"Told to by a friend."

     I think I need to get this down, maybe it would help someone else to not feel alone or maybe it will just be a release for me. It's hard for me to share my inner feelings with people, even people I am close with.. I didn't use to be like this..not before I felt I was made to be silent about a lot of things that were going on in my personal life. I was always told that someone who is making you keep a lot of secrets can't be good, it's a huge "red flag." I have learned a lot about that phrase too over the past almost 7 years.. it's probably a good thing if you have no idea what that is.. but after reading this you will have a better understanding and who knows.. maybe it is affecting your life too and you just didn't know the words to use for it. I gotta think of some type of title for this post too.. right now I have no idea.
     I have always been an introvert, I would shake with both my hands and my voice when I was made to read a report or whatever in front of the class. As I got older I would use outside sources to help make me more comfortable being in groups and out in heavily populated areas. I just feel more comfortable hanging out with a friend or a few at my home or a home I have been to before.. sometimes it takes me a few times of having those close conversations with someone before I start to feel comfortable being around them. Sometimes I wonder if that is what started the issues I have had in my life.. not being much of a talker. Does that make a certain type of person attract to you? I would say like bees to honey, but I don't want to speak down about the bees by comparison. Here is another word you may know or will learn here and that is "trigger." I am going to have to put a "trigger warning" for this post cause some of the things that I have been thru have caused permanent mental damage to others who have gone through it as well. Sorry to those people, I truly feel your heart and wish I could take back that pain for you.
     It actually started in junior high for me, well it happened one other period of time before that. With one I wasn't the only one, it turned into this whole huge deal in school and my name was brought up when another friend had come out and had been interviewed by the counselor and principal of the school. So I was called in and I lied about being one of them, I was scared. I didn't want that title associated with my name even though they said it was confidential things get around quick in junior high, I also didn't want to be known as a rat or suffer my own consequences if the officials didn't truly do anything about it. But they did and that person was kicked out of the school, so there was that. There were a few other ones and I never told anyone but my best friend who tried her best to be there with me all the time and we stood up for each other and were our own little force to be reckoned with.. that was when I learned that true bond that two females can have that is so strong it lasts for life.
     After high school things got really, really good for me for awhile. I had this amazing boyfriend, the best friends a girl could ask for, both male and female. I felt very safe and protected and was even inducted into this little family of black sheep. Our black sheep parties were the best times and that was actually when I met that boyfriend that was so good to me and I loved more than anything. But it all ended and I was left sitting in the dark, both mentally and physically. Again I had a female friend come to my rescue and made me want to continue fighting for myself. That's when I started bartending and I fell in love with that job and some of the environment. That life also had it's down times too though, it was a definite roller coaster life. Even though I met a lot of really cool and decent people there, its a bar so there is just as many bad as there is good. Now a guy I dated had his good points and his bad points. But his main bad point was so bad I could never see him again after. Jager was his downfall and it made him black out, act really crazy and not remember what he did when he woke up the next morning. Trigger ahead..... He came to the bar one night already drunk from this Christmas party where his mom had tried to set him up with someone he didn't like or find interesting so came to find me after he left. He stayed until the bar closed and I was worried about him driving all the way back to his house with how drunk he was so I told him to follow me home. He didn't hit me and it doesn't have anything to do with anger but it was one of the worst nights of my life, and I did end up hurt from it. He tried to contact me on and off for 3 weeks before I felt okay enough to answer the phone and only did cause I was at a friends house when he called where I felt safe to talk. I decided to remind him of exactly what he didn't remember and his shock said it all, he also told me that it explains why 3 other women never returned his phone calls.. for him that was totally out of the blue that they stopped speaking to him but now he knows why and swore off that drink for the rest of his life but understood completely why we couldn't see each other again.
