Oh my, Oh jeez, Here we go again in The Road Ahead

waves Hi everybody!

It’s been months since I’ve logged into and written on Prosebox. My last entry was about selling off my belongings and buying a van. Well, I’m still in that van! I’ll get some pictures posted here shortly of not only my van, but also some of my travels in it. Things have been up and they’ve been down, such is life. I’ve wanted to post before now. I log in, stare at the blank box and shut it back down, the fear that what I have to say isn’t important or will be too long to post via smartphone stronger than my urge to share.

Well, I’ve been doing a lot of interior work on myself, including my confidence and how I see myself. There are monumental, tectonic shifts happening in my heart and brain, as I shift from pre-30 to post-30.

Pre-30 had me thinking and expecting that I would crumble under the weight of my PTSD, depression, anxiety, pain and other struggles that I’ve faced every single day for as long as I can remember. I fully expected to be dead by my own hands before I hit 30. I’m not sure why that was my self-imposed deadline (hah, get it? DEADline?), but that’s what sounded right to me. And if you’ve read any of my past entries the run up to 30 was brutal, exhausting, and awful a good portion of the time. I was hospitalized for my suicidal ideations and spent weeks going to therapy and learning how to (better) manage my daily depression. It worked for the most part too! I found myself in a group and safe space where I was able to talk about how suicide felt to me. It wasn’t all negative. For a long time, suicide was my “safe place”, if you could call it that. When my pain was out of control, it was thoughts of ending it that kept me going. When I felt powerless or woke up screaming in the middle of the night from my night terrors, it was a small, cold comfort to me that at any time, I could choose to end it all. Which in retrospect, is pretty fucking sad. It reminds me of Mad World, “The dreams in which I’m dying are the best I’ve ever had…“. That was the hope that I held on to.

I started taking power and control back over my life. While I was hospitalized, I was able to see that I was still giving Larry power over me, and that I needed to forgive myself. That’s something I’m still working on, and brings me to the brink of tears even now as I write this. None of what happened to me was my fault and I didn’t deserve it. The poison in my veins and thoughts ran strong and it’s taken a lot of work to be able to recover and start counteracting that hurt. I wanted to stop being a victim and start being a survivor.

And that’s the road I’m on now. After spending the first 30 years of my life making choices and decisions based on the expectancy of not being around to either pay the consequences or reap the benefits, it’s been a confusing and entirely different beast to begin thinking about having a future and being around for it, regardless of how it turned out. I’ve been living in my van for the past four months now, with a huge thanks to my girlfriend. She’s invited me to crash at her place when winter finally came around and the temperatures crashed into dangerous territory. I was using a propane heater as a heat source until one night her and I were awakened at 2 am by the carbon monoxide alarm going off. After that, I was too scared to run it outside of using it for cooking and I was gifted an electric heater for Christmas which my girlfriend has been kind enough to let me plug into a 25 foot extension cord ran from her garage. That heater keeps me plenty warm and provides a sense of safety that the propane heater never had. It’s been a true game changer, as winter in the Midwest is both frigid and harsh! I also recently picked up a cordless drill and some other tools that will allow me to start working on the interior of the van, once the daily temperature rises above freezing that is!

Some days, I don’t want to get out of bed. While the weight of the past is slowly being dealt with and experienced with the expectation of finally being able to put it behind me, it’s still incredibly difficult some days to be a person. I’m still bawling in the shower, or fighting back tears while driving, or just sitting quietly while my mind is far, far away from where I physically am. The stress of dealing with it strains my back too, flare-ups are common and as my stress climbs, so too does the pain, a double-edged sword of healing. And I don’t think I’d be able to do any of this healing without the support of my girlfriend. She’s absolutely changed my life in so many ways. She’s the shelter and safe place I needed to even think about healing. She holds me when I panic, and while the night terrors are next to non-existent now, she would hold me tight and cry during the night. She’s a marvel to be with. I’ve always needed a lot of personal space, especially in my marriage, but with her, I don’t feel that itch to get away. I want to be with her, and around her, and I feel safe. Safety wasn’t something I felt until I was 28, so almost two years ago. And now I’ve got it in spades with her. She’s touched my life and my psyche and is playing a huge role in the person I’m finally able to become.

There’s so much more to post, and now that I have a reliable way to do that, I’d expect to see me around quite a bit more. I want to get back to writing what’s on my mind, where I’ve been, where I’m going, my poetry and erotica too. I’m excited to be back, excited to share and I’m hoping that the community is still around. It’s still not OD, and never will be, but beggars can’t be choosers when it comes to blogging sites.