Fear

Mentally I know how debilitating fear is. I know that it doesn't exist, but feels like it does. I know that  the actual thing I fear will never touch me, yet it doesn't even have to. Knowing all this I still let fear rule me. I wish I could delete fear from my life. Honestly, I don't even know how. The emotional part of my soul is way too controlling. To the point that reason doesn't even matter at the end of the day because my feelings of fear control me. My fears are absolutely ridiculous and I am very aware of it. I fear being home alone, so lock the doors. I even lock the bathroom door when I am home alone. It's like I'm afraid someone will come up behind me. How crazy!? I fear people are trying to hurt me. I have had many images in my mind of my own father murdering me. Yes, I am aware of how irrational this is. I also fear people, storms on the ocean, airplanes, as well as, abandonment from my loved ones. Fear seems to be the root of all my insecurities. It's like I'm scared to do things because I m afraid to do something wrong and that the consequence will be unbearable. This is so unrealistic. I have tried reading books on fear and insecurity. I have watched videos giving advice. I try to tell myself that these fears do not exist, but they still FEEL real. My feelings are way to active. If I get a bad feeling, it could last all day. If I do something wrong, I will mentally punish myself all day. The only way I let it go is if someone affirms me that I am okay. So, I rely on others to tell me how I am or how I should be! Yes, I know this is unhealthy. I really hope it is not too late to change these things about me.

I Call Her Poison Ivy

I really need to get this next topic out of my system.
When I first met my husband he had a friend, let's call her Poison Ivy (PI). They seemed from first glance like very close friends. When I was dating my husband she was around quite a bit. In the beginning it didn't bother me because I thought that everyone needs a few friends that they have had for years, especially if it was a healthy relationship. I decided to give her a fair chance to be apart of my life as well. I found out that her and my husband had had a sexual relationship in the past. Knowing this made me uncomfortable around the two of them. When we would go out together she would be all over him and tell everyone how much she loves him and how amazing he is. I am not exaggerating. One time she even made her boyfriend at the time jeolous because of how much she gloated over him.  Still I did my best to look past all of this because I trusted my husband and knew he didn't have "feelings" for her. Her and her boyfriend at the time needed a place to stay. They said it would be for two weeks tops. That turned into three months! She never offered to pay rent or help my husband with anything. By the way she is a mother of three who are each from a different man. She would see her children once a week and not even spend time with them. She would sleep in and my husband would go and get them food from McDonald's.  Even the way she spoke to them made me cringe because she would yell at them for little things. One weekend when we were away she made her kids stay in our room during the day away from her. I was starting to see the woman she was. Her words were empty, filled with empty promises to others. But when she was with you she acted like you guys were best friends. I soon learned she acted like this with everyone she was around. What ticked me off was that while she was using my husband's resources, she would vent to me about his brother and sister, who I am very protective over. She would say how much the brother upset her and that he "mooched" off my husband. She said this even though he was my husband's brother and he had barely turned 21. He was going to school and had a job. He has a better job than she does. She would constantly complain about him. She felt entitled to everything in my husband's life. I have never met a person like this. I continued to befriend her, knowing that's he was apart of my husband's life. I would buy her things and stay up late with her. When her and her boyfriend broke up, she went behind our house in the hills, drinking a bottle of wine. I went and found her. I comforted her as she cried and stayed with her until sunset because she didn't want to leave. Her being single started to worry me. She would walk about the house in skimpy clothes with her boobs busting out all the time. One night when we were hanging out, she went to the bathroom and when she came out, her boobs were falling out of her shirt. To me this was disrespectful to my husband and I. She lacked personal boundaries and respect for other women. What did I do with all of this? I thought that if I became good friends with her that her promiscuous actions would not bother me and I could move past all this. I was wrong. She finally moved out the week before our wedding reception. She moved in with a guy friend, surprising right? This guy was madly in love with her. Let's call him James. James gave her a place to stay, spoiled her with gifts and provided her with the most extravagant meals. She had no desire to ever be with this man. My husband and I watched James spend all of his money on her. We saw her use him for all he was worth to the point where we felt bad for him. The night of our reception comes and I am more drunk than I have ever been in my life. I was so happy I just kept drinking and drinking. This is not a normal behavior for me, but I thought, hey, it's my reception! Let's party! That night I freakin "hooked up" with this woman! What was I thinking?! The next morning I woke up and regretted every minute of it. I was so disgusted with myself. I texted her to apologize for my drunken behavior. She on the other hand suggested we hook up more! I'm a married woman and not a lesbian! I wasn't about to keep engaging in sexual behavior with anyone except for my husband. I learned my lesson. No more messing around with women. I have my experimentation and I was over it. After that night I realized how she influenced me. She lived such a sexually active life that I was convincing myself that it was okay and that that's what my husband wanted. I was done trying to please everyone. At this point I didn't care anymore. I chose to go back to my morals of self-control and not listen to every sexual desire in my body. Trust me, I was better this way. After that night with her I slowly quit talking to her. I felt like every time I was with her everything was about sex. My husband also didn't think it was right how she was using one of his friend. We slowly all lost touch, except for when she wanted us to do something for her. My husband had helped her multiple times over the years and she never even repaid him with good friendship. She didn't even bring him a gift when we got married. Time goes by and she starts to only contact my husband every once In a while. I became pregnant and she only congratulated my husband. She even sent my husband a video of her watching porn. It just all seemed very inappropriate. One night my husband randomly deleted her off his Facebook. I have no idea why. It was so random! If he deleted her then I should delete her too, so I did. We would wait and see how long it took her to realize. I was very surprised. She didn't notice for a very long time, especially for someone who calls your husband a close friend. She finally noticed and that's when the bomb went off. There were multiple reasons why my husband deleted her, I guess, but I couldn't tell her all of them. I just needed to give her a simple answer. We decided to tell her that we cut out all past "hookups" out of our lives to have a fresh start. She didn't like that. Of course she was deeply offended, saying that he was one of her best friends, not mentioning the Godfather of one of her children. She flipped out. She blamed me for this since he had never done this to her before. What does she expect? He is my husband and I am his wife. We have committed ourselves to one another for the rest of our lives! That's a big deal. We spend practically every moment together. We have been in facets of eachother's lives that no one has ever entered.  I never have known a soul-mate until now. She's started texting my husband saying things like, "Are you fucking serious!? You aren't gonna fight for us?! .... What am I gonna tell the kids?". It was like she was glued to him...to death do they part. Absolutely crazy I thought! She was acting like they were breaking up or something. What especially upset me was her trying to use his Godchild as leverage. Later that night she ranted on Facebook about how I have my husband's balls clenched in my hands! She even proclaimed that she had slept with my husband. She went on and on about how insecure I am. How can someone not understand that when you are married your husband or wife comes first or it will fail? I thought for days about this confrontation. Why? I have no idea, but it still bothered me. Finally today I came up with my solution: prayer. I decided that even though I don't want her in my life, I can still pray for her. I want her to find someone who means more to her than the world and for that person to reciprocate it. I hope that she can one day put her children first and show them the love they deserve instead of ditching them for men and alcohol. I will pray that good things will happen to her and for her and that she will learn from life's lessons. I just don't want her near me.

