The Awakening: Part One

HELLO EVERYONE!

To whoever made the choice to continue to read my posts, thank you and I love you.

So in my intro blog I had kind of touched base about this "awakening" that I had. So it's really affected me in such a positive way, that it's basically the reason I chose to start blogging. I wanna let you guys know how everything started, every detail. And I really wanna focus on the most recent relationship that I've decided to end, because part of this enlightenment that came to me, is that I've never established my self worth.

The awakening part 2 is going to provide psychological depth and detail about why and how I've never established my worth.

Side note- this blog has two different focuses happening at two different parts of my life. The topic of self worth will be relating to events starting when I was 9 years old. However my awakening happened after my last relationship ended, so the events in this blog will be those that have happened since april of this year.

Also to help prevent confusion, my awakening is what caused me to become aware that I've never established my self worth, and after digging deeper, the root of that stems from my childhood (which is why this is divided in two parts).

So since I'm gonna talk about my last relationship, I want you guys to know it all. And I want to make it clear that this is MY reality while in this relationship, my intentions with telling all is not to degrade anyone as a person.

So, it started almost 5 years ago, I was working at Hardees. This dude comes in with his bosses once a week. After hearing a little rumor that he wanted my number, I wrote it down and gave it to him. We started off seeing each other maybe twice a week. We clicked easily, our personalities vibed, and we had fun together. I was 19 when we had first met, so we were never able to go to a bar together, but had no trouble finding a place to drink together. He had met my parents multiple times, he came over to my parent's house and there was never really an issue except for his unfiltered mouth when he drank too much I never considered him my "boyfriend", it was just two people having fun and getting to know each other. What I found out later was that I knew nothing about him at all. I started to pick up on a different side of him that I hadn't seen. I would sometimes ask questions about what he was doing, but never tried to force the truth out of him. It wouldn't have mattered what he told me, he lied about everything. I remember a night when he had taken me to his friend's house. He told me to sit on the couch, and he would be right back. The back room where he went had no door to it, only a curtain, so I could hear him sniffing profusely and coughing so hard he dry heaved.

**At the age of 19, I had only been around drunk people. I was never around anyone who did pills, meth, heroin, cocaine. So I didnt know how anyone would act if they were on those drugs.

We continued to see each other, until my life took an unexpected turn. My best friend died march 18th, 2015. I've never lost anyone as close to me as Trey was, and I had no idea how to continue my life without my bestfriend. My parents had taken my sister out of town for her birthday 2 weeks later after the death of Trey, I stayed home by myself. I asked the same guy who i had been seeing, to come over so I didnt have to be alone. He stayed the night with me, and the next morning I woke up he was cleaning the garage out for my parents.

**So plot twist, I thought he was doing something really nice, but I later had found out he searched my parent's home for pills and expensive items to pawn off for money.

The next week, when my parents were home, he came to visit and apologize for being absent during a time I needed him. He stood in front of me, unable to keep his balance and unable to keep his eyes open. He nodded in an out of reality while he struggled to get his apology out. This is when I realized that he was doing something really bad. I never thought it was heroin, I just knew I had been involved with someone who was on a drug that would take over his life.

I had later received the news that he went to prison some weeks ago. I never expected to see or hear from him again.

He was away for almost 2 years, during this time, I bought my first home in fort wayne, I was now 21, and had a new boyfriend. My boyfriend at that time lived with me. Our relationship was slowly coming to an end, but we hadn't officially broke it off yet.

So I was bar hopping downtown after a tin caps game with some friends, and you wouldn't believe who I ran into.... yup, the ex who went to prison. I said hi and he messaged me that night. I so easily fell right back into something I should've never started.

This time with him was a little different..

We drank 5 nights out of the week, the other couple nights that I wasn't with him I had been at my house, probably having a glass of wine and catching up on my absence of laundry. We continued to do this for about a year. I stayed with someone who put my life at risk because he couldnt stay awake driving home from the bar. I stayed with someone who was not faithful to me, who called me every name in the book and degraded me in all aspects, but I stayed.

So while I was with him, my now ex boyfriend was still living with me. We barely talked, it was a miserable, exhausting situation. However we ended up hooking up a night in September of 2017...

October of 2017 I found out I was pregnant.

