Just Go For It

There are times my proactive mentality overrides my sense of reality, and becomes closer to willfulness than anything. I grew up surrounded by people who taught me what it meant to be selfless. One of these people was my Abuelo (grandpa) Armando. He was the MOST selfless person I know. He literally would give you the shirt off his back or anything he could if he had the capacity to do so.

Recently the five-year anniversary of the day he went home to God passed us and I was a tad more emotional than maybe the past couple years. Part of it may have been the five-year mark, realizing it had been half a decade since he took his last breath, or perhaps it was something else. You see, I recently made some choices that bettered me as a person, and for the longest time I didn't think I'd be able to do that because it may have been viewed as selfish.

However, as I look back on this past year, specifically what led me to planning my suicide and ultimately the continuation of suicidal thoughts and self-harm, it dawned on me that had I not made the necessary changes in my life, I perhaps would not be on this earth. Although I don't see suicidal tendencies stemming from any type of mental illness as necessarily selfish, had I not been willing to fight, THAT would have been selfish.

So I did fight. I fought for everyone surrounding me and typically, that might make sense. I focused on serving those around me without really thinking about what I needed to change in order to start living a life worth living. I figured deep down there is no way I could restructure myself because it might affect too many people in the outcome. I chose to continue to bury seeds of truth deeper within my being and fight for survival.

Do you know how exhausting just surviving is?

It is not only exhausting, it is miserable. 

After half a year of tearing through these deep roots, and prayers filled with tears of anguish, I finally was met with clarity. Clarity that not only provided me with a sense of hope, but also removed any desire to escape this life. Regardless of my progress, and it had been a ton of progress at that, it doesn't mean I still didn't have massive breakdowns I had to work through with a superfluous amount of skills. Somewhere in the back of my head I still held suicide as an ultimate option and before you judge that statement, remember that having Borderline Personality Disorder can sometimes be a daily effort to survive.

I got to a point where surviving wasn't enough. I needed to be able to live...and thrive.

I had to throw the "black and white" mentality out the window and just go with it. One of my favorite quotes is:

There will be a few times in your life when all your instincts will tell you to do something, something that defies logic, upsets your plans, and may seem crazy to others. When that happens, you do it. Listen to your instincts and ignore everything else. Ignore logic, ignore the odds, ignore the complications, and just go for it. - Judith McNaught

Oh but where does God come into this for those of you who might be shaking their heads. Well, God created every intricacy of our minds and that includes that "gut feeling" you have when you know you have to do something.

I have for TOO long concerned myself with pleasing everyone in my life. Guess what? 

Not going to happen.

If we were all on the same page, well then politics wouldn't exist. It is that simple.

This doesn't mean I care only about myself; however, what it means is that I'm not going to let the opinions of others or the dialectics of others be my foundation. I need to stand for myself. Another quote from the famous character Rock Balboa:

It doesn't matter how this looks to other people. If this is something you gotta do, then you do it. Fighters fight.