A New Life
Well, after a long absence of being away from myspace, due to the fact that I have important things such as school and work to focus on (you know, that old chestnut), I thought it was about time to finally update this thing. So, with that said, some interesting things have come up in my life...
For a long time in my life, starting with just after I graduated High School, for some reason I fell into sadness and then depression. I know what those reasons were, but I'm not going to elaborate on them again. If your honestly curious, just scroll down my past blog entries and I'm sure you will find out what it was. For a long time, it tore me up inside, and caused me to shift and change into someone that I'm really not. I remained that person for a long time, for almost two years, in fact. Nothing I did could change me, and no one I talked to could help me. Not my dad, my Bishop, not Jordan, or....anyone. For a long time I was searching for answers, from whatever place I could get them from. My religion, the people I look up to, History, you name it, and I looked for it there. After putting myself through so much self criticism, and judging myself from what I achieved and (more often) haven't achieved, my self worth fell completely to the ground. I didn't have any confidence, and because I was hurting so bad inside, everything else in my life suffered as well. School, family, church, friends...All of these became non-existent, as I forced myself into submission and depression, almost punishing myself for the things that I didn't have. Throughout two years of dealing with this, and going off and on between despair and optimism, something finally clicked...
Something changed, and it's not enough at the moment to save me from my inner demons, but it is enough to change, to attempt, and to try. I was the books called "A Better Way to Live" and "The University of Success" by an author named Og Mandino. He's a motivational speaker that lived a life of despair and poverty (self induced, by the way, because he made alot of mistakes) who then re-thought about his life, and changed it for the better. Other than giving credit, who he is, isn't important. What really helped me was that he had a chapter about why people place negative feelings on themselves, and how to overcome it. I skipped ahead and started reading it, figuring that it would just be like everything else everyone ever told me about my issues...but it wasn't. See, whenever anyone has attempted to ask me about why I place so much emphasis on certain things, or why I feel so bad about it, I tried my best to explain it to them, but they never really understood or got it. Instead, they would just reiterate several things, or write me off as being 'emo' or causing 'drama' that they didn't want to deal with. It left me feeling incomplete, because I couldn't explain it to them perfectly what it was that was bothering me, and it drove me crazy. Yet, in this book, as it was explaining all this, it was telling me and reasoning out all the things that I had been trying to explain to people about why I was feeling the way I was. Half the time I felt like saying "Yes! This is it! This is exactly why I feel the way I do, and someone finally knows what I'm going through!" It felt so nice and relaxing, that even though the author wasn't there to help me (and he sadly passed away in 1996), he in some way was able to reason out what I could never do to people. As if that wasn't good enough, he was also able to expressly tell me how to fix this problem, in ways that I had never considered before. Not in any "Do this, and you'll be fine" pattern, but just telling me why people feel that way, and how they can overcome those emotions. It was just...so nice to be able to hear someone say and explain why I was feeling the way I was, and then give me solid and realistic ways of getting out of it.
After I read that, I felt the first spark of peace in me again, the first glimmer of hope for the future, and of strength to last me through the day. I hope this hasn't seemed like a promotion for these books, but it stands to reason that they are the source for my sudden self realization. The only hard part now is maintaining it. I know I feel great now, but when things get tough in the future, and I end up going through some bad situations, I'll be severely tempted to just say "Man, this is exactly how things used to be. Nothings changed" and then give up in self failure and regret. I can't let that happen. I have to form good habits and good ideals, enough to last through whatever people and life may put me through. And so I shall. Not "I possibly will", or "I'll try". No. So I shall.
This broken person may have once been in despair, and depressed, and uncertain. Yet now he begins to pick himself up through the rubble, lifting himself out of his despair, and relating to himself and to others that he's back. He has returned. Anxious and ready to pick up from where he left off, and to begin a new day...and a new life.