I did not know who the father of my child was. My heart and my head tried to find every reason for it to be my ex boyfriends who still lived with me, and this was because a few months prior I had learned that the other guy I was with was not only on pain pills, he was doing heroin. After two weeks of not speaking to him, he called me and thats when I told him I was pregnant. He asked if it was his and I told him I honestly didn't know.

I had pretty much had my mind made up that this guy was not going to be in my childs life. He had asked for a paternity test when I was about 5 months pregnant, and honestly, at that point, I told him that this child was not his. He had heard from more than a handful of people that I knew he was the father, however he decided to walk away and move to another state.

The ex that lived with me also knew that this child probably was not his, however he stepped up and took care of me the entire time I was pregnant. Our relationship had not been fixed, but he chose to still be there for me despite the fact that I was carrying someone else's child. When it came to welcoming my little one into the world, he was there for 13 hours of labor, and months after that. He made the choice not to sign the birth certificate, and that was okay with me. He helped me so much with my son for the first 5 months, but things still weren't right between us, and it set him into a dark, deep, depression era. He became more and more absent from mine and my sons life. He spent hours on the xbox while I fed, bathed, and rocked my child to sleep. We weren't able to communicate anymore, there were so many times we wouldn't even look at each other. We had separate rooms and avoided each other as much as possible, we were killing each other. Aside from our broken relationship, he wasnt stepping up as a father. I fought through so many months of being at my lowest give him a chance to step up. I chose to live this way for about 4 or 5 months, until he made the choice to move out.

A week prior to him leaving, I gave him the ultimatum that if he couldn't step up as a father, then I had to take a leap and make the choice to give my son's biological father a chance. For some reason I couldn't let go of my son not having a father..

April of 2019 is when my son and his biological father first met.

The first night couldn't have gone better, their reactions toward each other were so natural. I had hope.

His first "mess up" (because I had expected these often) had occurred sooner than expected. The third night of him being home, he walked through my front door, his eyes glossy and pupils barely visible. He fed our child, bathed him and then I put him to sleep. A few hours after, I walked in the living room to him passed out of the couch with his phone still at his ear. I tried waking him up, he was incoherent. We talked about it later, he admitted to taking a percocet, he then cried because I had said he wasn't going to see our son the next day.

His next "mess up" occurred the following week when he started drinking and couldn't stop. He had been at my house for a few hours doing landscaping, and had a few drinks while doing so. I ended up falling asleep while putting our son to bed, and when I woke up, he was drunk and getting ready to leave to go to the bar. He is always so loud when he drinks and I had to remind him so many times to not wake our son up. I remember saying "shut the fuck up," when he wouldn't bring his volume down... well, that set him off. He couldn't find his car keys and blamed me for hiding them. He spent an hour marching throughout the house, inside and out, trying to find his lost car keys. Our son woke up because of the noise and he yelled at me for bringing him downstairs. I remember him saying "Really? You're going to bring my son into this?" It was my fault for taking care of our crying baby who had woken up due to the noise he made.

As I invested more and more time into figuring out how to help him become a good father, I also tried to learn the deeper aspects to his alcoholism and why he is the way he is. I learned that he had withdrawn from heroin more than 4 times, that the last time we were together (prior to my pregnancy) he spent hours cleaning his bathroom walls from the blood splattered while trying to find a vein, I learned that the reason he injects testosterone and trenbolone (a steroid) is because of a childhood of being overweight and made fun of. I learned that his downfall stemmed from a loss of his bestfriend at the age of 15. I learned that this egotistical, narcissistic personality that he portrays to everyone is due to an empty, lost soul who has never come to terms with his past. Instead of managing his emotions, he coats them with alcohol. He admitted to heavily drinking almost every day for the year he had lived in another state. As I learned all of these things, I didn't realize how much harder this was going to be to help him.

So you kind of get the picture of how this continues...

I knew bringing an alcoholic home wouldn't be easy, I knew switching his life entirely around in 1 day wouldn't be easy. I told myself I would stick by him and help him adjust, I told myself that he has so much potential and I was going to make it work.

But "potential" never promises.

