Curtain Closes

Harsh truth 1: Suck it up.

Life is gonna end before you know it! Sounds cheesy I know! Its a misrepresentation that movies or media gives us about life. Life doesn’t consist of an introduction, then a climax and then your whole life has a resolution. Your life isn’t gonna end in a neatly wrapped bow. You won’t have this grand conclusion that’s gonna sum up your entire life. You’re going to die one day! Tomorrow is never guaranteed. I have been fooled into thinking that I have this limitless amount of time to do whatever I want in life. Oh, I won’t start a blog until later. I gotta get a degree before I can start focusing on other aspects of my life. Next January I’m gonna start that diet and working out! Woe. How privileged do you fucking sound? I’m gonna be blunt with you! So prepare yourself. You sound like an asshole. Sorry but it’s true. I hate when people make comparisons between two different people situations but there is some validity in doing so. The truth that these people are saying is true! You aren’t diagnosed with a disease or illness, you aren’t starving in a third world country, you aren’t deprived of the opportunity to achieve your goals. You lack motivation in doing them. Well, here’s some motivation advice that would put every motivation speak out of business and that’s you are going to die. Simple. You are going to stop breathing, and this world will still rotate on its axis without you! Facts. If you wanna achieve things in your life then remember that you aren’t invincible and that you can be dead tomorrow morning. It’s depressing to think about but start being honest with yourself. So with that in mind then how are you gonna make today count? You fucking start that’s how you make today count. Stop thinking that you are lucky enough to have this unlimited time frame to where you can put off doing things. Asshole! (If you’re offended then, you should be)! You are lucky enough to raised and live in a time where so many people chose and depicted themselves in doing shit. And the shit they did is the reason why you have things or able to do things. Do you even think about how lucky you are to breathe? I’m not oblivious to several other people not having the advantages or the opportunity to achieve their goals that’s not whom I’m talking to. I’m talking to the ones who think they can choose to do something another day. WE ARENT GURANNTED ANYTHING IN LIFE!

Harsh truth 2: No-one Cares! But you.

“What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore- And then run? Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over like syrupy sweet? Maybe it just sages like a heavy load. Or does it explode?” -Langston Hughes, Raisin in the un

If you choose do not go into a career you love, if you choose to not try at the gym, if you choose to sit at home and ponder, if you choose to sleep your day away, if you choose to stay defeated, if you choose to not follow your heart then that’s exactly the life your gonna live. No one is gonna motivate you! No one is gonna be like “I see potential in you so here’s a million dollars.” Try again. The only way you are gonna dig yourself out of the hole is by taking back your life. Wanna know how I did that? I gave a fuck about myself! I stopped giving a fuck about what other people wanted. Get Selfish. If selfish means you’re not letting anyone stop you from achieving your dreams then be selfish! I gave two years of my life caring about someone else life and what they wanted. I worked for a company that didn’t care about me and for a boss that just wanted a trained monkey to do their work. And like most people, I thought I was making some progress and some change in this company but all I was doing was working in circles. I was so dedicated to this job that I gave up on my dreams. I ignored the calling in my heart for this company. I got obsessed with this job and thought this was gonna be my career. So what changed? Nothing. There wasn’t a moment that changed my thinking. It was the calling in my soul that wouldn’t go away. It was my passions that would burn like embers even when I tried smothering them. They wore still there. That’s what changed. Confusing I know! I’m passionate about mental health and having empathy with people’s feelings and mental disorders. No matter what I did at this company I couldn’t shake away this feeling that I was meant to advocate for mental health. I don’t know if its a calling from God. I don’t know if its because I’ve had some expertise with therapy with my demons when I was younger. But what I do know that I wasn’t helping anyone at this job. That my passion was being unfilled and it made me angry. I let this anger fester. I hated this job and I was miserable and no one noticed. All they could see was this super perky girl with a great attitude. I was dying, but my burning passion wasn’t.

Harsh Truth 3: You can die doing something you hate.

