I am not done yet!

Something was said to me last week by the therapist and it’s not the first time she has said it either but I think its finally started to sink in and I think for the first time in a long time I have really thought about it, evaluated it and actually began to think about my life and what exactly I want to get from life. It somewhat relates to a previous blog post I wrote about continuing on with DBT but its much more than that, what she said has meaning, what she said is true and it has taken me months to finally accept that she has been telling me the truth.

In almost every session that I have had with this therapist over the past four months she has told me that I have to potential to be a happy healthy person. I didn’t believe her and never really thought that much into it, until this week I disagreed with her because I couldn't see the potential in me. Whats more is that I'm not angry at myself for not seeing this potential in me because so much of my life has been a struggle that I have spent most of it living in the past, trying to make sense of things that happened and trying to find ways of coping that I never considered I could be healthy, mentally or physically because the way I coped in the past was by harming myself. I still struggle to this day with self-harm, I still have times where I give into the urges in the hope I can get some relief, I have days where I fight the urges and I win, I have days that I fight the urges and loose but comparing my self harm now to what it was 3-4 years ago I have come a long way. 3-4 years ago if you asked me to go a day without harming I would cry and inevitably I would not be able to do it, I did not have the knowledge or skills then to overcome the urges and while the urges still get the better of me at times knowing that I am now stronger than the urges shows me I have the potential to live a healthier life.

Despite having come a long way over the past 3-4 years and believe me I have come a long way, I've been off my meds for almost 5 months (originally under medical supervision), I have reduced me self-harming significantly and I have continued with therapy despite at times not feeling I was getting much out of it, I am not living my life. I am not living my life, I have the potential to live a happy and healthy life but I'm not. Why you might ask, well I guess there's many reasons but I haven't figured all of them out just yet, I'm not sure if I ever will but one main reason is I'm not giving myself the chance to live my life. Don’t get me wrong I do things I enjoy, I go to college, I go to wok, I go to athletics, I go to scouts and I spend time with my family but that’s it, nothing more and nothing less. I do these things because at this stage they are routine and because I enjoy them but I want more out of life, I want more then just going through the motions. Right now I don’t have a social life, when I say that I mean it too. I don’t go out with friends, I'm pretty sure I'm lucky to be able to say I still have friends and if I keep going the way I am not I'm not sure how much longer I will be able to call them my friends. Right now I don’t have relationships, the closets person in my life is my brother but even at that I cant depend on him forever, I'm already holding him back from doing things he wants to and as much as it pains me to say it I know its true. My relationship with my dad is next to nothing, I can go days without talking to him and I wouldn’t even miss it. If I'm not at college, in work or volunteering I'm at home, spending hours upon hours stuck in my bedroom doing nothing most of the time other times I'm binge watching TV series on Netflix and I need this to change, I need to change and I need to move on, stop living in the past and I need to use my potential to live the life I deserve to live.

Ive been reading Norah Casey's book, Spark and it honestly has got me thinking about my life and there is a chapter entitled “Are you done yet”(hence where this post title came from!) and the answer is no, I'm not done yet. I'm not ready to let my BPD take over my life, I'm not ready to continue to sit around and do nothing, I'm not ready to continue living in the past, what I am ready to do it move on, take on each new day as a new day. I am ready to begin to live my life. I am ready to begin to develop relationships, step out of my comfort zone, rekindle old relationships and most of all I am ready to figure out who I am meant to be, if that is a youth worker, a community worker, a girlfriend, a coach, I don’t know but what I do know is that I am ready to try and figure it out. I am ready to figure out what I want to do with my life, If I want to have a family, if I want to continue throwing discus, if I want a career as a youth worker, I am ready to begin to challenge myself, identify who I am, stop focusing on my weakness and imperfections and begin embracing who I am once I have begun to figure it out. I'm ready to use my potential and live my life.

I know this is a big cliché, but 2015 is going to be the year I begin to find myself, figure out who I am and make my life worth living. Its taken me years to reach this point and had it come in May I would have written this post then but it didn’t so while it sounds like a cliché I can assure you it is not, I am ready to live my life!