boyfriends* and bullies are fucktards…*only the mean ones :-)

did you find when you were younger you thought you knew everything and the cockiness that exuded with that knowledge, in hindsight was a tad bit out of line…my own cockiness about being a good friend, a good girlfriend, a good daughter, a good sister, a good worker is slowly diminishing as the years progress….as you experience each experience in life, expectations of how the story ends often disappoints…that’s what I’m learning in my 40’s…lower the expectations and you’ll have less disappointments…but jesus how low does one go…do we put out positive vibes to the universe and sit back and wait…hummm how’s that going for ya….

I remember a friend once saying “I’m a good friend and I expect others to treat me as I do them”…and yah she’s right…but is that setting us up for frustrations…and one could insert any word in that sentence “I’m a good worker…” or “I’m a good girlfriend” and still the story ends in frustrations…I’m struggling to strike the balance and I often wonder if others are too…and then as I sit back, I think is there a balance…I’m happy with what I’ve accomplished and the path I’ve taken may not make sense to others and I like to think I don’t care…but then the human emotions in me tell me I do…I share and I don’t get the response I want, I don’t share and I don’t get the response I want – then the fuck it I can’t win response comes to my lips…

looking back on my life, there has been tremendous growth in me as a person…I can own that…I don’t think my parents would have mapped out my life the way I experienced it…I think they love the person I am today and are super proud of the work I do…but I think they must have had many sleepless nights thinking ‘what the fuck’…it is so not all rainbows and butterflies and puffy carebears and smurfs in the backyard…

I watched the dr. phil show the other day, yes I’m addicted and he had posted warning signs of how you know you are in an abusive relationship – I ticked 8 out of 9…past not current – don’t freak out my peeps…I’ve come to realize that some past years of my life were honestly miserable despite the smiles and laughs, deep down the self-hate started back then…the worthlessness, the degradation, the blah-blah-blahness of my world weighed me down…my mother sent me a picture the other week and it was taken around this time and I shrilled at the look of my young, innocent face…the lack of luster, the lack of confidence and the pure hidden eagerness that lived inside of me, yet was not allowed to surface…I wrote ‘never ever share that with anyone’…she wrote, ‘I won’t sweetheart just reminiscing’…

it’s hard being vulnerable and it’s even harder staring at that vulnerability when it’s you…but vulnerability is strength…it’s guided me to where I am today…it helps me help others…that picture made me feel icky…it took me back to the very day it was taken…it took me back to a dark place that I never want to go again…it’s amazing how a flicker in time can stir so many emotions…it should have been sadness that was conjured up but it was actually anger…god I’m my father’s daughter – bit of anger never hurt anyone danielle…but honestly anger deep in my belly…an anger at myself for being such a fucking idiot but more so an anger at the other person for being such a dick…how one human can degrade another human boggles my mind…

it would happen to me once more…degradation should be a punishable by stoning – back to the biblical times…

I truly never thought of myself as having had been in a relationship like I was and it really didn’t hit me until another experience caused me to lose myself…I lost myself again for about two years, two long, long years…actually it was probably longer than that but my memory allows me to say two…as a successful career woman, I devote my time to my work…I chose that…I don’t need a husband, I don’t yearn for children, I don’t long for a bigger house and I don’t need to live an extravagant life…what I need is my sanity, my confidence, my clear mind, my desire to make a difference, my longing to uphold my namesake and my link – myself…that was taken away from me again a few years ago…

it’s hard being vulnerable…and boy am I angry at myself…what’s the saying, fool me once, shame on you…fool me twice, shame on me…well shame shame on me for I let that degradation resurface into a monster I never thought I’d battle…but battle I fucking did…

deep inhale in and here goes – did you ever think at your age you could be caught in the middle of a storm so powerful that you literally lost all your senses…imagine no beginning, no middle and no ending to a storm that brewed its’ head ever so slowly…a tiny gust of wind here…a drizzle of rain there…the blue sky changing before your eyes into a dark, deep black swirling overhead…did you ever meet someone so sweet and kind and captivating that you get tangled in a weave of deception…every word, every gesture, every sentence, every emotion, every movement becomes the beginning of your ending…

when you get yourself out of a slump and you soar into a new world where you embrace every moment, you swear never again body, mind and soul, never again will you be that young, innocent girl in that picture that lacked luster and confidence…when mom showed me it, I thought ahhhh for fucks sake I did it again…why share this now, because I’m learning that even the strongest people fall sometimes…confidence, competence, and a love for living is not enough sometimes because that innocence that exists in all of us sometimes makes us vulnerable to the predators around us…

some of you know and some of you don’t know that I was bullied and harassed as an adult in an environment that I adore…there I said it…I’m not a young girl in school who is being bullied because I’ve got pimples and I’m overweight…I’m not a high school student who sent sexy pictures to my boyfriend who now has them posted all over social media…I’m not a young kid struggling with my sexuality and being cornered in the school yard…but I’m no different them any of them going through this…I was a 43 year old successful career woman targeted for reasons beyond my understanding…

