People don’t really understand mental illness, they always associate it either with a psychopath who needs to be retrained, or a house wife who drinks too much wine during the day and needs some pills from her favorite therapist to keep her going. No one ever talks about the other people who live their lives feeling deep inside that they are not okay, but because they don’t present with the “normal” obvious signs of mental illness, live their lives feeling lost and alone. Many are able to keep this hidden and live life restling with these feelings in silence, they are drowning in plain sight… The popular girl at high school, the good Christian lady at church, the CEO of that major company. Then there is another group, the ones that stop fighting and tragically end it all, leaving the people around them stunned! How could such a well put together person do that? What did we miss? How could we have helped. But I feel that the most important thing is for us to start having these all important conversations, so that thpse that feel trapped feel safe enough to ask for help. So that we no longer have that second group of people, the ones that are lost forever because silence was all they could find and loneliness was all that was there. In my own mind I’ve been trapped, but now I finally found my voice, I’ve screamed from the darkest deepest part of me… And someone heard me. That’s all I needed, someone to hear me.

Yours Sincerely

A survivor, a fighter… But not a victim.

In the end all I’ve ever wanted from you was for you to love me. I thought that if I just did more, fought for you harder, you would, but you didn’t. Then I would leave and try to forget you, and every single time without fail you let me. And when I came back you would say you loved me and missed me. But you were fine without me for that time, there was a time when you even said to me that you had tried to move on… You tried to move on. It confirmed to me just how little I meant to you, just how easily you could replace me. So even when I would stay, it came back that I was wasting my time that in the end I loved you more and for once I just wanted to be loved more. To come first. It killed me and my self- esteem because I thought so highly of you, in my eyes you were perfect and I was the one who wasn’t good enough. It would make me feel so weak that I still loved you the way I did, and that I kept crawling back to you like I had no self worth. When my mom died that’s when I actually felt the most powerful. Again I left and you let me.I remember when I wanted to go back again like I always did, and I found out that all this time that I was in agony and all this time when all i wanted was your love. You had moved on yet again. For the first time I actually hated you, and I told myself that I didn’t love you. That what I felt was desperation and I needed to move on. So I tried that, and hurt someone else in the process because you can always feel when someone doesn’t truly love you. Still here I am, with the same love that I’ve always felt. Still with the same hope that you will see me, and fight for me and give me all of your love. I’ve come to a point where I wish that I didn’t love you, so that I could actually move on with my life.I deserve to be loved completely, and I’m worth fighting for. I am the kind of woman that you marry, and who holds a house down. I am worth it, and even if you never see that I want to be able to move on from you, to someone that will. I gave you my heart right from the start and I honestly feel like i’ve been paying for it ever since.

Sincerely

The woman that LOVED you to the point of destruction.

I’m torn apart by the pain, but I know that life flows from open wounds. There comes a point where when you break, you become open to fill yourself back up again. There’s that point where you have to let go of all that you once were in order to begin the journey of truly finding yourself. I love my people, they became my people because of all the good that I saw in them I saw them and they saw me. I will fight for myself and for them, and for all the others that will come after. I will fight for the life that I know I can have. And after the fight is over, true love and peace will come. I want to get to a point where I see again, I was blinded by my own pain my own rage and lost in utter loss of self that I never thought I’d ever want to fight again. But when I think about my people I see the reason to fight again.

I see light again, I have faith again… And I have Hope that it will all be okay.

Still love courses through these veins, no amount of time apart can end this ache.

I feel you in my heart and I promise never to make the same mistake.

Of letting you leave, of awakening your love only to leave you in pieces. There’s no doubt in my heart that there still remains, a love as powerful as the winds themselves.

I want to find my way back to God again, that’s the only way I know that I’ll be able to love you with a pure heart. The only way that I can be sure that nothing will tear us apart.

I long for your eyes, because they saw me in my imperfection and somehow I was always enough. I long for Gods love because in it I know I’ll be enough, and I can use that love that he gives me to be your wife.

