ramblings of a skittens mind

Sometimes your whole world changes in a millisecond, I know mine did. All it takes is that one thing to spark something inside of you and everything is up in the air. That one thing could be anything, a person, a memory, a book, a song or even a smell or taste.

For me that one thing was a person, who is quite simply the most amazing person I have ever had come in to my life. I have spent many years hating myself and always thinking that I wasn’t worth enough to have good people around me. I used to surround myself with people who would only want me around because they could either get something out of me or use me to make their lives better. I didn’t even see what was happening as in my eyes I was making them happy so I must have been doing a good thing.

I've found I will keep myself in a situation because it is making the other person happy, I think I try and convince myself that if make them happy then I must be happy myself, this was so far from the truth its kinda unbelievable. All I was doing was losing any sense of me as my own person that I had left. I guess I pretty much became an empty shell that plastered on a fake smile and let the outside world think I was OK.

When I look back at the past 6years now that I am seeing things with a new outlook on life, I cant believe that I would do that to myself. Going from one destructive relationship to another, not really taking care of myself and just letting my personality disappear till I was nothing but a a shell, a ghost if you like.

In the past 2 or 3 months I have learnt so much about myself it is unbelievable, I’ve learnt more in that short space of time than in the 24 years I’ve been on this planet. I have discovered what my personality is like, the things I enjoy doing (and the the things I don’t), what sort of job I want to have in the future and who I am as a person. I've pretty much been discovering me, it feels as if I have started from the ground up learning about myself one little bit at a time. I guess I didn’t really know who me was before, I would pretend that I understood me and fool myself in to thinking that what I was doing at the time was what I wanted. It all seems like such a waste now I look back on it.

I am sure there were sometimes when the real Jodie was in control and I was happy but they really were few and far between. I guess that because I struggled to have any self belief and didn’t value myself at all, I could never understand why people would be nice to me and really seem as if they cared about me. Every time anyone got close to me in that way I would always end up doing something to push them away because I felt as if I didn’t deserve anyone being nice to me or caring. This meant I ended up with a group of people around me that had an almost toxic effect on my life. When I think about how it affected me it really was like a poison that slowly ate away at me until there wasn’t anything left that could be recognised as me. I was what they wanted and needed which was something to improve their lives or to give them a source of entertainment. I wasn’t able to think as a free person and develop a sense of who I was. Its only now that I’m free from that environment that I have been able to develop in to myself and learn just who I am.

I think back to only a year or so ago when lots of people called themselves my friends but really they were only interested in the drunk, loud, mad person that appeared on nights out. All they wanted was a drinking buddy, someone who would entertain them on a weekend. None of them cared when I gave up alcohol, in fact pretty much all of them stopped talking to me altogether. When I moved out of Bristol most of them didn’t even notice I wasn’t around any more, they all just moved on to the next person that could entertain them.

Sometimes I do feel really lonely, like I’m missing out on something by not being surrounded by people that call themselves friends but if I am totally honest I would rather be able to count my true friends on one hand, than have loads of so called mates that don’t really care about me as a person. I look back at the friendships I have had in the past and I was never very good at spotting when somebody was taking advantage, being fake and using me for their own gain. Sometimes I do wish I had the wake up call years ago, I think I could have saved myself a lot of heartache, pain and stress.

Someone who I thought was one of my best friends really proved to me the other weekend just how wrong you can be about people. I came out for a Friday night out in Bristol with her, something I haven’t done in ages. The night was going really well until she disappeared on me. Left me in a pub on my own, when it was only the two of us out. She kept making excuses over text message and promised me she would meet me in the club I was headed to. Well, this never happened and I spent the rest of my night with 2 girls I met whilst sat on my own. But hey ho, its something I have learnt from and will move on from it as an improved person.

I think I have spent too much time dwelling on the past and using it as an excuse to behave how I have done and also using it as a reason not to really care about myself. I always told myself that if I was a good person, someone worth knowing, someone worth caring about then none of what happened in my past would have ended up happening to me. I always remember being jealous of other children in school when they would talk about they great weekends and holidays with their parents. I just wanted to scream out that it wasn’t fair that I had to go home to somewhere filled with hate, tears, abuse and violence. Why did I get the bad family?? what did I do that was so wrong that my childhood was taken away from me in the worse was possible??

