Emotional Healing. Child of an alcoholic. Young adult depression. Inspiration.

I was once told by a wise woman that emotions are a strong force to be reckoned with. They breathe their own life and have their own destructive force. If one does not allow their emotions both happy and sad to escape and feel acknowledged, they will eat away at the life they live in. My journey in life has been a road filled with many peaks of happiness and many valleys of depression. But through it all I have held those words of wisdom with me. I have always found it easy to release my anguish, my depression, my sadness, and my happiness to those around me who love me and to my best friends “pad and paper.”



With this blog I hope to inspire others to write their emotions on paper, let the forgiving page hear all the words of hurt, pain, contentment, joy. With this blog I hope to inspire myself to forgive all that hurts in my life, to let go of old grudges and to grow, from the inside out.



Wednesday, November 28, 2012

LESSON LEARNED

Relapse. That one word can be the scariest for any recovering addict or their family to hear. I can’t say that I know what goes through an addicts mind when all of the hard work of sobriety crumbles around them but I can tell you what went through my mind as I saw my father relapse. This is a hard subject for me to talk about here. Many of my family members read this and I nor my mom have told them about the recent relapse that my father had in an attempt to keep the front that we are okay and the big happy family that we appear. But to not say anything is lying to both our family and ourselves. And in order to heal I need to write, and hopefully help someone else heal.
A few weeks ago I became aware of my father’s relapse in possibly the worst way possible. My dad fell into our front screen door and broke it as he crashed to the ground. I was so scared when I heard the sound of him falling I thought there was something seriously wrong with him. It wasn’t until I tried to help him and he couldn’t move or talk and I could smell the vodka on his breath that I realized what had happened. I eventually got him into a chair, but he still couldn’t talk to me and was very immobile. I was so angry, hurt and disappointed that I went into self preservation mode. I left him. I didn’t know what else to do. I was so blinded by the swell of emotions building up inside of me I couldn’t think of anything else to do.
The next day was an emotional one. My dad had no memory of what had happened but he knew that he had screwed up. He had decided that he wanted to move into a sober living home and attempt to heal himself there. And despite the anger I had felt toward him the night before I couldn’t fathom him not living under the same roof as me. My mom feeling similar to myself decided that we all needed to sit down and talk as a family. Which I can’t remember ever happening in my life. We didn’t hold back our feelings to protect each other and we had to face the issues we held in our hearts. I know it sounds silly but my dad told me that he doesn’t want this for himself. That he wishes he didn’t have the urge to drink and that this wasn’t the disease that he had to deal with.  And for the first time I think I saw this disease as just that a disease. My dad doesn’t drink to hurt me, which is exactly what I had felt like for so long. Like every drink was a big F You to me. I realized that this isn’t just something that my dad has to deal with but something that we are going to have to deal with as a family. I needed to hear my dad talk about his addiction, to hear his feelings about it which we’ve never done. And I told him mine and as I told him every ugly sentiment that laid in me  I began to feel better about everything and felt like a weight had been lifted from me. Now my feelings about his addiction haven’t suddenly vanished. I wish it were that easy. But my perception of it changed and I know how to better deal with the addiction.
If you have pain, anger or resentment toward the addict in your life I would suggest trying to sit them down and having an honest conversation with them. It can be painful and hurt but you’ll begin to heal yourself doing so. And if you have a situation where they don’t want to listen or want to talk about it, write them a letter. Tell them everything you’re feeling and give it to them. Even if they never read it you know that you’ve given it to them and that the pain you felt is on that paper and not welled up inside you.

Monday, October 29, 2012

KISMET KECKLE

There is something bittersweet about a death. It’s bitter and shocking and upsetting when we lose someone we love. We don’t understand the loss and we are angry that we didn’t have more time with our loved ones and sad that we no longer have them in our lives. But there is also something sweet about death. There is something sweet in the way that it brings families together, the way we lovingly remember those we have lost and the way that it makes us appreciate those we still have. I recently went to a funeral in Arizona for my Tia who passed away. And for lack of a better word it was bittersweet. My family was mourning the loss of a woman who was so strong for our family and who was one of the last of her generation in our family and through mourning her we grew as a family. I met family who I’ve only heard stories about and I got to enjoy family I only see once in a very long blue moon. We all reminisced and laughed and cried and we were a big family and that was beautiful to be a part of.

