I need to find a new way to be me. It's a struggle. One that really no one but me knows about completely. I can count on (less than) one hand the people that know every place my brain has been in the last two years. And even then, I keep a lot to myself, so as not to burden anyone with my "sad story".
The problem is, my whole life - especially in adulthood, but even as I was young, I have always (admittedly, by my own fault) taken everyone else's problems on myself. Even when they didn't know I was. I would stay up nights, mentally exhausting myself on "How can I help them?" without ever breathing a word to them that I was thinking this, in hopes I could come up with a miracle cure for their issue. And would rarely - usually never - ask for help when I had a problem. I'd go out of my way to find a solution so no one had to be bothered with me. Or would just swallow the problem if it couldn't be resolved, and move on with my day. Super healthy, right?
I am incredibly blessed to be a strong willed/emotionally strong person. People have always told me this, but I never really saw what they meant before. I felt like every time I broke down crying to someone, I was being weak and/or making them "deal" with me when they already had so much going on in their lives to stress over. If I complained about not feeling well, I was just "whining". Seriously. My kidney stone ER visit years back? Other than me spinning a funny story about my adventures that day, and the Percocet loopiness in days to follow - I damn near live-tweeted the passing of the stone - no one knew what hell I went through during all of that. Other than the person I was living with that had to witness it so of course he knew, I fully confided in one person, because he knew what I was going through having lived it himself. My Daddy.
And that brings me to where I am now in life. While I am WELL AWARE I have ugly moments on social media (rage blackouts, as I call them), what people don't realize is they're a minuscule fraction of what has actually happened in my day/week/month. Like you hear about the people that bottle stuff up, then just explode? My rage blackouts are me exploding. That old way Katie did things was definitely not healthy. But I made it work. It was how I had always done things, and when a personal crisis hit, I went into "Save Everyone Else From my Shit" mode.
Times are different.
Too much has happened in the last two years (mainly bad, but some good as well) to change my mental/emotional state, that I have to find a new way to be me. I don't want to change who I am. I want to continue to do everything I can to help family, friends, and co-workers. Mentally, emotionally, financially - whatever I am able to do at the time. But I have to find a way to do this without sacrificing myself. This, without a doubt, is something I have to learn to do myself. It's no one's fault I've not done it in the past. While people may have asked me for help (many didn't), no one EVER asked me to hurt myself/put myself in a bad place in the process. I just have to find my new way.
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