To sum up how the weeks continued- overall, the 4 hours that he plays dad a couple times a week, he does really good. But it's the other 100+ hours spent when his child isn't present is what showed his true character. When he was at the bar, I was at home with our son taking care of him. He thought he deserved the weekends to himself because he worked hard during the week. His drinking progressed so much that he started to drink and drive. He showed up to see his son drunk, and lied about how much he had drank. (He also blamed me for the reason why he drinks so much.) And on the countless nights that he blacked out, I was the target. How many nights I've spent listening to someone call me a whore, a bitch, worthless, a cunt. I've been called it all over and over. It got to the point where he would be so far into blackout that he wouldn't wake up when our son cried in the middle of the night. On the nights he drank heavily, he would yell in his sleep the most awful things. He had conversations about doing heroin, often yelling the "f" bomb, degrading women. On those nights I had to take my son out of the room to sleep on the couch. I remember getting a call from a friend one time who said he had fallen asleep at the bar and couldn't stay awake.

I no longer looked forward to the weekends, because they consisted of me taking care of our son while he drank, I had to stay sober to be the DD. I didn't know when something that I said would cause him to yell at me and breakout into an argument that would last until he was sober.

I watched him beat his brothers dog in front of our son, and I will never allow my son to lay hands on any animal like that. I tried to nicely ask him to be mindful of what he said in front of our son, but then it turned out to be my fault because I, too, have said things I shouldn't in front of Mayson. I asked him to be quiet while our son was sleeping, but then I was a bitch for telling him what to do. I remember being at a restaurant and having to go into the bathroom to cry because he called me a bitch, and everyone heard it. I was so embarrassed. A waitress followed me into the bathroom and even offered to take me home so I wouldn't have to deal with him. And somehow it was no big deal the next morning because he didn't remember. He called me a liar when I told him the awful way he treated me the night prior. The words I'm sorry seemed to be on repeat. In my eyes, you're only truly sorry if you're capable or want to fix your actions.. you make it right when you're sorry. He never made it right.

On July 5th, I made the mistake of looking at his phone after he had passed out, on it was a text from my hairdresser that read "come fuck me so I can go to sleep." I woke him up and yelled, acting purely out of anger and hurt, I definitely called him a piece of shit. That night was the first night in my entire life that I had been picked up and thrown on the back of a car, his hands gripped my throat, I had been thrown on the ground with a knee to my chest, and thrown again against a window. And let me make this clear also, no man is going to put his hands on me for free, I fought back. I fought out of anger, hurt, and a new fear of seeing what he was capable of. I filed a police report 2 days later, but allowed him to manipulate his way into my life again, I dropped the charges.

He told me he loved me, I believed him. He told me he wanted a family, I believed him. When he said he was going to marry me, I craved it.... But when he told me I was crazy, I believed that too. When he said my family is the reason why our son would grow up fucked up, I believed his words. I was a nobody, I let him tell me who I was and who I wasnt. I continue to stay.

The second (and last time) we had been in a physical altercation, was when the other woman who, he had told me multiple times, that he wasn't talking to her, called him while we were out together. He lied and told me it was through facebook messenger and that he had blocked her number. I thought it was finally time to message her and let her know that I have been in the picture (more than just the "baby mama") the entire time.

****I was aware that when he moved back home, he was still trying to end a relationship that he had been in. For almost 4 months I did not get mad when she called in the middle of the night repeatedly. I didn't get mad when he told me they had talked that day. I didnt start getting hurt from it until he started telling me that he was going to end things with her to be with me.

I went back to his house that night to sleep. (I wanted to walk away so bad but couldn't, and I used the excuse that I didnt want to drink and drive in order to keep me at home with him.) When he found out that I messaged this other girl, he drug me out of his room and out to the living room by my feet. He picked me up and threw me at the lamp, and against his TV. I remember the look in his eyes when he told me I was 2 seconds from getting knocked out. This went on for almost 4 hours, he drug me throughout his house, hid my purse, threw my phone out in the yard, it seemed to go on so long...His mom and dad had to pick me up at 6:30 that morning. He had been snorting cocaine all night and was far beyond drunk.

I saw him once more almost a month after, he dropped off all of my things that remained at his house. That weekend he flew back to the state where his girlfriend was waiting for him.

