Survival of the Fittest

There's something to be said about human beings and their persistent urge to survive. No matter what hardship we run across, we will always persevere. As tragedy piles on tragedy, some of us, like my sister, lose sight of what the fight is all about. They lose sight of their own primal, human instinct. They become alcoholics, addicts, society drop-outs, suicides. Yes, some of us don't make it through the constant struggle known as life. But some of us, like myself, do. With that said, I would like to present you with this week's topic: How to Survive and Flourish in life.

People often comment in admiration on the fact that despite all of my hardship and tragedy I have survived and flourished. They think I must be incredibly strong to have made it through everything I have. I'll admit that it has been tough. It is a strange thing to look at a family photo and realize that you are the only one in that photo still alive. It is a lonely thing to realize that the only people to have known you from birth are dead.

 A lot of people think that in order to survive tragedy and suffering, you need the love of others. If you have the love of others, they will support you and carry you through rough times. But this cannot be the key to survival; my sister had the love of myself and my half-sister, as well as her friends. There was no lack of love towards her. Instead I think that the key to survival and happiness is the ability to give love. In my sister's case, there were people she loved, but I think that after my mother's death she could not find someone to love on that level. That is, the level of a best friend and caretaker, which is what my mother was to my sister. I think that it is not any level of strength or endurance that helped me survive, but rather, my ability to love new people in the ways that I needed to and in effect, create a new family for myself.

In moments of tragedy, if you look around you, you will see people reaching out to help you. You will see people who care about you.

These are the people who give you loans even when you can't tell them when you will pay them back.

 They are the people who have an open ear and open shoulder when you need to talk. They are the people who, when you mention that your mother was the only person who asked you about your day, takes time out of their schedule each day to ask you how you are doing and how your day was. They are the people who come with you on last minute road trips and don't pressure you to talk about it when you get the call that your sister has died.

They are the people who sit in silence with you when you don't want to talk about it. They are the people that will stand up for you if someone talks bad about you.

They are the people who get together to talk about the tragedy and loss you have experienced together. They are the people who laugh and cry and experience hardship right along side you.

They are the people who encourage you to be silly and ridiculous sometimes, just to experience that blissfully happy side of life.

They are the people who support you when you need them, and they are also the people who tell you that you don't need support, that you have been through hell and back again and that you will survive this.

These people will enter and leave your life as the years pass, but they will always leave an impression on your life. They can be your family, if you let them. If you allow yourself to love them, they will change your life. They have changed my life, in ways that I can never fully understand or describe. I am left in awe at the debt I owe each and every one of these people for coming into my life and being the family that I needed to survive. The key to survival and to happiness is to love and let love. Happiness is not real unless shared.

On the topic of bullying

I watched a clip from X-Factor recently, and the story that a contestant told seemed to movie the audience to tears and inspiration. She said that she had been bullied in middle school and high school; she said they made "prank phone calls" and told her she'd never make it with her music. That was all that was said on the subject, yet it seemed enough to move the emotions of many. This surprised me a little. Is this what people think bullying is? I wondered to myself. Surely it's not very much fun, but it didn't seem like bullying to me. What do I have to say on this subject? Plenty.

As a "military brat", my family moved around a lot when I was young. Every base we moved to seemed overly friendly and kind. The kids were all in the same situation as me and we all got along great. There weren't cliques or groups or exclusions. Everyone just accepted everyone. When my Dad retired, we moved to rural Illinois, and things were drastically different. People weren't welcoming anymore. As a matter of fact, they were the opposite of friendly. They were outwardly hateful and aggressive. I joined our Cheer-leading team in fifth grade and the girls made fun of me because I didn't yet shave. I was made fun of for being slightly overweight. I was called names, talked about behind my back, I'd find possessions of mine missing and they would never be found. In sixth grade, during recess, a boy spit on me. When I told the teacher, I was punished for lying. When I went to middle school, things just got worse. Because I lived in such a small village, I had to ride the bus to a larger town 30 minutes away. The town was filled with people who were very well off financially, and the poorer class kids were looked upon with scorn. We didn't have a lot of money and couldn't afford the brand name clothes or accessories everyone else had. I didn't have any friends. Here there were cliques. The jocks, the nerds, even the outsiders seemed to have a group, but I fit in to none of them. I wore hand-me down clothing that was too large for me. My mother made me wear my pants higher than other kids. To be honest, even at its worst, I would have gladly gone back to the bullying levels in middle school, once I hit high school.

