It took a phone call with my childhood best friend to realize that I have normal thoughts. In that phone call I also realized how much progress I’ve actually made since trying to out myself. Not only in my day to day life routine, but I am much more able to handle my thoughts. I am not as reckless and I can choose not to listen to my negative emotions. My way of handling conflict has also changed and I do not allow my emotions to control my situation.
I called my childhood best friend, Roxy, because she knows me better than anyone and talking to her just calms me. I called her to talk *sob* about an argument I had just had and to ask her how she deals with arguments in a relationship. I had not been in a healthy relationship in years nor had I been in a relationship with someone I could actively see my future with. So anytime we have an argument, I feel like I’m going to lose him. Not because he’s given me a reason to think that he would be capable of simply leaving me, but because I had been conditioned by an unhealthily negative person to believe that I am unworthy to make someone stay unless I follow tenacious rules that apply only to me. I forget those rules no longer exist because for some reason I thought they applied to all relationships, but he isn’t like that at all. Roxy has a long history with her fiance and like all relationships, has had its ups and downs, so I needed to validate that what I was going through was normal. It was.
The correlation between this argument, phone call and my self control is… I’ve learned to accept my emotions, digest them and then give myself some time to react. My past self would cut, run away, drink into oblivion as soon as an angry or sad feeling creeped in. I would do this because it would create an immediate fix, but what I didn’t realize was that it wasn’t the solution that I needed. In not having the right solution, nothing was being recovered. I never sewed myself back together, I just put tape that couldn’t hold up. I didn’t know there was even a possibility to digest and break down and accept emotions. I had to acknowledge, not just know, but actually acknowledge, that I was suicidal in order to find a solution. I had to digest why suicide was put in my system and only then was I able to come up with a solution to get it out. No one was able to tell me this and it has taken a lot of time to realize this and put it into action in my life. I was desperate to try anything that would fix me. Although I am not completely “fixed” I strongly believe I am on my way.
