learning to live

this whole idea of a live journal kind of makes me nervous......i guess it's just knowing that people are reading about my deepest feelings and thoughts and forming an opinion about me. i've always written in a journal and hidden it away so nobody could find it and see how i was feeling or why i am the way i am. for so long i've kept everything bottled up. i've never talk about how i'm feeling, and i've never let it show......

it's very hard for me to open up to people and so doing this is quite challenging. i was thinking maybe it's a good thing...getting feedback from people who can relate....maybe that's what i've been needing this whole time. hearing from other people that i don't know that won't tell me what i want to hear.

for so long i've been living in a shell. it's been extremely hard for me to break out but i'm doing my best.....trying to find who i am and where i'm supposed to be in life, and at this point i feel like i've been sitting at a stop light for 10 years that has yet to turn green.

i guess all these feelings first stared about 10 years ago. my parents were on the verge of a divorce and my mom took all her anger and frustrations out on me. i'm not going to dump all this on my mom but i can't help it...i honestly feel it's because of her why i was like this. she would call me names you would never think a mother would call her own daughter. constant put-downs, disappointing looks, mean glares, never telling me she loved me....after hearing all of these things, and also not hearing.......day after day i started to think maybe that's what i really am, if my mother thinks it than it must be true. i would cry to my friends but they didn't know how i was feeling. their mothers were their best friends.....

this went on until i was 18 years old. i cried myself to sleep everynight praying that i wouldn't cry tomorrow....i looked forward to going to school...i was involved in tons of after school activities so i wouldn't have to go home and hear her yell and bitch at me. at that time i could honestly say that i hated my mom and i didn't love her....as harsh as it sounds that is how i truly felt. at that point in my life i felt like i had absolutely nobody..my dad was stationed in germany for 2 years because he was in the army...so i couldn't call...i would write letters begging him to come home....but i knew he couldn't. i would pray every night asking God to please have my dad stationed back in missouri so i could live with him...i guess God does listen because after all that praying one day my mom came in my room to tell me that my dad was being stationed back at fort leonard wood...my prayer was answered! i thanked God every minute.

even after moving in with my dad my mom still found a way to call and bring me down.....i couldn't take it anymore....so i just stopped talking to her. i was in such a major depression i couldn't bring myself to be happy about anything. it got so bad that my best friend suggested seeing a therapist...so i did. i saw her for a few months and started taking anti-depressants. for a while it worked, but then i didn't like the feeling the medicine gave.....like it was controlling me. i couldn't help but be happy...as much as wanted to feel sad i couldn't. i always had a smile on my face and it felt so fake. so i quite everything. i figured i needed to do it on my own. i then realized it was going to take a really long time but i had to do it.

it's been a couple years since all this and now i no longer have that depressed feeling....my relationship with my mom is better...we talk regularly and i visit every now and then....i've learned that forgiving my mom is one of the hardest things i've ever had to do.

i'm realizing now that maybe i went through this for a reason. i'm am very independent and strong now.....but now i'm getting to the point to where i just feel lonely and lost and confused....so many different emotions. i'm 22 and i feel like i'm wasting away. still living in missouri. boring. i have so many things that i would like to do...i just don't feel......motivated. i need a swift kick in the ass and some direction. my escape from reality is traveling and going to shows, meeting new people.......where i feel like i can be me...delivering pizza is not me!!....fuck that...i hate it! yeah i make money but i'm not happy with how i make it. the money i do make allows me to travel and go to shows, which makes me happy....kind of contradicting.....but true. sometimes i feel as if God created me just to deliver pizza to marines who don't tip because they need their extra cash for beer or strippers...i think about and i get so pissed off sometimes to the point to where i cry.

another big part of this is feeling lonely....i don't mind it, sometimes. i'm always by myself. i've learned to be ok with that...but that's one thing that i am most afraid of...being alone forever. i just want somebody to hold my hand and tell me i'm beautiful.....to look in my eyes and say i love you......

'you are the key to your own destiny'.......'seek and you will find'.....i know all this. i hear it, i read it. i just don't know where to start.