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(Victory-}
{2003-05-12} {5:02 p.m.}
It is my belief that everything in this world happens for a reason. I think every circumstance we go through is given to us so that we might learn from it and eventually benefit. It is extremely hard to accept some of the things that happen to us in our lifetimes; sexual abuse, physical and mental illness, and other troubles seem to be without any reason. They seem to be flung down from a cruel heaven with no sense of what they are doing to us. But, we can triumph over these things if we go about it from the right direction. We can turn our troubles into victories. I am sincerely sorry for everything you have endured in your life, but it is my full belief that these things didn't happen to you because the universe is cold and without compassion. If you commit yourself to overcoming your pain, you will be all the greater. You can have greater knowledge than someone who has never experienced such hard circumstances; you can be more loving, more giving, more open than someone without hardship could be. You can still make the best of terrible situations.
Childhood developments and the experiences you have in your youth are more important than most people realize, I think. Without the proper foundation laid as a child, it is extremely difficult to function as a healthy adult. I know you have struggled with the things that happened to you as a child. I continue to see the effects of those moments on you today. I think you have somehow gotten stuck in victim stance. It is understandable why you have done so but to move forward with your life you must remove yourself from that role. The role of the victim is the role without the power. As long as you feel victimized, you have no power or will of your own. When you move from being a victim to taking control of your emotions, thoughts, and actions, the power moves back into your court. To do this you must sort out what parts of your life are your own responsibility. You must recognize where you have been affected by your childhood ideals, and learn to overwrite them with better ideals. For instance, you were often betrayed in your youth. This led you to the conclusion that no one cares about you, that everyone will eventually just screw you over. In this position you are the victim. Your pain is enevitable and all you can do is wait for people you love to hurt you. How you can begin to move past this is to change the way you view that situation. You need to replace the "no one cares about me" mentality with the "I am worthy to be loved" mentality. You deserve love. Not because you are perfect; not because you are completely blameless in everything that happens to you. You deserve love just for being a human being, and it is not something people can take away from you for acting or feeling a certain way. No matter how you feel about yourself, no matter if you think you are a horrible person or if you think you are a wonderful person, you deserve love all the same. Now you have the power, because you know what your basic human right is.
You must also give this love to yourself. You cannot say to yourself in any manner that you need to be prettier, skinnier, richer, or healthier before you will love yourself. You must take yourself as you are, scars and all. When you learn to love yourself, other people's acceptance won't be so critical to you. Most of our problems in life we can solve on our own time. Those of us most hungry for love and acceptance are so hungry because we cannot give it to ourselves. We are desperately seeking the validation that we are worthy of it; once we know that we are worthy of it and that we can give it to ourselves, we don't need to look to other sources.
The danger of looking outside yourself for confirmation that you are a worthy human being is that people's opinions will always change. The entire world will not have a favorable or a negative opinion of you. And no one knows you better than you know yourself. There are so many substitutes for love out there. Craving acceptance is a kind fo addiction; the very kind that diary review sites are built off of. Iron Review is one of the sites that builds its reputation on being brutal. Their gimmick is that their reviews are going to be most likely cruel.
I think some of the things they said to you were unnecessarily personal and did not pertain to your diary. But you can't change what they said or what they think. What you can change is whether or not it matters to you. Self image is the key to all of this. How do you see yourself? If you don't believe the things they said about you, deep down, you will be able to find that strength and say clearly that no, they are wrong about you.
I think your childhood issues have created a lot of fear and a lot of unaddressed resentment in you. I think the way you view men has been severely damaged. All of these symptoms are completely logical for the situations you have gone through, and to come out of such a situation without at least one of these symptoms would be miraculous. There is nothing wrong with you for feeling the way you do. There is nothing abnormal about you. If you got pneumonia, no one would blame you for coughing violently. That's what pneumonia does to people. Being abused as a child distorts your view of the world severely, and that's what has happened to you.
What it is your responsibility to do now is to try and change that view. Basically you have to face your childhood, not as a series of horrible events, but understanding them in logical terms. To get past the emotion you will have to do a lot of soul searching. You will have to be courageous and not run away when you feel like it, as you often will. But underneath all that hurt lies the answers. You have to find the lies that you believed as a child subconsciously (i.e. being abused was somehow your fault), and you have to confront them with the truth.
You may need help finding out what that truth is. I know you have had therapy in your life and probably some of those experiences were not pleasant ones. I highly recommend that you see someone, however. I don't think it in any way means you are incapable of helping yourself, that you are somehow a bad person because of it, or that you are crazy. I think even people without any sort of clinical ailment should have therapy, although not necessarily as rigorously or as regularly. But we can all benefit from someone who both has the compassion to help us and the training to guide us. Training is something I don't yet have, so my advice is all arbitrary. It is easy for me to type these things; the hard work is on your part. But if you truly want to move on from your life and truly want to develop a healthy self view, you will confront your past. Without making peace with your past I don't feel you can ever have a peaceful future.
I hope this has helped you. I will be praying for you, Chrissy, and I sincerely hope you find the courage to confront your past. You are a wonderful person and you are worthy of being loved. Don't accept anything less than that, even from yourself.
Your friend,
Michelle
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I am absolutely speechless. I just... I just...don't know what to say. That has to be the most deep down heartfelt advice I have ever encountered upon anyone. Don't get me wrong I love my girls passionately and will welcome their advice for ever; but this...its just exceptional. And it couldn't have come at a better time.
Thank you Michelle for all your heartfelt effort. Even tho I asked you not to make me cry, I cried like a baby anyway...not out of fear or hurt; but for victory...