So I've heard more than what I've needed to about everyone's opinions and judgments toward me based on my relationship. How could you go back to someone who laid hands on you. How could you put your son through that. You aren't being a good mother. You need to get your priorities straight.

Blah blah blah

You know how many nights I wanted to pack my things and leave? Does anyone know how wounded my heart and head were.. and I knew what the right choice was, but my feet wouldn't walk away.

I didnt allow him to see his son after that, if I wasnt safe, then my son wasn't either. He told me he was taking me to court for custody and that he had paid over 3 grand for a lawyer. Well, a week went by and I was thinking about everything, and I just wanted this to be as easy as possible if we absolutely had to coparent (again, more excuses that I made to go back- I had this idea so concrete in my head that just because we had a kid together, meant that I was stuck.) So I had came up with the idea of doing a written contract between us, it would cover days of visitation, holidays and everything that we would establish in court....without the hassle of going to court. I still had been so consumed in him. I wasn't ready to make this decision, any decision that I would have made, would result in me being around him, and that is why I would supervise their visits.

It wasn't until someone questioned if I was doing this for my child, or for me, that I realized, I was using my son as an excuse to not have to let him go and to be in his presence.

So this is when my little light bulb decided to turn on.

The morning I called my sons father and told him the written contract wasn't a good idea, was the last damn time I let him get in my head and make me think that I was the crazy one. I was honest in the fact that it was an excuse to see him, and, well, let's just say he went off. He told me I was selfish and that I never think about my son, he told me I was a crazy bitch (and for a second, I really did second guess myself to think maybe I was crazy), I listened to him for almost 10 whole minutes as he screamed at me, saying anything and everything to degrade me.

And I dont know what it was, what happened or what I was thinking, but all of a sudden I just saw everything.

I'm worth literally nothing to myself. For all you assholes who questioned why I stayed, or what I was doing, there's your answer.

This person gave me everything I wanted in a sense of making me feel as if I had some worth, a worth that I never gave myself. Whatever he had filled me with, prevented me to leave, I held on so tight to the "highs" that the lows seemed so easy to disregard.

So, I realized that I don't love myself at all, but that isn't what gave me the strength to leave, that's only the reason why I didn't leave.

As I'm sitting outside trying to analyze and sort through this part of my brain that decided to start working (at a really good time too), I discovered what was going to allow me to be able to leave.

My son... I'm a mother.

At this point, I've been a mom for 15 months, but for some crazy reason, I discovered that this man wasn't the only person in my life who gave me worth. I sat and looked at Mayson and felt overwhelmed with a sense of such empowerment and relief.

As I tried to comprehend my thoughts, I've concluded I have two parts that makeup my self entirely. The first half is what I describe as me now, the second part I named me as a mother. Even as a mother, everyone has a side to them that they would act like if they never had kids. So this me now side, doesn't know what she's worth, she doesn't love herself, and she is scared of being alone. But, my other side, me as a mother, just finally realized that this little boy that God has blessed me with, gives me an overwhelming amount of worth. And because I was so invested in holding onto this worth that this man filled the part of me that was empty, I blinded myself and didn't give my son a chance to give me this.

To explain a little bit better, I know that my son loves me, and although I put myself in bad positions, I would never do that to him, he's always come first. But my subconscious mind had figured out a way to allow myself to put mayson first, and at the same time, be able to find a way back to what I couldn't leave.

If it seems like a lot.... its because it is.

I've been trying to understand subconscious thoughts and how the brain is capable of rewiring itself without you knowing. It's an amazing, crazy, scary moment when I realized that I have been capable of this all along, but something so deep inside of my mind prevented me from seeing it, I was blinded by my own self. It didn't matter how many people questioned me or told me he wasn't good for me, I knew I deserved more, but I didn't know I was worth more. That is also another awakening moment that occurred to me that morning. Everyone has this picture in their head of what love is to them, and how they want to be treated by someone. That picture is so clear to me, and I knew that I didn't deserve to be hit, or blamed for someone else's actions. I knew I didn't deserve any of this, but I just didn't know that I am worth more.

The more I took in this fresh air, I started thinking about other people in these situations. The situations in which you know you should go the other way, you know it from the bottom of your damn heart, but you just can't... you will never do what you need to, unless something or someone else is able to satisfy whatever void you have.