My sister preceded me by three years in high school. She was fairly accepted and left alone by the other kids for some reason I didn't understand (later, I would realize it was because she did drugs with them). As soon as I became a freshman, I was fair game for the upper classmen as well as my own classmates. My resemblance was compared to that of farm animals. I was laughed at openly in front of teachers. I was called dirty and beneath them. Once, someone told me I should just do everyone a favor and kill myself. I began to cut myself quite severely. While I was inexperienced, I would cut my lower arms and blame it on my cats (we had four). The longer I did it, I smartened up about location and began to cut my shoulders and wear short sleeved shirts. I stopped coming to school. There would be weeks where I didn't show up and would be in quite a bit of trouble with the school. I know I frustrated and worried my mom so much during those times, but she did not know what was going on or why I was acting the way I was. It must have been so frightening for her. I know it was for me. I just wanted to sleep and never wake up. I wanted to escape the hell I was in by any means possible. I began to fantasize about things that could kill me on a daily basis. I'd look at a pill bottle and wonder if I took them all, would I finally die and escape? It was a very low point in my life. A low point caused by bullying. Not prank phone calls, not people telling me I "wasn't going to make it" at something, but rather people telling me that I should kill myself; people grabbing me by the hair and pulling me forcefully from my seat on the bus because they wanted to sit there instead. That is what bullying is to me. That is what bullying is to thousands of kids out there right now. It is something that should not be trivialized or accepted. Bullying can ruin a person's life. It can also end it.

That being said, if you are being bullied, know that the bullying stops. For me, it happened my senior year. Something switched in me; in the people around me. I was moderately intelligent and people began to see me for that. People began to see me in a positive light and I was finally, blissfully, left alone.

It has been five years since I have been bullied. When someone tries now, I won't stand for it. There comes a time in everyone's life where they have to step forward and say "no". You will not push me around any longer. I am a good person and I will not be treated this way. It is a voice that exists within each of us; we just have to find that voice. It takes a lot of self discovery and experience sometimes, but you will get to that point, and you will survive. So please, don't give up hope. Redemption is only a revelation away.

How to be a Survivor Instead of a Victim

Yesterday as I was getting my hair done, I heard a story on the news about sexual child abuse. The reporter said some studies showed that "as many as 25 percent of girls and 17 percent of boys are sexually assaulted by the time they reach 18". This doesn't surprise me in the least bit; as someone who has multiple friends who were assaulted as children, I feel like if anything, this number is misleadingly low. I, too, am a survivor of sexual child abuse. As a survivor, I feel like I am qualified to present my insights on this subject. So without further adieu, I'd like to jump right in to this week's topic: How to be a survivor instead of a victim.

More often than not, child abuse happens in places people think are safe. They let their guard down because they think that nothing like this could ever happen in such a safe environment. It could be under the protection of parents, under the protection a public place can bring, in the sanctity of your own home. For me, it happened  when we lived on a military base in Maryland.

I was around seven at the time. Down the cul-de-sac from us lived a woman who was in the military and her son, who was in his mid to late teens or possibly his early twenties. Whatever his age, my parents determined him to be harmless enough. He used to hang around with my friends and I at times. One day, he approached me holding a red ball that he had apparently found in the woods. I asked if I could play with it, to which he responded that I could, if I gave him something in return. When I asked what, he pointed to my shirt, and told me all I had to do was raise my shirt for just a moment.

And I think the next part is what made me so ashamed for years that I didn't tell a soul; I did what he asked. I was so young that I don't think I really had a concept of what sexuality was at all, and therefore no concept of what was wrong or right in that sort of situation. I knew that instinctively it didn't seem right, but after a bit of coercing I decided there would be no harm in it. And to some degree I'm still ashamed of that to this day, even though I don't think I could've known better. Which brings me to my second insight about sexual abuse. The number one reason I think that "25 percent of girls and 17 percent of boys" is actually a lower number than the truth - A lot of sexual abuse victims feel too ashamed to say anything. They're scared of how society will view them. They're scared that somehow, ultimately, this is their fault. Sometimes their abuser will make sure they think this, or sometimes it's just the scared imagination of an abuse victim running rampant.

