MynameisnotDeja
Bluelight Crew
I think every single person in the world needs to just STOP. FOr like a day. And they all need to devote that DAY to figuring out wtf is going on inside themselves. That would do the entire world a heap of good.
I have a story to tell which I think relates here.
In early 08, I was still very very ill, this was when I was first figuring out that I had celiac disease, and the disease (or, rather, gluten in my diet) had absolutely destroyed my entire system. I had no immunity, I was deathly skinny, my hair was falling out, my gums were bleeding and my teeth were loose, and worse of all I had these terrible cystic acne like lesions all over my face. They were huge, painful and wouldn't heal for months once they erupted. At the time, I didn't know that celiac was the cause of all this..
The pain from my illness was bad enough, but the illness also destroyed my face. My FACE.. of all things. I know a lot of girls stress about their bodies, but honestly, losing my face was one of the hardest things Ive ever been through. The cysts were bad enough, but at the peak of my illness, I developed a staph infection which pretty much ate through the skin on my forehead and cheeks. My facial problem went from bad to God awful, not to mention the staph infection was one of the most painful things I've experienced. People stared at me on the streets, because my face was terrifying looking. Random strangers actually asked me "What is wrong with your face?" and "Is that contagious?" etc. Anyway, it was bad, you get the picture.
I not only no longer felt pretty, I felt like a fucking leper that should be hidden away in a basement somewhere and be forgotten.
Sorry, this is a long story. Bear with me here..
Having already tried every supplement, medication, skin cream, exercise, detox, and God knows what else to try and get my skin and health issues under control, I was ready to give up. Being ugly was only half of it.. I just couldn't take the pain anymore. There was a period of time where my face was so swollen that I couldn't even leave the house or eat properly, because chewing my food moved my face and hurt the lesions. I began thinking suicide was the only way out. I just didn't want to hurt anymore. I fought and fought and fought and for years saw doctors and no one could give me an answer (at this point Id been suffering from these health problems about 7 years but my health went extremely downhill in the last year). I was so angry. Why could no one help me? WHY did I deserve this? What did I do in a past life? I was just so fucking angry at the world. SO fucking angry.
There are still posts on a different message board(curezone forums) of me pleading for help because I didn't know what else to do but commit suicide. So many kind people responded to my thread and offered me support and love. So many people told me to just hang on, just hang on, for the people who loved me if not for myself. An answer would come, they said. An answer would come. One person on there told me something I would never forget, she said if I didn't have strength to hold on, I could borrow hers. It still makes me tear up when I think of that.. I could FEEL the love coming through in her words. Love for me, a random girl she'd never met, who reached out for help. It was enough to give me strength for another day.
At that point, I decided the best thing I could do would be to GIVE up on fighting for my health. I decided on a different approach. I decided to fight for happiness. I mean, there are people in the world who survive so many things. Burns on half their skin, amputations, horrible birth defects, etc. There was a woman I read about who'd survived a car wreck and had horrific disfiguring burn scars all over her upper body. She was living this amazing life, filled with art and social functions and she was even taking dance classes. If they could find happiness dealing with their misfortunes, some which were much worse than mine, then I could find hope too..
For years, my happiness was on hold. It was conditional. I was waiting for the day when I got better. When I found my cure. THEN I'd be happy. Until then, all I had was passion for the fight. But I knew that had to change. So I said fuck it. It's never gonna get better and I might die in a few years but you know what? I WANT TO BE HAPPY ANYWAY.
At this point, I was directed by someone on the support forums toward a therapy called EFT. Emotional Freedom Technique. I have written about this therapy here on Bluelight in Healthy Living before, so I wont go into explaining what it is here, as it doesn't matter, but the thread is here somewhere if you're interested. Anyways...
I began the therapy. The first step of this therapy is to figure out a topic you want to work on in life. Being so distressed about my face, the most upsetting thing to me at the time, I picked the topic of "beauty". The goal of the exercise is to find out your limiting thoughts and emotions on a topic and then clear them from your subconscious. A good method of doing this is to do free association writing on the topic, which is what I did. You just start writing, and don't think, just let go.. and write. So I did. I started a page, "Me, and beauty".
I was AMAZED at what came out. Things like "I'm filthy. Im disgusting. I am ugly inside. I am dirty and gross. I disgust myself. I HATE myself. I will never be beautiful. I am unworthy of beauty. I will never be beautiful on the outside because Im so disgusting and embarressing inside" etc etc etc. And so on.
