The Facts Of Life

I have grown up in a Christian home, and some of you may know what that feels like but then others of you may not…Both of my parents raised me to be just like any other kid, except for the fact that from a young age it was understood that I was a Christian, which in real life was so not the case. So I was just floating through life without a care in the world, but there really was one huge care. This care was that I felt like at all time I needed to make people happy or else they would hate me. This has been a huge problem in my life because it makes me not able to be myself, it is extremely hard for me to truly open up to people, and I feel like I need to change to fit the group of people I am with. This has always been the case with me. And for a while it worked great! As I mentioned above, I grew up in a Christian home, thus being said it was understood that I would go to church. The only problem was that I hated going to church, I thought it was a waste of time, that the kids were not cool enough, and that it had nothing to offer Me. This train of thought lasted until about 8th grade. This is when the problems started to happen…I had been best friends with two other girls. And by best friends, I mean we were going to go to the same high school, college, and were planning on living near each other once we got married to the perfect men. However, these dreams would never come true. Because about half way through my 8th grade year, my best friends started spreading rumors about me, none of which were true. This then caused no one in the entire school to talk to me except for three other girls, to whom they did the same thing. To say we banded together would be an understatement, because to this day these three girls are my best friends with whom I would trust my life.

So around the same time this was happening, I became clinically depressed. But no one would believe me. So I did what I thought would help me, I blocked everyone out. I still had “friends” but none that I would tell what was truly going on in my life. These were the days when I began to hate God, because to me he was some guy who did not care enough to help me when I needed it most and it seemed like I was the only person who was going through all this crap. I was the only person who could undo what I had done, yet I did not know how. All I knew was a deep pain and sadness. About this time I started hanging out with the wrong crowd. They did drugs, drank, and did not care what anyone thought about them. One thing I am glad I did not do was the drugs but I did plenty I am ashamed of.

Then by the start of my freshman year, I was suicidal. I never let anyone into my life; I could not even look at myself in the mirror. My self-confidence had reached an all time low. I was not listening to anything my parents said, we were fighting almost every night, and I had about two friends who really cared about me the rest were just people who I could hang out with if it was convent. Then half way through my school year I met two really great girls who helped me begin to open up about my problems, however I did not tell them the truth. So now each day I went to school, I would paste on a smile so no one would suspect the pain that was on the inside of me. And around this time, I had attempted, well kind, to commit suicide. The first two times I was ready to but then something stopped me, not to be lame or anything but just something made me flush the pills. The third time, I really have no idea what happened and the fourth was just bad. Now when I had said I had reached a low earlier, it was nothing like what I felt in the following months, I was begging for something anything to take my life so I could just die!!! I was so done with living and nothing in this life mattered. I mean, I love playing volleyball and hanging out with friends, but even those seemed pointless and so stupid. So this time, I still wanted to die but I began to write poems and lyrics, because music is the one thing that never lost value for me. So if you were to go into my room you would find stacks of notebooks filled with lyrics about all the pain I felt and about how much I wanted to die. Around this same time, is when I would cry myself to sleep every night, just wanting someone to come and take all this pain away. This was a point in my life when I just wanted someone to look deeper and find the real me. I knew she was there, somewhere. Underneath all the crap that I had filled my life with and I think that if someone would have taken the time to look they would have spared me a lot of unneeded pain that came with faking who you are. And this longing in my life is one of the reasons, that now I have a hard time connecting with people because I want them to like me and I don’t want to be rejected.

So then comes summer, my plans were to just hang out, go to parties, and just be with some friends…But that changed when I got my grades. I had not done well and this did not fly with my parents. They expected me to be a 4.0 student; needless to say I was far from it. So the only thing they were going to let me do this summer was volleyball and raft camp. SO I decided to go to raft camp and if you have not been to camp you have no idea how much fun you are missing! When I first signed up for camp I was planning on having a friend go with me, but it ended up she had to work. So we leave for raft camp and by this time I am thinking how stupid church is, I mean I have been going my whole life, so I know all the answers and there is no WAY a week with a ton of Christians is going to help me at all. But I was so wrong, you might even say dead wrong. About half way through the week, I had a talk with Rob, which involved me crying, him talking, and me feeling so lost. For the first time in my life, I began to see that I was missing something. But like I always do, I lied and told Rob that I knew Christ, which was the biggest lie of my entire life. So after that talk I was out on a run and something just hit me. I needed Christ, way more then he would ever need me, and for once all the stories that had been crammed in my head began to make sense. But for some reason I kept quiet about my revelations. But the rest of raft camp I began to listen to the stuff that Rob was saying.

Once I got home, I knew what I needed to do. I asked Christ into my heart and told him that I wanted him to be my Savior. After that I began to see subtle changes in my life, I wanted to read my Bible, I was not as sad, and people were not the number one enemy anymore. So after a while, I began to see that Christ can only help me if I ask him, but still something was not right. The memory of what had happened in 8th grade still haunted me, everyday. So I did what was the hardest thing, or so it seemed, for me to do. I forgave the girls and thanked God of the fact that even though I had been pushing Him away, He was there the whole time! And amazingly enough, these girls who had hurt me so bad, after I accepted Christ, apologized to me. And I am not saying that we will ever be best friends again but we at least can talk and be in the same room as each other.

When I returned to school my sophomore year, people thought something had changed. They were right, I could talk to them, I mean truly talk to them, I built relationships, and was having fun…But life is not always that easy, yes I was still depressed, but I did not want to die anymore. I still had friends that were huge problems in my life, and I did things that I really regretted. But those were things that I could not change. I needed God’s help. And He helped me be able to form new friendships with good people, helped me like church and the people I met there, and He helped me begin to not base my value off what others thought of me. But there still was the issue of music. When I was depressed I listened to scremo/heavy metal/rock/ whatever you want to call it, and this music had language in it that was not going to help me get closer to God. So I was at a hard spot because music is a huge thing in my life, and today I still love my scremo/heavy metal/ whatever you want to call it, but I just can’t handle the lyrics as well as I use to. But good news is I have found an alternative in Christian scremo/heavy metal/ whatever you want to call it. And today not all the bands I listen to are Christian; they just don’t have the language that is so bad. And with my music problem figured out, I was feeling pretty good about myself, until, one of my friends was diagnosed with cancer. This was a huge thing because she had been my friends since we were born, our dads were friends since third grade. But after a lot of prayer, and worry, she was found to be clean again.

Now when I go to school, I still feel like I am being judged by everyone I meet and I know this is partly true. But it is not such a big deal anymore, I mean I still want people to like me and want to be friends, but it does not cause me to be depressed. However, everyday is a struggle to be happy and now I have to make the decision that I will be. I never want to go back to how sad I was but I know that if I don’t work hard at it that I will be right back there in a matter of seconds. I still love my friends but am trying to reach out and to get to know people because that is what makes life fun and I know that if they don’t like me it is their problem not mine. I want people to be able to see the true me and I know, and hope, that the true me is someone that Christ is proud of and can say “that’s my girl” because if he can’t I am not doing my job. The times I feel myself slipping, I know that I always have someone who cares weather I live or die, he wants me to live and not only live but to truly live. So now when I think of my life I hope it reflects my favorite quote, “Preach the gospel, if necessary use words.” I want my life to be an example for Christ. But there are days when I feel like I can’t do it, but those are the days when I need him the most. And I know that no matter what, he will always love me for just being me, he has taken off my mask and has seen what lies underneath and loves me for it.