But if your soul is as abandoned as mine, filling this void will only give you what is temporary.

If anyone is going to listen to anything I've said, I want this advice to stay with you- there is nothing in your life that will last forever, you will (many times) suffer from a loss, whether it's a physical existence, or psychologically, you will have moments that you feel "something is missing," that is a void. It's an unknown (or known) empty or uneasy sense. Filling a void is so easy to do and we do it sometimes without trying to. It's simple, an empty space can be filled with anything, but that space can also be vacated just as fast. Filling voids will only provide temporary comfort.

I have a lot of pieces that I'm missing internally, my whole life I've searched for anything or anyone to redirect my mind away from feeling unhappy with myself, or alone. Voids are inevitable, but temporary. However, if you have this empty, dark, feeling that is forcing you to continually find short-lived satisfaction, I've learned (specific to my situation) that there is something more internally that needs to be assessed. In my case, this happens to be the absence of self love. Know the difference. An empty space can be filled and emptied over and over again, (a void), but if you're finding yourself to allow things into your life that inhibit your growth because of some sort of happiness you obtain from it, that is your worth that is missing or has yet to be found. But you have complete control of that. You can choose to allow other people (like I have) to control every aspect of you and how you feel, OR you can choose to obtain a lifelong understanding and happiness with yourself.

So that's where I'm at right now. I have this little boy who loves me SO much and he doesnt even know me. And because I've spent my whole life searching for happiness in anything besides MYSELF, my mind had already made the decision for me. This enlightenment of my worth as a mother has made me walk away from the most toxic relationship I've ever had, and one that I could never say no to.

The me now part of myself is still empty though, like I would go back to him if I had never been able to grasp a piece of my own worth. The first couple weeks of this journey consisted of having to come to terms with being alone again. I laid in bed a few times and just cried myself to sleep. But I can honestly say that now that I've accepted it, I'm so focused on building the strongest possible foundation of self love and internal happiness, and it's such an amazing experience. I feel so different about myself. If anything in my life prevents me from growing physically, mentally, emotionally, or spiritually, I won't hesitate to let it go.

If you're reading this and you've thought "really, that was it? She just doesn't know what she's worth?" YUP. that was my oh shit moment. My whole life has been relationships that (I now realize) have been abusive in some way to me, and no wonder they never worked out. I've been trying to dig deep into my past relationships, and all of which I have found that I've had a unique "abuser". In another blog I will explain my mental abuser, my emotional abuser, and all others in which have damaged my mental, emotional, psychological, or spiritual self worth and growth.

I had read this article on Empaths and Narcissists. Link at the end of blog, super good read. We all know the definition of a narcissist, however an empath, is described as an "emotional sponge," someone who can absorb feelings from other people very easily. This makes them them very attractive to narcissists, because they see someone who will fulfill their every need in a selfless way. I feel like this really describes my last relationship. The article goes on to mention a term called trauma bonding. I did some research on this term, and I copied this definition from google so I do not take credit for the following- "With “Narcissistic Trauma Bonding,” you are initially showered with intense love and approval. It is like a fantasy come true. ... You will find yourself “Trauma bonded” to someone who is destroying you. This is like your own personal opiate addiction crisis. WEIRD. The article goes on to explain that empaths will typically listen to their abuser in the sense that they are the ones who are at fault, empaths tend to ignore the narcissistic behavior and direct their energy on what they need to improve, what their character flaws are, and it ends up in this toxic cycle. Empaths struggle with fears of rejection, abandonment and loss, and this is why they become attracted to the toxicity of a narcissist. They believe that loving others is the solution, without cultivating any self-love themselves.

As sick as the surface of all of this is, there is an interesting psychological reasoning to why people stay in toxic relationships.

So that was that guys! I hope this was an influence to self reflect and realize you are worth more. Part 2 of this blog focuses on the same concept, however I talk about where the hell I went wrong, where this started, and some voids in my life that I, too, have tried to fill over and over, and yet I keep wondering why I'm not truly happy...

Thanks to all those who took the time to read, stay tuned for part 2.

Xoxo

Link to article <<<<< https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.businessinsider.com/why-empaths-and-narcissists-are-attracted-to-each-other-2018-1