While reading back over what had come out I was just like.. wow. Is this really what I think about myself? Is this the inner dialogue that's playing out in my mind, every day, while sleeping and awake? Reading these feelings on paper turned on an awareness within myself. It was as if there had been a recording playing in the room, saying all these awful things.. and then someone suddenly pointed it out.. and only then you realize it was playing in the background the whole time.
So. I began the therapy.
After the first session I noticed a difference, and after a few days I noticed a MASSIVE change. I no longer spent my days crying in the bathroom or hiding in my house afraid to go out. I still was aware of the way my illness made me look, and I still didn't LIKE it. But the pain in my heart was replaced with something else. Removing all those terrible thoughts about myself seemed to leave this vast open space inside of me.. and there was nothing to fill that space but this incredible, universal love.
I remember this moment within the first few weeks of therapy. I was driving in my car, singing along with the radio, and just felt this incredible joy. I looked in the rearview mirror and caught my image, my face still swollen and pussy, but instead of staring in horror at the lesions, I looked right into my eyes and that moment defined happiness to me.
It couldn't have been more than a month later I discovered that celiac disease was the source of my problems, I went on a gluten free diet and began healing. After 7 fucking years without a diagnosis, the answer comes to me within a month of changing my mind and clearing my subconscious of negativity.
A month or two later my skin was healing. It took a LONG time, but with each month that passed, I got better and better. I continued using the therapy to work on other issues. After many months of hard work, I ended up with a deeper level of self awareness than I ever knew possible.
So my point of this long and possibly boring(sorry lol) story is that WE do decide everything in our lives. We not only decide whether or not to be happy, but we also MAKE our circumstances with our thoughts. Some circumstances exist to teach us something and we can't always change everything, but by choosing to be self aware, we can also choose how we think and feel. And thoughts become things. That is the one absolute, without a doubt truth I have learned of this Universe. THOUGHTS are things.
I almost committed suicide in February of 08. In February of 09 I was living my dream of backpacking the world, healthy and happy. I didn't even bring makeup on my backpacking trip, I was THAT confident in myself.
Life is a choice. Happiness is a choice. We can all choose to shine.
I hope this story helps someone because my God it took a long time to write out.
I have a story to tell which I think relates here.
In early 08, I was still very very ill, this was when I was first figuring out that I had celiac disease, and the disease (or, rather, gluten in my diet) had absolutely destroyed my entire system. I had no immunity, I was deathly skinny, my hair was falling out, my gums were bleeding and my teeth were loose, and worse of all I had these terrible cystic acne like lesions all over my face. They were huge, painful and wouldn't heal for months once they erupted. At the time, I didn't know that celiac was the cause of all this..
The pain from my illness was bad enough, but the illness also destroyed my face. My FACE.. of all things. I know a lot of girls stress about their bodies, but honestly, losing my face was one of the hardest things Ive ever been through. The cysts were bad enough, but at the peak of my illness, I developed a staph infection which pretty much ate through the skin on my forehead and cheeks. My facial problem went from bad to God awful, not to mention the staph infection was one of the most painful things I've experienced. People stared at me on the streets, because my face was terrifying looking. Random strangers actually asked me "What is wrong with your face?" and "Is that contagious?" etc. Anyway, it was bad, you get the picture.
I not only no longer felt pretty, I felt like a fucking leper that should be hidden away in a basement somewhere and be forgotten.
Sorry, this is a long story. Bear with me here..
Having already tried every supplement, medication, skin cream, exercise, detox, and God knows what else to try and get my skin and health issues under control, I was ready to give up. Being ugly was only half of it.. I just couldn't take the pain anymore. There was a period of time where my face was so swollen that I couldn't even leave the house or eat properly, because chewing my food moved my face and hurt the lesions. I began thinking suicide was the only way out. I just didn't want to hurt anymore. I fought and fought and fought and for years saw doctors and no one could give me an answer (at this point Id been suffering from these health problems about 7 years but my health went extremely downhill in the last year). I was so angry. Why could no one help me? WHY did I deserve this? What did I do in a past life? I was just so fucking angry at the world. SO fucking angry.