As time moved on, things became more violent. Looking evolved to touching, to ignoring my more and more frequent cries of "no", to threats and knives held against my thin, trembling throat. There were legitimately times that I thought I was going to die by the hand of this man; he wanted me to know he would do it in a heartbeat. That was the other reason I didn't tell anyone; he drilled it into my head that not only would no one believe me, but that he would kill me if I told a soul. In the fragile psyche of a child, I began to feel like no matter where I hid or who I thought would protect me, he could find me, and he would slit my throat.

The fear in that sort of situation is indescribable; every moment, waking or asleep, was a nightmare for me. I would come home from a session with him and pretend to not feel well; I would change my clothes and bury my bloody undergarments in the woods near the house. I would not tell a soul about anything that would happened. I thought that the rest of my life would be this way.

But one day, I finally told someone. A male friend of mine, about 3 years older than me. I told him about the session with the red ball, still at that moment not realizing that it was anything bad or in any way associated with the other bad stuff that had been done to me. I told someone, but only because I didn't realize I was telling them. I can't imagine what it was like for him to hear me tell that story without any emotion or indication that I thought what had transpired was wrong. It must have been disturbing. I remember he became upset and said he was going to tell his mother. I cried, begged him not to, but he went to do just that. I ran to my house and locked myself in my room and cried, scared I was going to be in so much trouble.

Even as my parents were asking me concerned questions, I was so afraid of being in trouble with both him and them that I tried to minimize the damage that had been done by my slip up. I swore he had never touched me, just looked. And after awhile, they had no choice but to relent their questioning. It was clear they didn't believe me, but they had no proof to the contrary.

Although he was never charged with anything, he moved away almost right after my slip up. I didn't sleep well for months; I spent most of my nights either awake and frightened at every little creak in the house, or dreaming that he had come back to kill me like he had promised. It took me about a year to realize he probably wasn't coming back. After that, I blocked the entire thing out of my memory for years. My parents never spoke of it, I never spoke of it, and soon, it was as if it had never happened.

You can't just block something like this out of your memory for good; no matter how hard you try, the memories start to creep up on you. It might just be a feeling of unease, but it could also manifest as irritability or in the form of dreams. For me, it began with unease and then evolved into nightmares. I began to dream about the man with the red ball. I began to dream about the things he said and did to me. Bit by bit, I began to realize that these weren't just dreams. These things had actually happened to me. I'm not sure what I felt when I first truly realized the weight of this revelation. I think I was numb. In shock. How could I have forgotten this? It just didn't seem possible. Yet, it was.

I was already on a steady descent into teen depression, and this pushed me over the edge. I was a victim of sexual abuse; this was the first time I ever attempted to kill myself. I tried to hang myself from the door knob in my room. I could feel my life slipping away from me right before the rope I was using broke. And as I lay there, neck bruised, gasping for air, I realized that this was the lowest point of my entire life.

The thing is that in your lowest moment, things can only start to look up. Every moment from that point forward is higher than the last. It has to be. Slowly, you can begin to recover. Slowly, you can become a survivor instead of a victim. A victim is who I was in my lowest moment; abused to the point where I wanted nothing more than to die, to not remember anymore. A victim is someone who is still mourning their losses. A victim is someone who cannot move on.

A survivor is who I am now; who I became when I decided that if I couldn't kill myself, I would have to learn to move on. A survivor is someone who won't let their past slow them down or make them less than they could have been otherwise. A survivor is someone who uses their past to motivate them and help them become more than they ever imagined.

It's an incredible struggle to overcome the obstacles of your past. There are some low points along the way; some nights where you wonder what you're trying to accomplish and what all the hardship is worth. But there are also high points where you in no way have to question if it was worth the struggle. I live in those high points almost every single day of my life.

My name is Erin. I was raped at the age of seven. I am a survivor, not a victim.

Insights into Living with a Life Long Illness

Last night, I woke up with a feeling of discomfort and pain in my back. Groggily, I rolled from one side to the other, and sighed in relief. This was not the first time or the last time I would wake up to change positions and alleviate my growing discomfort. Why? I have been diagnosed with a life long condition called Degenerative Disc Disease - which is, as it might sound like, degenerative arthritis of the spine.

It's a scary experience to be told that something is going to be "wrong" with you for the rest of your life; it doesn't matter if it's a life long diagnosis of depression or of physical pain, it's still life changing to hear that you will never be in a "normal" state of health again.