That’s the predicament that I was in. I had two roads before me, and they wore to either stay on the path I was or to diverge and start a new one. Most people don’t diverge from the path out of fear of the unknown. So you work at the job that brings you misery and you then become miserable and you blame every missed opportunity on circumstance rather than your self. Sorry but just because you’re afraid of risk isn’t a valid excuse to not try. I could’ve stayed at the mental exhausting job and continue to work my ass off for no gain. I could’ve stayed at a school that wasn’t benefiting me, I could’ve stayed in a sorority that was harming my mental health, I could’ve stayed in a relationship that blamed me for me being sexually assaulted. Where would I be in I had chosen to do that? I don’t want to know because I did choose to diverge from that particular path.
The media has oversimplified and nearly distorted the meaning of Robert Frost’s poem “The road not taken.” What does this poem have to do with choosing to leave unhappy circumstances? This poem isn’t about taking a different path from the norm. That’s way oversimplified. You miss the point entirely. The poem is focusing on the idea of when we take a path and we can’t go back to that very moment and choose another. The idea of time isn’t infinite, and the choices that lead us down a path are our outcome. The speaker of the poem is assuming that the path they choose was the better but he doesn’t know for certain if it was. Think about that. Why choose a path in life just to regret it later? Do you want to be looking at your life and think if I had done what my heart wanted then maybe my life could’ve been different? No! You don’t! Don’t let time slip away from you for you to see your life became something you don’t recognize anymore. The best advice I was ever given was when I was 19 years old and my psychology professor makes a grand statement to the entire class and she said” If you hate your job then leave. If you aren’t happy to walk away. If you want something else then do it.” This statement wasn’t profound, and it didn’t need an existing vocabulary or some philosophical bullshit. It was straight to the point! And that’s all I needed to hear! She sparked a change in me that is still lit to this day.

Harsh truth 4: Own it! Because it’s your story.

So I quit going to that specific college. I hated it. I quit my sorority because I hated it. I left a toxic relationship because I was miserable. I hated my life. I hated it!!! I finally spoke out about my sexual assault because I began hating myself for not speaking before. How can someone so young say that? Because it was the truth. My happiness was dying, and I was living a life I hated. It wasn’t immediate when I started to turn my life around and in fact, it took another year for me to start changing. So you’re talking 2 years of being unhappy and then another year of finally deciding to be happy. That’s 3 years gone from my life. I don’t get that time back. I don’t want it back either. I don’t regret anything that happened to me or that I choose to do. I needed to see what a different path would’ve looked like for me to diverge from it. If I hadn’t experienced the ridicule and harsh treatment from women in that sorority then I wouldn’t have known what they wore capable of. If I hadn’t been told that my medical issues don’t matter and that I should finish my job then I wouldn’t have to know how little compassion my boss had for me. Life is about learning. I’m going to have more problems and conflicts come my way and that’s never gonna stop until I’m dead. I’m only 21 years of age and to think this is gonna be the hardest circumstances that I’m gonna ever endure would be false. I’m gonna have more “haters” and I’m gonna have circumstances pop up that I’m gonna have to cope or deal with. Having a strong foundation (not a wall) that allows you to rememberer that you can handle anything thrown at you. And don’t be afraid to walk away from something in your life is toxic. It takes a lot more courage to walk away then it does to stay.

Harsh Truth 5: You’re gonna get backlash. People don’t like being questioned.

Yes, the experiences I had worn horrible but they made me realize what I was willing to allow and fight for. These people pushed me to my limit, but they unintentionally also built me up in the process when they attempted to tear me down. They gave me the strength to walk away! So Thank you! Every insult that was thrown my way and every accusation that was thrown my way did hurt me, but if I didn’t get pushed down to the ground, then I couldn’t have risen from the ashes. That’s the greatest feeling in the world and that’s being told you can’t do something and then giving them the middle finger and doing it anyway. I recently had some girls reach out to me by private messages telling me that I shouldn’t say certain things because it does apply to everyone. I started pondering and feeling remorseful because the last thing I want to do is to group someone into a category or label. But then I realized if I censor my story then it loses its authenticity. If I don’t say exactly how it happened through my eyes then how can I say it’s my story? If I offend someone is that my fault? How are my story and my experience offensive? I don’t care. That’s the bottom line. I’m gonna speak the way I know how and if I’m offending you by what I witnessed and felt then that’s, not my issue it’s yours. I found that the real issue is that people wanna keep this illusion that everything is all sunshine and rainbows and when one person’s story sheds light on the injustices then people freak out. I stayed quiet out of fear of a backlash and getting criticism. Now I encourage it. I’ll take it. If George Elliot (Virginia Woolf) said I think I’m scared of what a man will say about the social injustices and oppression of women and so I won’t write. Then we would never have had such well-crafted literature that influenced others to take a stand against the oppression of women and take part in the suffrage movement. In no way am I saying I’m as influential as Virginia Woolf but what I am saying is that I won’t stop writing because you don’t wanna hear it. It’s my story and its gonna be told.