I already know what my New Year's resolution is going to be!

When my therapist said to me that singlehood is the greatest gift a young person could give themselves, (She thinks thirty is young, I guess it’s your prospective!), I didn’t truly understand what she meant. However, now I been thinking about an old saying. It goes, “Before you can love another person you have to love yourself!” I thought I did love myself. However, I haven’t been taking care of myself properly. There is the weight thing, being too tired to wash up at night, and not always tending to my Spiritual Life. So I have decided to take better care of myself. Not for God, not for my parents, and certainly not for a lover! I think I am entering a year of grace and at the end of it, I will truly love myself.

I want to talk about doing stuff for myself. They say when I baby is born until it is about two, it is ego centric. Only worrying about its own needs! Why can’t we all be like that? It makes sense for a baby to worry about itself because it has to survive. However, as we grow older we do things for our parents and our friends. I can remember being three years old and all I wanted to do is be like my friend Sarah. It was so bad that there were three of us that hung out together, Sarah, Laura, and myself. Anyway, Laura and I would fight constantly over Sarah’s attention. My Mom even thinks my favorite color is red because that was Sarah’s favorite color. I still stick to my guns saying it’s red because of Elmo. However, there are so many things I did just to be like Sarah.

Next, you know what we grow into adolescence doing? I remember being thirteen and having the biggest crush on this boy in my CCD class (Sunday school). Anyway, I would put on make – up for him, dab on perfume because I think he would like it, and generally be nervous around him for being careful not to do anything that would make him not think the world of me. This continued for much of my life (of course not with the same boy or even gender.) The worst was just before I was diagnosed with my invisible disability. I was dating a very abusive girlfriend and I let her dare me to do stuff that wasn’t good for me. For example, I drive a very undriveble car (it was only meant for on campus and the doctor about a mile off campus) an hour away from my college, in the rain no less, to a ratty neighbor. It was very dangerous to say the least. I don’t know that if I had been in my right mind whither I would have been scared shitless or not. However, that is something I want to change.

Now I said that I don’t want to take care of myself not for God. My Lord is the center of all I do! However, I am a separate being from my God. I know my Father in Heaven will be happy for me when I am done. I also offer it all up to Him. However, I still have to love myself for who I am. So my New Year’s resolution is to take care of myself! I hope by the end of 2010 I will be happy with the person I have become. And I am not doing it to “find” someone. I just wanted to make that clear because I did say about loving yourself before another person. If I do find the love of my life at the end of the journey then it is a bonus. It’s just to say that I am doing this to find a lover is defeating the purpose. I want to be happy with me, for me, and by me.

Avoidance

There is an issue that I find common among people that happen to have a mental illness. It’s avoidance which takes many forms. However, what I am going to talk about is social avoidance. When I was first diagnosed, I was still living on campus and I was staying at the recovery house, after being discharge from the hospital. My friends from college wanted to see me, but I was avoiding seeing them. It happened that one day my best friend at college had her mother visiting her and she brought my best friend and her roommate, my other friend. Now her mother said that they were family. I was a little shaken when I found it was friends and not family. However, after our visit I felt better. Then when I came home to live with my parents and finish college in Chicago, I only had one friend to go out and do stuff with. My therapist at the time had a hard time convincing me to hang out with her. Every session it was like pulling teeth for him to get me to promise I would go out and do stuff or just even call her.

Gradually, I got more social. However, in 2006, I was hospitalized for the second time. (I am truly blessed that in the ten years I have had this illness, I was only hospitalized twice.) Anyway, I was inpatient a week and half before my graduation ceremony from college. I had already finished all my work and was accepted to get a degree. However, I came up with a million and one excuses not to go to my graduation ceremony. I had a therapist assigned to me in the hospital and the day before I was discharged he said to me, “If you are not well enough to go to your ceremony, then you aren’t well enough to get out of the hospital.” So you know what? I went and so far my college graduation was the best day of my life. I know there will be other best days like when I find the love of my life and make a commitment and if I every welcome a child into the world. However, for now that college graduation ceremony meant the most for me.

Now I can’t believe how social I am. The reason for writing this blog is because I just got home from one of my good friend’s house. I feel so comfortable with her, even though she doesn’t have a mental illness. I think that’s a part of avoidance too that when I first started feeling happy and well, I only wanted to hang around with people with the illness. It was like a safety net. Now in my life I have four very good friends. Two are mentally ill and it is o.k. to hang around with mentally ill people. However, I have two friends without the illness. I feel at ease around them and my avoidance is starting to go away. I think there is hope. St. Therese says, “It’s love, not time, that heals all wounds.” I think the kindness and compassion these people show me brings me a long way! And for the first time in a long time, I feel alive and free. It’s like I want to be out in the world and understand other people! I thank God and my friends that are healthy and good friends.

A long awaited thought!

First, I want to apologize for how long it’s taken me to update my blog. I don’t have many followers, but you are all faithful so please forgive me.

What happened?
By Amanda Robin

One day I was on top
Of the world
I was a promising,
Young,
Genetics major
With
A scholarship,
A loving boyfriend,
Fifty sisters to call my own!

Then I was in a place
That a judge
Decided
I was to stay for
72 hours.
I had lost my
Freedom,
Hope,
Love.

Now I live everyday
With a illness that
Limits me
In society
Life,
Career.

However, I have
My Freedom
Like never before
Knowing my limits
Hope
Knowing
One day there will
Be a cure.
Love of a group
Of people with
My illness
That know no bounds

Of understanding