INTRODUCTION
I would tell my younger self that all the effort I was going to put into trying to impress others and buying their friendship would be a waste of time and energy and would only create heartache. I would tell myself that true friendships are a two-way street and not to settle for less. I would tell myself that boundaries are healthy to have, not selfish. I would also tell myself that it is okay to have differing opinions from my family, that it does not mean I have betrayed them but am doing my due diligence in thinking for myself. I would tell myself to use losses in life as learning experiences, rather than viewing them as failures. And that each time I do not succeed to gain knowledge from that experience and try harder next time. I would tell myself to never give up on my dreams, to keep pushing forward. Most importantly, if I could have convinced myself to take this advice when I was younger, I could have been a better role model for my children. Life if too short to take for granted. Take time to enjoy and appreciate family. Put your family before your career. Invest in the future, so that my children have security. Take time to enjoy God’s creation and all that is in it. And ever be too busy to help those less fortunate.
BATTLE
I was eleven or twelve, we were living in a very remote area of Alaska, as my dad was practicing rural medicine. All my focus at this time was on my animals and my few close friends. I was especially obsessed with my pony, Fancy.
Other than traveling to the nearby town on the weekends for grocery shopping, church, and visiting with friends, we rarely went around people outside of our family. The friends I had all shared similar interests and hobbies as me. I was also very close with my family, especially my dad. I loved spending time with him riding horses, fishing, hunting, target practice, watching sports — anything, as long as we were together.
Then one summer I was introduced to some new kids. We quickly became friends, or so I thought. They were well-liked, popular kids. (Not like my close friends who weren’t popular.) My true friends loved me for who I was, not for who they wanted me to be or what I did for them. The new group introduced me to many new things – different movies, different music, different language, a completely different lifestyle. They soon didn’t want me to associate with my true friends. They thought it was stupid for me to be so close with my family, or to attend church, or to be involved with my animals. Pretty much everything I enjoyed in life I had to change to be accepted by my new “friends.”
My world as I knew it was quickly turning upside down. I soon began to be bullied by these friends. If I didn’t do everything they said or wanted they’d humiliate me and attack me both physically and verbally. I was starting to experience a pain and discontentment I had never felt before. I was conflicted and hurting and desperate to feel something different.
Anything.
One day, I was sitting in our living room watching a movie that came on. It was about a young teenage girl being severely bullied and she was experiencing a pain she needed to escape. She started self-harming through cutting to escape her internal pain. That same day I decided to try this, hoping it would alleviate my pain. I remember the euphoric feeling. It took my internal pain and numbed it for a while. This quickly became an addiction, my escape when I was hurting. This became a lifelong battle. There were times I thought I had won the battle. There were even years that passed that I had victory over this battle. So I thought.
Many years passed, and my oldest daughter started high school. She was relentlessly bullied by a group of girls. About a month into her freshman year, she went to a football game and got attacked by this same group of girls. They beat her severely while recording the attack on their phones. They then sent the video around their school, causing further bullying for her. She experienced a concussion, a dislocated arm, among multiple other injuries. She was out of school for over a month and a half recovering. She became very depressed and withdrawn.
During this time, she started self-harming by cutting. When I found out, I was clearly devastated. This brought about a flood of feelings to the surface that I hadn’t felt in years. I once again started battling frequent thoughts of using self-harm to escape.
My daughters and I made a promise to each other to never purposely hurt ourselves again. We both ended up getting matching tattoos to symbolize our promise. I wish I could say this is where the battle ended and I wish I could say I kept my promise to my daughter. But I didn’t.
After my incarceration, my old patterns of coping returned. But this time it was different. All I could think of when cutting was failing my daughter, disappointing her, and breaking her trust. We continue to be honest and transparent with each other. She is and will always be my biggest, most important reason to change, to stop the cycle and to overcome the battle. | TS