Every battle that I’ve been through has lead me somewhere, I hope that you will stay long enough for me to win the war so that you’ll be sure that i’m not going anywhere.

Still love courses through these veins, and still something always remains. The way you were always my truth, the light that I used to guide my way home. And in your love, I’ve known perfection.

In your love I’ve embraced imperfection. Still love courses through these veins… Still love courses through.. These veins.

It’s a shameful emotion, we are told to control our anger. Because if left unchecked it has the power to destroy. Now that I am still, and I’ve let my emotions settle or fester depending on how you look at it. I can feel my own anger, I know that it’s that determining step before the wall comes way up. So I’m going to try and understand my anger, because I don’t want to retreat to that lonely place again.

I’m angry at him because he made me feel like maybe just for a second there was still a chance for him and I. I’m angry because he didn’t just shut me out from the beginning, he allowed me into his space and I felt those feelings again. Now he’s not speaking to me, I don’t know what he’s thinking and I’m agonising because I’m waiting for the blow. I’m angry at him because I was hurting, and I can own up to the fact that I pushed him away and hurt him… He let me leave.. For a full year he was fine without me. You were fine without him to, how do you think that made him feel?

#Lie number 3: I just want one honest conversation where he tells me that he hates me, and that he never wants to see me again. I can handle that, rejection is where I live most of the time. What I can’t handle is the unknown… The what ifs.

Why do I have to love him so much!!! Why did I allow myself to fall in love with him,why does our love cause so much pain and confusion.

His silence cuts deeper than any words he could ever say, and now I get it. Just a little bit of what he went through. So I’m going to fight the urge to run into my safety bubble. I’m going to ride this wave… And for the first time i’m not going to invalidate my feelings.

My question to you is, what emotions do you run from and why?

Yours Sincerely

A girl whose anger, is just fear in disguise…

I hope that by sharing my truth, I will not only free myself but also those who yearn to be seen.

#Lie number 2: I’m not sure if he is the man I wan to spend the rest of my life with.

I’ve opened my heart to the possibility of real pain, his loss would be significant and I know that I would take a long time to heal. So I wait, I wait for my love to come back to me, I wait for him to fight for us… Because now I know we are worth fighting for. A love like ours doesn’t happen by accident… And a love like ours was built to last.

What do you do when you feel like you are losing your mind, that the thought of losing the one you love has become to much to bear?

Yours Sincerely

A heart that’s finally opened to love…

I used to be a fighter… I never gave up on the things and people that I viewed as important in my life. But somewhere along the line, I lost my fighting spirit. I’m now more likely to yield then challenge. I know what got me to this point, my mothers death broke me. It extinguished my own will to live, that’s why he suffered the most… Because he breathes life into me. When I’m with him I feel connected, plugged in to this surge of energy that never lets me stop fighting for the next breath. So you see why he had to go, death and life cannot exist in the same space. Now I’m back where I started, the most difficult thing is learning to find my voice again. Learning how to be alive again… So now he’s saved me twice, the first time was when I met him and the second is now. I know in my heart that he loves me and drowned in all the chaos that is my brain I know that I’ve always loved him. That time and distance has never been able to end our love. I feel him agonising, trying to figure out why his heart won’t let him forget me and why even after everything I’ve put him through he still wants me… Still needs me.

My question to you is why does some love last and others die? I think the difference is that we stop fighting. For the love that’s worth fighting for, the kind of love that brings us closer to who we truly are.

I am a fighter, and I’m going to fight for my love until the end…

Yours Sincerely

A fighter who has lost many battles but refuses to lose the War…

When they ask I’ll tell them…

I’ll tell them that I always knew that it was him..

That I knew that I would love him for ever, that It wasn’t a dream.. I…

I wasn’t niave, it wasn’t the whims of youth..

If they ask me I will tell them..

I’ll tell them that it happened instantly..

And that all of a sudden he was part of me, that no matter how hard I tried to run from him… My heart

My heart still found it’s way back to him..

I’ll tell them… I promise I’ll tell them, because the kind of love we have is for the story books.

