A Tiger and Her Stripes

  Appearances will keep you bound. I share so much, yet so little, of my life. Whether it is out of "pretending" to be a private person or shame or both I couldn't tell you. Even now I'm almost certain it's that I'm not going to tell you. I have to explain some things about alcoholism . It is not as black and white as you might think it is. See my issue with drinking started back in 2010, 2011. I drank because it was fun. I drank because it was an escape. I drank because my life at that time was difficult, but I didn't drink daily. I've always been a binge drinker . I could party on the weekends and go to work like the weekend didn't happen. I even recognized back then the possibility of a drinking problem. The clearest incident in my mind was one night I had been drinking, I got sleepy and decided to go to bed, now, an alcoholic doesn't waste alcohol. I had my cup that was still about halfway full, I didn't want to guzzle the e...

  I don't know exactly what sent me down this rabbit hole. A thought popped into my head and I started wondering what happened to Evangelism like we had in the 90's? What happened to going out into the community and having tent services? Additionally, I got lost in the memories of Christianity when it was oh so simple for me. Back when I went to church every week, multiple times a week for various things: Bible study, choir rehearsal, piano lessons, drill team, mime, and church plays. The one thing I found myself missing most of all was the March For Jesus. What happened to it? Does it still go on? When did it start? The answer to my question was wrong. I did a google search to see when The March For Jesus started in Youngstown, Ohio and it said that it started on June 11th, 2000. Although my memory is horrible, I knew that that wasn't correct. I was 16 years old and even though I had a lot going on in my life at the time, I knew for a fact that io hadn't attended the M...

At this point I have to ask, is therapy really working?    I've been in therapy on and off since I was about 14 years old... maybe one or two years younger than that. That being said, I never really got much out of it in the teen years because let's face it, as a teen you really don't want to cooperate with any adult, let alone a "Shrink". I would go and talk about nothing of importance, pretending to sleep when it was my mother's turn to come in for the session with me. How this woman knew I wasn't sleeping was beyond me. I did what I was required to do and got my Doritos every time I went, so I was happy. Looking back at my first session, I can see the pattern that started even way back then. I have the hardest time finding competent therapists. Let me explain, from the moment I read an article in Teen Magazine about depression, I basically diagnosed myself. My being in therapy wasn't even the result of my mother thinking I had depression; it was bec...

Random conversations at work tend to be the best sort of conversations. One such conversation occurred last week that has been on my mind ever since. In true ADHD fashion, I cannot tell you how this conversation came about. I can only tell you that by the conclusion of that conversation, I have been contemplating deeply on my bucket list. Two of the three of us had bucket lists, can you guess which person didn't have one? Yes, that would be me. Oddly enough, during my recent vacation to Tennessee with my best girlfriends, the mention of go-karting as something on one of their bucket lists didn't get this sort of response out of me. In fact, I thought it was cute that that was one of the things on their list. So, why was last week's conversation different? Why was that the moment I thought about what was on mine, and did I actually have one? It's taken a week to figure it all out, but this is what I came up with. First, I didn't even know what should go on my bucket ...

  It's frustrating that I even feel the need to write about this. It's more than frustrating, it's downright infuriating. It's so strange to look back on my life and see how far I have come. I used to have the worst attitude in the world. If my day was going bad I would take it out on anyone and everyone at any given time. It wasn't until I was at McDonald's one day, and a lady I had been really nasty to said to me "Honey, I haven't done anything to you." I remember exactly how I felt in that moment. The mere memory of it elicits the same emotions and feelings of that moment. The realization as it swept over me, the light that seemed to brighten my world, and the smile that spread across my face. I felt light, and I felt free. I apologized and vowed from that day forward that I would try my best not to take my bad day out on others. Admittingly, I still struggle with it from time to time, however, in those moments that I do forget I try to at least...