As a recent high school graduate, I wanted to get as far away from my family as I could. I applied and was accepted to the University at Buffalo. About halfway through the year, I stood up from my computer chair and started to cross the room. I was suddenly hit with waves of extreme pain that radiated from my back to my torso and down my legs; it felt like I was being stabbed repeatedly. I fell to the ground in pain and could barely bring myself to breathe, the pain was so bad. In about 30 minutes to an hour the pain receded but was still present. I called the health hotline on campus and was instructed to see a doctor immediately. I did. I was told I had sciatica, a fairly common occurrence.  They prescribed me muscle relaxers and Vicodin and told me that it would go away "in time", but to see a doctor again if it did not subside.


I waited patiently for over a month in pain. It in no way got less painful or intense, and I was still occasionally hit with waves of extreme pain that would leave me crippled and stuck in place for hours at a time. I saw a different doctor and was told the same thing, and given refills of the same medication. When the school year ended, I was still in pain. It had subsided from sharp pain into a deep, burning pain in my left leg and lower back. I returned home to take care of my sick mother, feeling extremely miserable. I finally asked my mother to take me to our family physician. I had high hopes -- surely my physician would be able to figure out what was going on. She wasn't some random doctor I had managed to make an appointment with, she had worked with me for years. She came into the room and we discussed my symptoms and she said the same exact thing doctors had been saying all along.


This kind of brings me to my first point about having a chronic illness - sometimes the most frightening part is not knowing what's wrong with you. You start trying to self diagnose, which does absolutely no good. You're always going to assume it's the worst thing possible because you're scared. I had seen three doctors and none of them had any idea what was going on, or, more importantly, any interest in figuring out what was causing my pain.

That doctor eventually stopped accepting our insurance, and I found myself in yet another doctor's office, not having any real hope that he would show any more initiative than the others. He came in and we discussed my symptoms. He started out by saying he would refill my prescriptions, and my heart began to sink just a little. Then he told me he also wanted to schedule me for an MRI. He wanted to take a look at my back and see if there was anything there. This was the first time a doctor had even discussed doing any sort of test on me or my back, and I was ecstatic, but also quite scared. Suddenly it would no longer be an unknown source of pain; I would know one way or another what was wrong with me.


Tests are a pretty frightening aspect of being diagnosed with a chronic illness. Whether it's taking blood or scanning your body, your mind tends to exaggerate things around you. The people performing the test are too nice - was that a look of pity you just saw them shoot you? Every noise is overly loud. The hum of the MRI machine was the least of my worries; in such an enclosed space I could hear my own breath and feel it on my face. I had to focus hard to keep it together and not move.


I had scheduled a follow up appointment with my doctor in two weeks. When I finally saw him, he pinned up my MRIs and he told me what we were looking at. He hesitantly said "I hate to say this to someone so young, but these are indicators of degenerative disc disease". What I remember most about our conversation with that is how much he seemed to emphasize how young I was - 19 years old with degenerative arthritis of the spine. He repeated that he hated diagnosing me with this, and especially hated prescribing me arthritis medication.

This actually brings me to another point about having a chronic illness - if it's chronic, those pills aren't to cure what's wrong with you. They're to alleviate the symptoms, and they will need to be taken for the rest of your life. On top of this, I'm going to tell you right now, sometimes the medication itself has negative effects on your health. When I take my arthritis medication daily as prescribed, there is a noticeable drop in my short term memory. I will take my medication, and in a few hours, not remember if I took it. The Vicodin makes me extremely sick at times; sometimes I will spend 24+ hours in the bathroom, dry heaving into the toilet and crying. It's absolutely awful.

Although I didn't realize it when I was diagnosed, having a chronic illness would impact the way I lived drastically. I have to be sure to keep up my core strength with stretches or I risk seriously throwing my spine out of place. I am not supposed to lift heavy things for the same reason. I can never join the military because of this diagnosis. There is a very real possibility that sometime in the future I will require surgery to my back, and even with surgery, there is still a possibility that as I grow older, I may become crippled. However, I think hands down the most difficult fact for me to come to terms with is the risk I would be taking with becoming pregnant. Not only can the added weight put me into extreme pain for months of the pregnancy, there is also a chance that my spine will simply not be able to support the weight of a child at all, and that I will become paralyzed.

The thing about chronic illness is that you either learn to live with the pain, or you don't. The ones that don't destroy themselves; my sister had an extreme case of bipolar disorder that nothing helped and she drank and overdosed herself into the grave at the age of 24.

The ones that do can still go on to lead a life full of adventure and happiness - I have a career in Quality Assurance, own a house and a car, have many loving friends and have managed to capture the eye of an extremely kind and amazing man, at least for the moment.