Self Awareness

Today I am focusing on how to love myself and be myself in its truest form. I have noticed a lot of self-destructive thinking. For example I compare myself to others. I think I need to be different and what other people want because I want to please people so bad. I am throwing all this thinking out the window. Other destructive thinking has caused my anxiety and bouts of depression. I am working towards personal freedom. I never thought I was supposed to enjoy myself. I thought everyone else was more important. I am going to enjoy life now, in the moment. I will not take any ill thoughts towards myself. I will stop avoiding situations because of anxiety. I will enjoy socializing without anxiety. Wishing for what others have is destructive to ones self. I believe I will be truly happy when I truly love myself, including strengths and weaknesses. Then will I be able to give pure love to others.

Insecurities

My not loving myself effects my relationship with my husband. We are newlyweds so we don't have a lot of foundation yet. My lack of confidence and insecurities has put strain and frustration on my husband, which causes me to be even harder on myself. He is constantly having to affirm my value to him because my insecurities are so obvious. When I noticed these things was when I realized I needed to change. This man is the best human I have ever met. He is loving, compassionate, fun, strong, smart, attractive, ect. I don't want to loose this because of myself. In order for our relationship to be stable and strong, I need to be secure in myself without asking for his affirmations all the time. This is what happens when a child grows up without love. When a child is verbally beat down to nothing as a child. I didn't think I could do anything right as a child. Now the lack of love in my childhood is manifesting into my adulthood. Red flags are in huge air!

Now with being married and losing my job, I have had no other option than to dive deep down into myself. I was hiding from myself for so long. I even knew the distance was building in between us. When my job disappeared so did the wall that hid me. I couldn't distract myself with other peoples problems anymore. Mine were hitting me in the face. At first I would sit and ask myself over and over what I wanted to do. I didn't know what I wanted, so I continued to keep asking myself until I found it. I was raised in a strict household. I was punished for wrong doing and held accountable for many chores per week. If my parents were not pleased I was made miserable. I never did anything without their permission. I would need permission to go to the bathroom, to go play in my room, ect. There were times my parents wouldn't let me go to the bathroom until it hurt. They controlled me and everything about my life. Anything that I came up with on my own, they took away. I wanted to be in many group sports at school, but my stepmom had many reasons why I couldn't do it. I spent most of my time in my room, singing and dancing. I also wrote poetry to relieve my emotions. I know now why I am scared of everything and why I am a people-pleaser. It has destroyed my soul trying to be what others desire. I never thought I was supposed to love myself. I thought you needed to love others only and loving yourself was being selfish. I realized that one needs to love them-self in order to truly love others. This has caused me to change my mindset. I am determined to reach out to others in another way I never have. To love everyone regardless who they are. To love all with a brotherly love. This is something I feel our society has not discovered. If they did life would be so much different. In order to practice this I am taking the initive to do social activities with others. How do you love others? Do you find it easy to give love to others