I lived a lie for a while, not knowing what was happening until someone took me aside and said it out loud to me ‘you are being bullied’ and handed me a book on harassment…I reached for a tissue, which ended up being a bounce sheet and I let the tears flow…heads up a bounce sheet doesn’t work well on a tear filled face – may work well for static but not this, I promise…I can speak freely of this experience now without having a meltdown, well not a major one at least…for those that stayed by me, phew – thank you…for those that I lost, I’m sorry I wasn’t able to sustain us…

I kept saying how does an adult be bullied…I’ve read, I’ve talked, I’ve meditated, I’ve drank, I’ve cried…I’ve wanted to run, run as fast as I could and I was on the verge of leaving something I loved for the simply notion to run…and then I remembered I don’t run – like legit physically don’t run…lol lol…no seriously, my father taught me never to run and that allowed me to slow down…it allowed me to slow down and experience the bullying and the harassing in an almost mindful manner…sounds super creepy but I let myself slow down to experience it, so I could be strong enough to stand up to it…I refer to them as it because bullies don’t deserve a proper introduction…

why share this though…why blog…well because it’s hard being vulnerable…but I now know vulnerability is strength and I now know bullies target strength by honing in on the innocence that exists in our person…and that’s okay – it’s nothing I did…it’s nothing I said…I can’t own it because I didn’t create it…but I can own my reaction to it and I can own how it’s made me grow into a better person, a better clinician and better human…but it’s changed me in a way that I can’t explain to some…like the young, innocent girl in the picture lacking luster and confidence, I am now that career focused adult full of confidence that lives with chronic stress…

I watched a video the other day on stress and what stress does to your body…the physiological impact that occurred inside my body wrecked me…what once was strong muscles, clear skin, free mind, legs that could walk forever – is gone…the joy, the desire to engage in meaningful activities, the sound of laughter, the desire for passion and love, the desire to take care of myself – out the window…as I ticked off the trigger points from dr. phil on relationships, I found I was again ticking off the trigger points from this god blessed cartoon video on stress…

I did a group recently on anxiety which in hindsight is freaking hilarious looking back because I probably had the highest anxiety amongst the peeps in the room…like legit wanted to jump out of my own skin as I lectured on this common phenomenon…some stress is good I would say, it often is that motivating factor that you need to put the skip in your step when starting something new…too much stress, I would say is a bad thing because it’s more than just an emotion it’s a physical response…I would go through symptoms of stress and ask have you ever experienced heartburn (inner voice says yes), irritability (inner voice screams fuck yes), headaches (yup losing my sight from time to time), cravings for comfort food (inner voice says yup don’t even cook anymore), weight gain (inner voices says for fucks sake, #obvi), insomnia (inner voice says yes), acne (skin looks like shit, yup), or fatigue (I yawn when I say the word fatigue, so yup)…

why am I the girl who had to have a shitty relationship that probably fucked me over to the point that trust is an everlasting issue…why am I the girl who was bullied as an adult…well because shit happens…it’s not the end of the world to have had my experiences…it’s a gift to have had my experiences…it takes a lot to reteach your mind about the fight or flight concept…but my experiences have made me sit back and realize that I only enjoy flights that take me to sunny destinations…there is so much going on in this world around us…why do we as a society feel the need to break others down…as humans we do that enough to ourselves…I’m not getting younger, I’m not going to get a second chance to live my life…this is it, this is who I am, this is what I got and this is my journey to celebrate as I choose…

going into the next phase of my life, I refuse to give in to the evils of this world that often surround us…yah I may lose myself for a while and I may need a kick in the guts to come back around but knowing that I’m a survivor keeps me going…knowing that I stood up and screamed NO keeps me going…I made a pack with myself that I will never give up on myself, I will be the most important person in my life and I will choose me over and over again because I only got one life to live…let’s make it memorable…

don’t worry about being the good friend, the good girlfriend, the good daughter, the good sister or the good worker – work on being the best you first, that’s where happiness starts…bad shit happens everyday but today you woke up breathing – embrace that…

it’s hard being vulnerable but it’s super fun growing old happily…