Hey again everyone. Hope you are all doing well or teetering near there. I am back as I said and wanted to share and expand a little more in what I touched on in my introduction post. It is a little scattered as are my thoughts and long as are my days so hang in there. I hope you can relate not in the direct sense, but your own situations and take a little something from it.

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Why I went to a foreign country for a year

A lot of people including some on here know I left and do not understand what the hell happened so I will start that off with a simple but not simple answer. I am a survivor not a victim of physical and mental abuse for 12 years. There are many people who knew of it and even on here offered help and I refused it because I did not see it as such. When you are conditioned to believe a chaotic and toxic environment is normal, that is exactly how you see it. Oddly enough you become accustomed to the suck basically like an addiction. So for years from the age of 18 to 30 years old I stayed in the suck even having two kids and getting a home with my abuser. It was always horrible, but towards the end of those 12 years it became life threatening. I knew if I did nothing something was going to happen to me and I could not let my kids see that. I at least owed it to them and myself to find the power to do something about it.

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I finally had it and left.

After twelve long years of physical and mental abuse and being at the point of severe desperation I finally gave myself the permission to say fuck it. I needed to stop being told by someone who was so destructive who I am, what I will be, and what my limits are. I needed to stop needing someone in order to feel good about myself, even if it was toxic. I knew the only way I could be safe - stick with me here because it may sound a bit much to some of you, was to leave the country. A lot of people have said to me, "but there are programs and resources." I am speaking for myself, but when you have gone through over a decade of abuse, you start to blame yourself and keep going back to the abuser. It becomes normal, almost missed. I knew if I stayed even in the same city, state, country, I would have ended up back there and it may have led to something much worse happening to me. May not be the case for everyone, but for me it was. So from 2018-2019 I lived in a foreign country. Never imagined I would, but I did and you know what? I needed that experience and regret absolutely none of it. Some look at it as running from your problems. Nope. If anything I found out more about myself that I never knew existed.

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Get out of your comfort zone

Sounds so cliche and I used to roll my eyes when people would say that to me, but its true. You will stay in the suck as long as you allow it. Nothing changes if nothing changes. In actuality the fact of the matter is people would rather live in the shit, be lazy, and make excuses. Anything and anyone is possible of making themselves or the situation better. Sure maybe your situation is a little bit tougher than the next person, does not make it impossible. Do not be lazy. If you are not happy with anything in your life, do something about it. You have one life to live, once chance to make it better. Don't look back in regret or just settle. You're worth more than that and deserve the best you can get.

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Challenge what you thought you knew about yourself

I never knew what I was capable of until I took myself at the most vulnerable point of my life and threw myself into the wind and said fine lets see where it takes me. Take a chance because at least if you fail, you didn't really fail. You learned to try a different way next time. It's not even really failing. Failing would be not even giving yourself enough credit to think you can do something you once thought was impossible. If you feel hopeless, use that. Sometimes the way we get that push we need to better ourselves is when we are in survival mode or such desparation that there is no choice left. Do not use that as defeat, use it as motivation.

I am not where I want to be fully, not even in the slightest. However what I do know is I was able to make scary leaps to at least better something, even just a smidge and I know now I am very capable of going into way more situations I was afraid of head first. That's okay with me for now. Please if you can take away anything from what I've written, know you owe it to yourself to be the best damn you that you can be and let no one ever tell you otherwise.

If today is your birthday, Happy Birthday. This gal loves you.
XOXO,
Kristan