Something my abusive ex once told me is that no one else would be willing to take care of me when I grew older and crippled; but I think that even if I were crippled, that wouldn't be true. If I can endure years of relentless pain, then I can accomplish anything, and that includes taking care of myself when I grow older and crippled. In the words of Homer,

Be strong saith my heart; 

I am a solider; 

I have seen worse sights than this.

It's Always Darkest Before the Dawn: When and How to Leave

It's hard to lose someone you love, but there are other situations that are equally as dire. Recently, the television show Glee did a two part episode about domestic abuse and the forms it can take. It featured a woman named Beiste, who seemed outwardly confident and independent but was in an abusive relationship, and followed her through her struggle to decide if she should leave or stay. This story truly struck home with me, because I, too, have been in an abusive relationship. This week I would like to present to you my second blog post: It's Always Darkest Before the Dawn: When and How to Leave.


Abusive relationships don't tend to start out abusive. If they were abusive from the start, the abused party wouldn't stay. They stay because they have formed a connection with the person abusing them - in most cases it's a connection of fear and/or love. In my case, it began as a connection of love, and evolved to be a mixture of love and fear. You have no idea how much rage they have inside of them until they think you are hooked; in my case, when I moved out of state to live with him. I cut myself off from family and friends to be with him. That was when he knew I couldn't leave. That was when the abuse began.

It's subtle at first, so much so that you don't even see what's happening. They begin to wear you down with their words. They make you feel useless, like a waste of space. They make you feel like without them, you wouldn't make it in this world. They make you feel like you need them. This is the earliest sign of an abusive relationship, and ideally, this is when you should leave. Any person that asks you to push away your close family and friends is someone that you don't want to be around.

Let me tell you right now; you don't need anyone but you. An abusive partner wants you to think that you're a lost cause and that they're doing you a favor by being with you and caring for you. This isn't true. Your greatest ally is you, and you should never doubt your ability to do what you put your mind to. I lost sight of this, and quickly began to believe that I was just as hopeless and worthless as he said I was.

At some point when they're trying to break you down emotionally and mentally, their words will turn nasty. They want you to hate yourself, and they're willing to say anything to make you feel that way. It took me a long time to open up to him, but once I did, everything I said was used against me to make me despise myself. I told him what was, at the time, my closest kept secret - that when I was a child, I was raped. He told me no one else would ever love someone as broken and used as me. Someone as defiled as me. And I began to believe his words. I began to hate myself.

Once they think they have you dependent and resentful of yourself, they're going to start showing their anger. Once again, this may be a gradual process. It might begin with yelling. Then they begin to throw, hit, or break things. Sometimes inanimate objects, sometimes themselves. This is the second sign of an abusive relationship. This is also when your self resentment will come into play. They will use that to their advantage, making you feel responsible for each outbreak of anger you witness. I asked too many questions and it frustrated him, I made him feel like a bad boyfriend. It was my fault. You will definitely be able to identify that something in this stage of the relationship is not right. If you have allowed the relationship to progress this far, you should get out now. It is very likely they will threaten to harm themselves if you leave, and they might actually go through with their threats, but you need to get out before the relationship progresses to the next level.

If you are anything like me, you've ignored all the signs. You're in love. They would never hurt you.

But then, they do. Their anger get physical. For me, it started with wrist grabbing. He had gone into one of his tantrums, throwing things and yelling. I had retreated to his bedroom and was crying to myself. Even after all that time, I still wasn't used to his anger. It frightened me. He suddenly became quiet; then he came into the room. He grabbed me by my wrists and started dragging me towards the doorway. I remember he said "This is my room, not yours." His grip was tight; it hurt. I tried to tell him as much but he wasn't listening to me. He flung me into the hallway and slammed the door. That, for me, was a defining moment. I remember every moment of it so clearly, and sometimes I still relive it, in my nightmares. I told myself it was my fault. I had upset him. I gathered myself, got up and apologized. That was how blind I was. I didn't even realize at the time what had just occurred - the first of what would be many physical encounters.

From there, things can only get worse. I received "punishment" for multiple offenses: not having dinner ready on time, not greeting him at the door when he came home from work, disagreeing with something he said, defending a friend or family member that he said something awful about. It's important to try to get out soon after the physical blows start, if you haven't already. Rely on friends and family; even though you've been forced to abandon them, they're still waiting for you to ask for their help. They care.