     At the bar I was known for taking the job a little too seriously compared to others. I kept everyone in line, including the managers which they weren't used to but the owner called me his number one and that made me feel good. I had 3 male managers that made a bet with each other on who could get me to go on a date with them and break the rules. They also held a daily bet on who could make me smile or laugh first, truth was I had a few managers before them that cracked me up daily but just had a better and goofier sense of humor. I picked the least perverted of the 3 but I learned just cause you are the least perverted of 3 guys, its still 3 guys who work in a strip club so are pretty perverted anyway. I was tired of the single life, I was tired of being the girlfriend who longs for more.. I wanted my babies. I was 24 and I was scared that with all the health problems that run for the women in my family that if I didn't have them soon I would lose out on being able to have any on my own. I let him fast forward a relationship to marriage and babies, I figured I could learn to live with certain issues and marriage was for life no matter what I was going through. But after almost 5 years I had to give that up for my and my children's health. You start to long for stability when you are moved 8 times in 4 years. When you stop having the same stuff in your home when you wake up than when you went to sleep the night before or in between shifts of work. And to be able to walk past a person without being grabbed on when you have asked and begged so many times for him to stop doing that and explained how it makes you feel and what it reminds you of from when you were younger. There just wasn't anything I wanted from there anymore and I was tired of walking on eggshells and feeling like I was living in a land mine zone.
     On my own there was an overwhelming loneliness and sadness and I invited the wrong people into my home because of it. I wanted to numb down those feelings, I wanted to be happy again and I didn't know how to go about it on my own. I also fight this extreme insomnia, diagnosed but I didn't like the medication they put me on, it didn't work right and I didn't want to try any new ones being a single parent and the only one to take care of my two little boys. One night of having a friend over she invited another over that I had been introduced to a couple of times and seemed like a nice guy. He wasn't and had ulterior motives and she wasn't as much of a friend as I thought and only had a payment on her mind. That included longer mental anguish than anything else, to be betrayed twice and then a third time when another person I thought was a friend threatened my life if I spoke about it to anyone. Another guy I was friends with that was showing interest in me in something more and I were followed and threatened for some months after, it was very childish and horrible. To be sent texts and calls saying, you are here and you just did this and not knowing where they were or who was watching was a feeling I cannot put into words.
     Skipping ahead to now and the reason for this post and these stories from my life. I know we all have had bad or even horrible things happen to us and since we are still alive we are forced to go on and live some sort of life. I have two kids to raise and they rely on me for moral, mental, physical and emotional support. So as a mother and sometimes a father I have to be all these things for my children and I cannot be weak even when I feel like crawling into a ball for a few days and ignore the whole outside world. I am not allowed to, I must keep going. Do you know what it feels like to be afraid, more than afraid, actual fear to be outside in public? It's a small world and I have seen some of those people from my past in more recent times. Have you ever had a panic attack just from seeing someone's face? Hearing their voice or having someone tell you that they are in your town? Have you ever felt like you were holding your breath for the entire time you were away from your home and can't breath normally until you are back in your own home, with doors locked? Your own little comfort zone where you feel totally safe for the most part. Have you ever felt nauseated just by someone of the opposite sex brushing against you? Whether their hand accidentally touched yours or you have to sit leg to leg by someone in a waiting room. All these feelings are my life now and yes, I am going to reach out professionally and already have to my PCP. Yes, I am already on some type of medication for a part of it. But can you just imagine for a moment what it feels like to live this existence, please? There are others out there who feel all these and maybe more and I get tired of people saying to, "get over it, deal with it, you can't change it so why worry about it now." Sorry, but none of that is helpful to someone who suffers from these emotions and only makes them blame themselves more. Learn to be more gentle with someone who trusts you enough to reveal these types of things to you, it means a lot to even be privy to these innermost thoughts that some of us have like this and it's not easy to admit. I paused several times in this post just trying to give myself enough courage to write the next sentence. Here is one final dictionary word to learn if you don't already know it, I am also an Empath, which means I will feel what others feel. When you come to me with your life stories I live them also through you and your words.
     Statistics say that 1 in 3 women has been abused in their lifetime. This means that you or someone you know has gone thru some type of abuse. It is all around us and can be a killer, but we are still told to be silent about it. Women and especially men are revictimized when they speak out and shamed into silence. The first thing you can do to help someone when they come to you with a story of abuse is to believe them and state so, the second thing you need to do is offer any kind of help that you are able to stop the abuse. Even if its just looking up the phone number for a counseling center for the type of abuse that person has suffered. Finally, we need to speak out, stop the cycle and end abuse in any way that we can. Thank you.