Personally I learned a lot more than I thought I would and not necessarily about life or death but about my own contributions to the world. I was talking with my Tio and we were actually discussing this blog and he asked me why I stopped writing. Unfortunately I didn’t have a good answer for him. I went with the usual I’m busy, tired, bla bla bla, but he saw beyond that. He saw that I didn’t know how to write about the happy side of what so many of us go through. He saw that I needed some inspiration and a kick in the butt to get motivated again; and that’s exactly what he did. He guided me towards a shining ball of inspiring light that I promised him I’d hold on to and really get back to my writing. So here it goes again, I’m going to write again and try to reach all of those who have experienced any of what I have in my life. I want to inspire and show hope and light to our sometimes dark situations. Because if my words can reach just one person I know that it’s all worth it.

It’s sad, like I’ve said that it took a death to make me realize that I can’t stop writing and that I have so much to offer the world. But I’m glad that my family motivated me to keep going.

Friday, April 13, 2012

Juxstaposing Journeys

I found myself writing this on a to go menu for Panera and that makes me happy because its been a while since my words and thoughts couldn’t be contained until I go to a computer or proper pen and paper. Maybe my pizzazz for writing is returning. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

Do you ever wonder how different your life would be if you had made a left at the fork in the road instead of a right? Would you have full tattoo sleeves and nipple piercings? Or would you play polo and sip afternoon sangria at the country club? Have you ever thought about what decisions in your life have led you to be where you are and who you are now? Recently this is something that I’ve been pondering, a tangent that I’ve allowed myself to wander down. And it’s an interesting journey to see where your life might be had you made your choices differently. I wonder if I would be starting my own family in some alternate universe, or if I’d already be working on my Masters degree.  As I go down all of the hypothetical roads I begin to wonder who it would be in my life that I would be missing out on had my journey been different, and that thought alone halts any further day trips down
Almost Ave.
I can’t even begin to imagine an existence with out some of the key players in my life. There’s my loveably goofy best friend who has changed my life so much, been my sounding wall and occasional cheer leader. Or my peculiarly amazing love with out whom I feel I’d be a very different person, he’s taught me to love myself, and how to open up to others. I don’t care if my life style would be better or classier in my alternate universe, I can’t image trading my friends and family for any other way of life. So I guess, as interesting as it may be to imagine things differently I am happy with all of my decisions just as they are, because they’ve helped shape me and give me the many amazing people that I am so fortunate to call my friends and family. I love you all.

Thursday, March 29, 2012

Involuntary Insecurities

There’s something sad to be said about a person whose insecurities overpower their compassion, a person whose selfishness overshadows their friendships. In my life I have had my fair share of encounters with these people. They come in all shapes and sizes from the boy in school who laughed at your expense, to the girl who you thought was a friend but liked your boyfriend more than she liked you. We are surrounded by these people in our lives and we even are them from time to time. They have an uncanny ability to hurt us, belittle us and pass their insecurities on to us. And I personally am sick of it. I hate wondering if I need to worry about if I’m cool enough. Or feeling anxious every time someone texts him, wondering if she’s still trying to get with him. I hate it all, and I don’t want to be a part of it. We all have our insecurities in life; even the most confident person has a glimmer of self-doubt. And as soon as we can accept that about ourselves, and stop being catty and going behind each others backs we can truly change our worlds. Why would you want to inflict your pain on someone else for your own gain? And let’s face it; we never gain much when we do that. You end up making your self look like a villain and loose people who could truly be close to you. I hope we can all learn from our past experiences, at one point or another we’ve all been hurt and all hurt someone. And I think it can end now. To all those out there that have gone behind my back, made snide remarks or try to humiliate me I forgive you. And to those that I have put in this situation I am sorry. I hope that this can reach some fraction of the world out there and maybe we can see a difference in our lives.