A cautionary tale on love that’s felt too deeply, felt to quickly.. A love that’s felt..

And so i’ll tell them, I’ll tell them so when they look at you. They see a man that loved and was loved..

So that when it’s all over, and our time on earth has ended they will know that you were loved and that you loved… Me

I’ll tell them…

When they ask… I’ll…

I smell his scent on my skin, it was probably from when I hugged him too tightly and refused to let go. I wish I had held on that tightly a year ago, I wish that I hadn’t let go that time. Because as I held him, I felt the distance of a year apart. But I also felt that familiar pull of emotion, the one that got me in trouble in the first place. When we met we were both young, we fell fast and passionately in love, just like how kids do… Before life teaches them to slow down and to live in fear.

All the wise people will tell you that usually when “love” is felt that quickly and deeply it’s not love at all… But here I am 4 years later, I still love him as deeply and as intensly. Even though I too have learnt to “slow down” and “live in fear”.

I walked away from him and when he looked at me, for a second he broke and I could see that pain and it broke my heart. I don’t want to hurt him, but I also don’t want to live my life without him. For once in my life I want to stay, I want to feel vulnerable and open.

He asked me how I know that I love him, I couldn’t answer him. Not because I couldn’t say a whole speech that would have gone along the lines of “You’re compassionate and loving… You are the sun and moon all in one”. I just failed to put it into words. How do you tell someone that the reason you love them, is because they fit into all of your edges and all of your cracks.. That their ability to see you for who you are and still love you, shows more about them then anything. He sees people, he sees through the pretense and behind the wall of insecurity and pain, do you know what a gift that is.  How do you possibly tell them a list of things that they probably know about themselves, when they touched a part of you that no one else could because of who they are inherently. That’s something that cannot be simplified… So as I stuttered and failed to let him into the deepest corners of my being, parts that even I don’t visit often… He thought that I didn’t love him… HIM! The man that I love wholeheartedly..

So how do you know if it’s true love, is it something you can tick off a checklist, is it said simply through a cute compilation of things that you have observed or is it something that only a rare few get to experience…all I know is that it’s alot and I feel like I’m failing at it too.

My question is what is true love, once you know you feel and are experiencing it… How on earth do you begin to share that with the other person?

Yours Sincerely

Puzzled and in Love?…

45… That’s the age that my mom always said would be an accomplishment if she reached. That’s because her own mother never made it past the age of 35. She knew loss, she knew grief and managed to build her life from all of that pain. I wish she had prepared me to carry loss as well as she did, but I guess she didn’t know that I would bury her too… Before 45.

For a year after her death I didn’t have a voice, I died inside and my silence was my greatest cry. I shut everything and everyone out, and that destroyed me. What they don’t tell the children of parents with cancer, is that as quickly as you will witness your parent perish right infront of you. Is as quick as you will have to adjust to your new life, because everything changes.

WHO AM I?

That was my greatest struggle, after the last mourner had left, after we had packed away my mothers things, after we had got rid of our furniture because she had once mentioned in passing that she wanted new furniture, after my dad and I had swapped rooms because he couldn’t bare to sleep in their room… A swap that I wasn’t too keen about either, but which I agreed to because his pain was devastating. So after we had come to the realisation that mom did EVERYTHING and that we had to learn the basics of our own household. After all of that I had to accept that she was gone… Something that I haven’t truly accepted to this day.

I also needed to figure out who I was, not from her perspective. I had to figure out how to make decisions without consulting her. I struggled with all of the emotions that they tell you about in those oh so helpful grief books… And everyday that whirlwind of emotions starts from scratch and circles back and I’m on the floor dying of pain… And so it goes on…

So my question to you is, if you have ever experienced a profound grief… It doesn’t have to have been a fallen loved one from cancer. Because honestly loss is loss… How did you deal with the “new” you? Do you know who you are?

 

Yours Sincerely

A daughter of a Cancer Victim… Starting her life from the depths of an unexplainable pain.