There are still posts on a different message board(curezone forums) of me pleading for help because I didn't know what else to do but commit suicide. So many kind people responded to my thread and offered me support and love. So many people told me to just hang on, just hang on, for the people who loved me if not for myself. An answer would come, they said. An answer would come. One person on there told me something I would never forget, she said if I didn't have strength to hold on, I could borrow hers. It still makes me tear up when I think of that.. I could FEEL the love coming through in her words. Love for me, a random girl she'd never met, who reached out for help. It was enough to give me strength for another day.
At that point, I decided the best thing I could do would be to GIVE up on fighting for my health. I decided on a different approach. I decided to fight for happiness. I mean, there are people in the world who survive so many things. Burns on half their skin, amputations, horrible birth defects, etc. There was a woman I read about who'd survived a car wreck and had horrific disfiguring burn scars all over her upper body. She was living this amazing life, filled with art and social functions and she was even taking dance classes. If they could find happiness dealing with their misfortunes, some which were much worse than mine, then I could find hope too..
For years, my happiness was on hold. It was conditional. I was waiting for the day when I got better. When I found my cure. THEN I'd be happy. Until then, all I had was passion for the fight. But I knew that had to change. So I said fuck it. It's never gonna get better and I might die in a few years but you know what? I WANT TO BE HAPPY ANYWAY.
At this point, I was directed by someone on the support forums toward a therapy called EFT. Emotional Freedom Technique. I have written about this therapy here on Bluelight in Healthy Living before, so I wont go into explaining what it is here, as it doesn't matter, but the thread is here somewhere if you're interested. Anyways...
I began the therapy. The first step of this therapy is to figure out a topic you want to work on in life. Being so distressed about my face, the most upsetting thing to me at the time, I picked the topic of "beauty". The goal of the exercise is to find out your limiting thoughts and emotions on a topic and then clear them from your subconscious. A good method of doing this is to do free association writing on the topic, which is what I did. You just start writing, and don't think, just let go.. and write. So I did. I started a page, "Me, and beauty".
I was AMAZED at what came out. Things like "I'm filthy. Im disgusting. I am ugly inside. I am dirty and gross. I disgust myself. I HATE myself. I will never be beautiful. I am unworthy of beauty. I will never be beautiful on the outside because Im so disgusting and embarressing inside" etc etc etc. And so on.
While reading back over what had come out I was just like.. wow. Is this really what I think about myself? Is this the inner dialogue that's playing out in my mind, every day, while sleeping and awake? Reading these feelings on paper turned on an awareness within myself. It was as if there had been a recording playing in the room, saying all these awful things.. and then someone suddenly pointed it out.. and only then you realize it was playing in the background the whole time.
So. I began the therapy.
After the first session I noticed a difference, and after a few days I noticed a MASSIVE change. I no longer spent my days crying in the bathroom or hiding in my house afraid to go out. I still was aware of the way my illness made me look, and I still didn't LIKE it. But the pain in my heart was replaced with something else. Removing all those terrible thoughts about myself seemed to leave this vast open space inside of me.. and there was nothing to fill that space but this incredible, universal love.
I remember this moment within the first few weeks of therapy. I was driving in my car, singing along with the radio, and just felt this incredible joy. I looked in the rearview mirror and caught my image, my face still swollen and pussy, but instead of staring in horror at the lesions, I looked right into my eyes and that moment defined happiness to me.
It couldn't have been more than a month later I discovered that celiac disease was the source of my problems, I went on a gluten free diet and began healing. After 7 fucking years without a diagnosis, the answer comes to me within a month of changing my mind and clearing my subconscious of negativity.
A month or two later my skin was healing. It took a LONG time, but with each month that passed, I got better and better. I continued using the therapy to work on other issues. After many months of hard work, I ended up with a deeper level of self awareness than I ever knew possible.
So my point of this long and possibly boring(sorry lol) story is that WE do decide everything in our lives. We not only decide whether or not to be happy, but we also MAKE our circumstances with our thoughts. Some circumstances exist to teach us something and we can't always change everything, but by choosing to be self aware, we can also choose how we think and feel. And thoughts become things. That is the one absolute, without a doubt truth I have learned of this Universe. THOUGHTS are things.
I almost committed suicide in February of 08. In February of 09 I was living my dream of backpacking the world, healthy and happy. I didn't even bring makeup on my backpacking trip, I was THAT confident in myself.
Life is a choice. Happiness is a choice. We can all choose to shine.
I hope this story helps someone because my God it took a long time to write out.
. And guess what?? They even got a whole country for it at the expense of others' suffering! Aint that a tear-jerking story??
