To every side of every spectrum there is always an opposite, my blog rants will start with me taking accountability for something in my life that is far from beautiful.
From a young girl I have learned to let stress keep me a physical prisoner of my own body.
In my short 24 years of life I have been bullied, exposed and experienced to sexual abuse as a teenager, lived a life if darkness and alone, grow up into adulthood not knowing a thing about life and being naieve and vulnerable enough to allow a man into my life who destroyed every light in myself that I saw. He destroyed my confidence in myself, made me codependent, and I believed that I was less than nothing and that's all I would ever be. I was convinced that all I needed was him around- he could abuse me in anyway he liked but as long as he was there I thought that was my purpose.
The abuse lasted a couple of years and it tore me inside and out because it took away the youthful kindred spirit that was always inside of me. During the relationship I lost my best friend, my grandmother, and the night of her passing is when my daughter was conceived by not my own choice.
After finding out that I had a child in my body, that alone gave me the strength and courage to get out, not that I felt worth more but because the child would be able to make more of herself. I got out of that relationship and the first few weeks felt more like a detox, I simply just soaked up the stress and tension of it all and simply moved on and went about life as if it happened in the past and there was nothing I could do about it except live.
It is that attitude that has stuck with me and I have acquired and I have adapted to in life ever since. Me coping with stress is non existent, I simply move on with the attitude that there is nothing more that I can do.
This is the behavior that has become my own poison.
My body has shut down twice now in the last few months because it is physically overwhelmed with the stress that has built upon it over the years. I have chose to ignore my problems and not consider them anything but life's twists and turns.
What I have learned is that my mind may be clear of the memories and thoughts but the tension and physical responses never do. Why? Because there is no outlet that I use to release them.
Never do I take part in an activity such as exercise to release my stress, I exercise because I hate my weight and want it gone so that I can accept myself and have others accept me because I have been convinced all my life that I am fat and that is why I attracted abusers and haven't been fully accepted by female peers. This attitude was provoked through family and school members from a young girl.
I don't sing, play an instrument, capture photography, or paint a picture to relieve my stress.
Instead I sing to forget things or I don't sing at all knowing the talent I have within me, again afraid of not being accepted. I don't play an instrument cause I don't feel smart enough to. Photography I love because it focuses on everyone else's beauty but my own. And painting, that was my grandmas talent and I feel like I would be stealing it away from her.
The article says that the people who are talented in these ways are beautiful and I simply agree. I think there is an amazing beauty within individuals who not only have such talents but also have the courage to share their talents with others and not care about what other people think.
That is a courage I have backwards, I fear too much of the negative because it's what I'm convinced of. This is not to say that I don't consider myself a good person or are ignorant to the fact that I have a good heart.
But when I look at myself in the mirror or lay in anxious thought my mind is going 100 miles per hour over what I would enhance or change about my body (no not plastic surgery) but I am so convinced that I am not accepted by society or my peers based on what I look like.
I never believe people when they tell me I'm beautiful and trust me it hurts to acknowledge that I waste every compliment that comes my way.
As a Christian I know that God created me in His image, but through my reading of captivating, I learn that His image is my heart and the things about who I am that are a reflection of and yes I have a certain amount of confidence and thanks in that but I still feel ashamed to say that Satan still has this hold over me, that I'm far from beautiful in the physical sense.
As I open myself up and allow myself to become vulnerable to feeling for others I find myself becoming more critical of how I dress, what makeup routine I do, and how I want to present myself when they will be around. It's become a torture, satans way of convincing me that I'm not good enough.
This attitude is NOT beautiful and one thing I have learned while being sick this last week is that I need to be still in Gods voice who says I am enough, that I don't need to go and change everything about myself for anyone else- especially a boy.
He's reminded me that other priorities need to come first such as taking on activities that are purposely meant to relieve my stress and also to show myself that I need to be a priority too.
So many people have counted on me in the past and I have let them down. Some have become angry and I've lost one friendship over it because the individual couldn't see that two people were being hurt in the situation. They only cared about their own discomfort.
I am always the first to put others first because if I focus on myself I feel selfish and ashamed of my journey, mistakes, and I feel like a failure. That's why I do everything in my power to distract myself and it's finally got to the point where it's not God or my peers telling me to get a grip and wake up, it has now become my body saying "SHAYLYN I am hurting, please do something!"
So that's what I've officially set out to do, make myself a priority and discover things that I find pleasure, peace, and joy. Also find things to do that will purposely relieve stress so I can face it head on instead of attacking and dealing with it.
There's a fine line between choosing to not focus on your own problems and ignoring the stresses that are affecting your every day life big or small. I am not just stressed about one thing and most certainly I have had troubles come and go but the thing is that the tension never goes away.
The Christian in me feels guilt for fretting about this but the logical person in me also knows that I am human, I'm going to fret, and giving God my situation will always be key, but there are things that I need to do in my own free will as well in irder to ensure I'm taking care of myself correctly.
It is my hope and prayer that anyone who deals with stress this way would find it in their own hearts and strength to figure out how to release it because I would not wish upon anyone what has happened to me over the last few months.
God Bless You All
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