So when it comes time, how do you leave? That's a tough one. For me, I moved back when my mother got sick. I wasn't around him as much, and I began to see the truth of the things he had done. I began to see that maybe I wasn't such a loathsome person. I began to see that my friends and family were concerned and had been all along. Above all, I began to see the pitiful shell of a woman I had become.

I wasn't myself anymore. You could see it in my demeanor; I couldn't look anyone directly in the eye and I walked one step behind everyone else. You could see it in my words; I asked less questions and apologized even for things that were in no way my fault. You could see it in my eyes; they appeared tired and worn down, because I was. I was so worn down from years of emotional and physical abuse.

I had been trained to hate who I was, but I hated who I had become even more.

That was when I knew I had to leave.

I took the coward's way out; I called him on the phone, told him I didn't think it was going to work. He was sad at first, and he cried a lot. It made me feel awful. I almost took back my words, but I knew I couldn't, knew this was only a manipulation technique. Sure enough, his sorrow soon turned bitter. He told me he had cut himself and that it was my fault. He told me I had driven him to it. From bitterness, he turned to anger. He began to yell at me. He told me no one else would ever love me, that he was too good for me. I was nothing, a worthless piece of trash. I was losing the best thing in my life. I listened, tears silently streaming down my face, still apologizing. But I couldn't budge. If I relented now, I knew what would be in store in the future. I knew how bad the repercussions would be. Once I had said I wanted to leave, there was no turning back. I had everything to gain if I left, and all that would await me if I stayed was increased abuse. And I think this is what kept me moving forward, rather than backtracking. I think that my fear of what he would do if I stayed after trying to leave spurred me forward. Your fear can be empowering in this situation, so don't be ashamed of it.

Somehow, I stayed on the phone for close to five hours after telling him I wanted to leave. I endured all of his crying and anger. Eventually, he hung up.

I can't even begin tell you how to get over the emotional, mental, and physical scars left behind by an abusive relationship. I'm still figuring it out for myself. But what I can do is tell you what I've learned from this experience.

You are never worthless. People can make you feel that way if you let them, but you always have a purpose- something you can be doing to better yourself and others.

You are never beyond hope. Sometimes it may feel like you are beyond saving; I often feel like I am "broken" and can't be repaired. I sleep less than I should due to a fairly consistent barrage of nightmares. I still apologize for things profusely. I certainly have trouble looking people in the eyes, and I have to be reminded not to walk behind someone. But I am slowly getting over these obstacles with the assistance of those closest to me. Every day I live without my actions being controlled, every day I live without having to fear someone I love feels like a victory.

You never deserve to be harmed in any way. You never deserve to be told you're worthless. You never deserve to be struck for not having dinner done on time or not greeting someone at the door when they come home from work.

Even though you may blame yourself, it is in no way your fault. You didn't provoke them to abuse you. They would have abused you no matter what, and if you had never dated them, they would just be abusing someone else instead of you.

Lastly, although it may feel like you are in a hopeless situation, you are not alone, and there is always hope. Once you take things into your own hands and move forward, life genuinely get better. It's been a few years since I left, and I have never been happier. The term "It's always darkest before the dawn" has never made more sense to me than it does now. Despite, no, because of my struggles to overcome so much in my past, I can truly appreciate life and the joys it has to offer.

Because life truly is beautiful. There are so many amazing people out there that are the exact opposite of abusive. They are kind and gentle. They support you rather than tearing you down. They encourage you to pursue your dreams. They never yell at you. They never hit you. They respect you and your opinions. But best of all, they never try to control you.

And that is so, so much better than the alternative.

A Day in the Life of Loss

I saw a post on Facebook today. It was from a friend of mine who had recently lost her mother. She wrote about how much she missed her, and it was the end that stuck with me: "I've been told that it'll get easier, but it's only getting harder". It felt like such an accusatory statement, considering that is what I had told her at her mother's wake. It was as if she was saying "You promised me it would get easier. You lied to me", and this wouldn't be exactly wrong, but it isn't exactly right, either. Being poor at spoken word, as I stumbled past her at that wake, all I managed to blurt out was a slurred "It will get better". I did not say when. I did not say how. How could I expect her to think anything but that it would get better soon? It was at this moment in time that I realized that what I have to say might actually be of some help to her. I might actually be of some help to a lot of people.

