was to young to know what was really going on. So from what I knew my father was still was a good person. I mean, how could he not be... he took me to the pool and played around with me a lot right? Around 6th Grade I personally started to notice things changing more obviously again. When he was angry or drunk he would do things like put me up against the wall, but I was still to young to perceive that as something bad so I never really retaliated I just thought it was kind of strange. When I was about to enter 7th Grade an event happened that would change my life forever... We were packing for a big family vacation that we had planned for a while. My father decided that we were going to clean out the car so everything would be clean and prepped for the big day. As my sister was a teenage girl at the time she wanted to be in shape for the beach so she asked my father if she could go on a run and do her part of the cleaning later. My Dad forgot that he had said she could go so when she was gone for a while he started to get angry. My sister eventually came back and it turned into a large fight and my sister ended up getting picked up by the throat and put against a tree and I was watching the whole thing. My sister was very angered about the whole situation obviously, but eventually everyone got together and went on the vacation anyways. A few more fights went on once we were there and got back and it eventually led to my father leaving our house. We decided to go to an Alateen meeting to help us all cope with all of the events that had happened. I met this girl that I ended up liking and everything turned South fast. We ended up going into a program with a company that was supposed to help our family reunite eventually and come back together. This process ended up going the opposite way than I thought it would go because my Dad started to deny events that I had seen with my own eyes specifically the one where he picked my sister up by her throat. When I entered 8th Grade, my mom continued to stay with us and support us in anyway she could. I ended up staying in touch with the girl I had met at Alateen even though she was having a bad influence on me because I personally felt as if I had no one else who I could connect to on a personal level. When the girl I was talking to felt as if she did not have enough self worth she would cut herself. Considering the fact that I was so close to I thought that I would try this as well I mean, it was working so well for her so what could go wrong? I had only done it a couple of times when two people from my school found out and told the school counselor. At the time, I was mad angry for them doing this but now I am so thankful they did. My mom ended up finding out by the counselor and I did not know what to do. I ended up cutting myself one more time and at that point I knew I needed more help. I voluntarily committed myself to a mental hospital called Holly Hill. The hospital didn't show me why not to use self harm as a way to attempt to relieve myself from stress, but it showed me people who had resulted to self harm for a long time and I immediately knew that I wanted to change my life and find a knew way. After I got out, there was still a lot of stress from my family situation as my Dad wanted custody of us when none of us wanted to live with him because he wasn't trying to get better and still denying things from the past. I struggled not to result to self harm a lot at home but after getting home never ended up doing it. As a result of my family situation, trying to manage my school life, and everything else that was happening at the time I was an emotional wreck. I got into fights a lot at home and my grades at school weren't the best either so we decided to try going to a group therapy session called DBT. This therapy session ended up helping me so much with my mental health and I would recommend it to anyone even if they aren't going through anything at the time. This taught me how to be in the correct mindset at different times which still to this day helps me manage stress and my family life. I got out of the group after a while and just started to meet with a therapist one on one. At first, I started meeting with her once a week and after a while it ended up being that I would only go meet with her if I felt that I was in a situation I couldn't handle by myself. For the first time, I was able to safely manage my emotions by myself. I started to swim and do other sports and become more "socially normal". Around this time, I went on a youth retreat with my church and started to learn more about Jesus and God than I had ever known before. I thought the concept of having a personal relationship with God would be amazing but I was troubled. I had watch my Earthly father do so many bad things to my family so how could my heavenly father be any better? I continued to listen and learn more in church and listened to what Jesus had done to save me and noticed that how could Jesus do some of the stuff my father had done to me if he cared so much that he saved me from eternal death? The battle between my parents continued to get more and more tense until they came to the agreement that we would do reunification therapy. At this point we had been in and out of at least 3 different therapists and I knew that our family situation wasn't going to change. I asked our therapist what would happen if I decided not to show up to therapy and I was told there would be serious consequences. I decided to come to the next session considering the fact that nothing in my schedule was colliding with the time we had to meet. The session went well, but I had agreed with myself that I wasn't going to let my family situation hold me back in the stuff I was doing that was going to shape my future. About a week ago now I realized that my swim practice was going to collide with one of the sessions. I had one of the hardest decisions to make in my life... was I going to refuse to go to therapy anymore and potentially start another court battle and get on with my life or was I going to just going to let the system have control over my life. I decided that the only thing I could do in a situation like this was to pray. I prayed and waited for a response. I felt like God was telling me to choose what I thought was the wisest decision so I ended up choosing to not go. I made this decision because I felt that if that started another court battle than one would be inevitable either way. God guided me to the right decision because our therapist said that I could do the activities from home instead of doing them in her office. If you let God be the person making the decisions in your life he will shape it in the way he wants it to be. I know that the future ahead of me will likely not be smooth, but with the skills I learned in DBT and with God leading my life I am sure that I will be able to get through anything. Thanks for reading this far :)
Side Note:
Mom,
Thank you so much for everything that you do. I know that without you caring so much about us that we would likely still be in a dangerous situation without you. I seriously cannot thank you enough for everything you do on a day to day basis. You have given your all to help us fight for a better family situation.
I love you...
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