Those are not really questions I can answer even now but I have learnt to accept that although I may not be able to change my past, I can learn and grow from it. I went through more as a child than most people will face in a lifetime and I came out the other side of it all a stronger, better person. I guess I’ve always had a fighting streak inside me, I’m not one to let things beat me. It may be tough and sometimes I feel like giving up but I always keep going, I wouldn’t be here now if I didn’t. It just seems wrong to me to give up now after everything I’ve faced. I'm still here for a reason and it would be foolish of me to throw all the hard work, effort and tears I’ve put in over the years away.

I still have the odd few days where I will ask my self “why me?” and sometimes its hard not to start rethinking over the past, but then I think about where I am in my life now and it almost makes everything in my past disappear. I have so much going for me now, that its hard to think of my life being any different. I have met some of the best people I think I could ever want in my life and they really are true friends. They don’t want anything from me, they don’t use me and the best thing of all is that they respect me for me. I don’t have to pretend to be someone I'm not when I'm around them. They accept all the little strange things about my personality, they don’t try to change me in to what they want and they are honest, kind, caring and real true friends.

I think part of me never thought I would ever find that with anyone, so sometimes I have to remind myself that they friends with me because they like me as a person not because they are using me for their own personal gain. I guess sometimes my brain slips back in to old thinking pattens and I start to wonder what they want from me, but then they will do something that reminds me why I have them in my life and I cant stop smiling. Its taken me along time to get to the point of being able to trust people totally and I'm honoured that its this amazing couple of people who have helped me feel so good about myself.

I really didn’t think much of myself when I was growing up or when I hit my twenties , I was never very proud of me as a person, I didn’t think I was worth anything to anyone. Which I believe is why I let myself fall in to bad friendships and relationships over and over again. I knew that they were doing me no good but I had convinced myself that I wasn’t worth anything better so I carried on with it all, I think that sometimes I convinced myself that when partners were treating me badly that it was them showing they cared but I now understand that there wasn’t any care or love behind their actions or how they treated me.

I think it got to the point where I just didn’t even care about me as a person any more, it was as if I wasn’t worth caring about. I used to tell myself that if I was a good person that was worth something then none of what happened to me in the past would have happened. I know now that I had no control over what happened in my childhood, it wasn’t my fault and at the time there was nothing I could have done to change it. Just because bad things happened to me doesn’t mean I'm a bad person or I'm not worth caring about. I pride myself on the fact that I did manage to keep going when everything around me was falling apart.

Now that I have grown up a bit and have stopped blaming myself for everything, I can see that I wouldn’t be who I am today if I hadn’t have been through everything I have. I have found my self worth and respect, I know that if I hadn't I wouldn’t have found the friends I have at this moment. Sometimes it just takes a bit of time for you to start seeing the bigger picture and you have to let everything fall in to place. If you try to force it to happen too quickly, you will just end up right back where you started.

To be able to sit here and say that within myself for the first time in god knows how many years, I really do feel as if I am worth something and I am a good enough person for others to respect, care and want to be around, is the best feeling in the world. I really didn’t think that I would ever be able to honestly say that I have such a new found self confidence and self belief that I have started to accept myself for who I am and I have started to like myself which is something I can never thank the people around me for enough.

I guess it just takes that one little spark to set off a whole chain reaction that at the beginning you might not be able to see where it leads but once you start to feel the changes happen not only around you but also within yourself, you will know that the all the bad things, events, memories and feelings just don’t even matter any more. You start to see the new and amazing direction that your life is starting to head in. Knowing the people that are by your side are true and loyal friends that you can count  on no matter what, makes your journey even more special.

How can you expect yourself to move on with you life if your always living in the past. You cant change the past or erase it but you can learn and grow from it, and use it to help shape the person you are today. The past doesn’t make you, its you that using all of life’s experiences to mould yourself in to the person that you strive to become.