In my 21 years on this planet I have experienced a lot of... unique... situations. Because I have experienced these situations, I have an insider's view. I know, to some extent, what to expect. And I can pass that knowledge along to others who are going through the experience. In the case of the loss of a direct family member, I am triply qualified; I have lost my Father, Mother, and Sister. So, without further adieu, I would like to present to you my first blog post, A Day In the Life of Loss.

You never forget the moments leading up to the discovery that a close family member has died, or the words when you are told. It doesn't matter how many drugs you do or how much alcohol you drink, you will never forget. The night my father was found dead, I couldn't sleep. I was laying in bed thinking about finals. After awhile, I noticed a faint rumbling noise, like a large truck was parked nearby but still running. I looked out the window and saw flashing lights. I immediately thought we had been robbed. I went downstairs and saw our front door was open. There was a stretcher being wheeled in. My mother saw me and rushed to me, cupping my face in her hands so I wouldn't look behind her, and she said to me "Dad's dead". I can't even remember what I had for dinner last week, but I remember every moment of that night, even though it has been 7 years.

When you are told, you immediately go into a state of shock. Not shock in the conventional sense; you don't necessarily feel surprised or upset. As a matter of fact, you don't really feel anything. As soon as the words "Dad's dead" escaped from my mother's lips, a wall hit me leaving nothing but emptiness in its wake. I felt dazed. I asked her to repeat herself. Nothing seemed real. I was sure this was all just a dream and that I'd wake at any second. If I just didn't think about it then everything was okay. So I didn't. And I became cold or hostile to anyone who tried to bring up the topic with me, including my family. And I continued to not talk about it for three years.

Which brings me to my first bit of real advice -- You need to talk to someone. A friend, a family member, a stranger on a hotline if you really need to. I didn't because I was afraid talking about it would put me in increased pain, and it does, but you get it out of your system a lot faster that way. I slowly spiraled down from the shock into a world of depression, which kept getting deeper and deeper, all because I refused to talk to anyone about it or even acknowledge that it was a problem. My attendance suffered. My grades suffered. My mom suffered.

My second piece of advice is don't alienate your friends and family. It's probably true that most of them don't understand what you're going through, but it's probably also true that they're trying, because they care. You may feel like you need to be strong in front of them, but you don't. They feel this loss too, whether personally or through you. Comfort each other.

The first time a loved one dies, the shock is significantly longer lasting. My theory for this is that I don't think we are really capable of understanding that bad things can (and will) happen specifically to us. Bad things happen to other people. You don't expect it to happen to you. When it does, it takes you by complete surprise. I went to school the day after my father died and I saw people carrying out their lives like nothing had happened. At the time, I was completely disgusted and outraged that the world could just continue on when someone so close to me had just died. When someone I loved so much had been taken away from me. What I didn't realize until that exact moment is that the world goes on, even when you don't want it to. Why? Because bad things happen to everyone.

After the shock finally wears off, there will be sorrow and you will feel lonely. After my mom died, I found myself constantly picking up the phone to call her and tell her about my day, or getting excited when I found something on reddit I knew she'd like. When my sister died, I officially lost everyone I had known all of my life. It was an extremely lonely feeling.

Even though you may feel alone, it is important to know that you never are. There are people who care about you, even if they were not as close to you as your family. They want to be there for you. Trust me.

Though it may take many years, it gets better. It's so gradual you aren't sure, at first. You smile a bit more. You find things more amusing. You start wanting to go out and meet people. It's as if you're waking up after a long nap. Sleep struggles to pull you back under, but you know you have to wake up. You have to live again. And eventually, you do. You move on. You are able to love, live, laugh, and learn once more. You are able to remember them fondly, and their memories will make you shed a tear of happiness instead of sorrow.

Someone once asked me what my happiest memory was, and although it is bittersweet, I'd say it is this: the night my father died, after his body was taken from our house, my mother, my two sisters and I sat around the dining room table. We stayed up all night reminiscing about my father -- telling stories and passing around photographs and laughing. I have experienced two more deaths of close family members since then, but this good experience has altered little after them: I sit down with the ones closest to me and my family, remember the good times we had, and I laugh.

I laugh because life is short and a life long lived does not equal a life worth living. I laugh because the people you truly care about never die, they live on in your memories and the things you may do later in life. They live on in the person that you become after the clouds clear and the sun comes out again. They live on in the people you influence for the better, the people those people influence for the better, and so on, into infinity.

I laugh because I owe it to the ones I love to live my life to the fullest.