This is what they call “life”

“To remain silent and indifferent is the greatest sin of all”- Elie Wiesel. This quote alone has been one of the most inspirational things to get me through my days, recently. Elie was a concentration camp survivor, and if he can get passed all of that, then I can get past a few horrible days, and don’t you know, I’ve had plenty of those.

When I was in seventh grade, I had a few friends who had been dealing with really abusive parents, for their whole life. I didn’t really know exactly what they were going through, because I never had experienced that before. I grew up watching them come to school with bruises and broken arms. They shared with me things that no one else knows, to this day. It was one day in seventh grade, when I decided what I wanted to be when I grew up. My best friend at the time, Allie, had came to science class one day with a black and blue eye. I had asked her about it, and of course, right away she had replied “it’s nothing, I fell”. I knew that was a lie. She finally had pulled me aside after school that day, in the girls bathroom, and lifted up her shirt and showed me all the bruises she had covering her ribs, and then pulled her pants down and showed me the bruises on her bottom. After she had showed me them, she had told me that her dad had gotten mad at her the night before, because she hadn’t cleaned her room. Allie’s dad was an alcoholic. As soon as he had the slightest amount of alcohol in his system, he was a monster. I never went over to Allie’s house, but she came over to mine very frequently. After that day, I knew I had wanted to be someone who anyone and everyone could come and talk to about any type of problem, good, bad, confusing, whatever the case may be. Clinical psychology was what I wanted to delve into. Almost every single year since that day in seventh grade, I have been exposed to almost every single element of abuse, neglect, heart break, mental distrubances, family battles, suicide attempts, suicide successes, and much more. My freshman year was one of my hardest years. I attended over 10 funerals that year, two of which were my classmates, one of which was one of my best friends. All three were due to suicide. I had dreams about all of them so frequently after they had died. I documented them, because I feel like they’re some kind of gift, in a sense. After those deaths, I lost my Grandma, who was one of my best friends, such a sweet woman. There wasn’t one person who I had known to dislike her, she was wonderful. I grew up around all different kinds of death. It’s a scary and hurtful and messy thing, all emotionally and mentally. After going to so many funerals and seeing faces of loved ones that I never thought would leave the earth, I had felt so low that I almost didn’t know if I could get back up. I had hit a few spells where, at my lowest, I did some pretty stupid things, and as a result of those mistakes, I will have proof on my body for the rest of my life, because fact of the matter is, most scars don’t heal with time. I went through the crappiest of relationships that anyone could think of. If you can think of what could go wrong in a relationship, I’ve been through it: cheating, getting another girl pregnant while dating me, lying notoriously, abuse, rape, emotionally and physical abuse, downgraded, got my house torn apart while being out of town, had hate mail spammed to me for over a year, the list goes on and on, and I don’t want to refocus on those things. Point being, I had hit all of those really really hard spots in my life, and still I’m here. I found that by getting past each of thoes battles, I had felt a little stronger, each and every time. It’s in a sense, glorifying, if you think about it. Like video games, you beat off the enemies, and then you progress to the next level, that’s how I have felt. And now, here I am, a freshman in college. The first day of that whole wonderful college experience, started off by my roommate and I filing for a sexual harassment charge against 4 males in our dorm building. That didn’t get resolved for over 5 months after the fact, and of course, the boys remained on campus with a mere slap on the wrist, go figure. But, guess who else is still on campus? That’s right, they can’t get rid of me that easily. My roommate on the other hand, well, she had been dealing with a lot of internal struggles during that time, to begin with. Chronic depression, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and Anxiety. I had spent countless numbers of hours with her up all night counseling her, just to do it all again the next night. That’s the tricky thing with depression, it can be subconsciously triggered by things that you’re not even aware of; you can be completely happy and great one second, and as soon as you walk passed room 105, you feel like shit. Was it the fact that you were returning back to your room for the night, that had made you sad? Or the fact that something bad that happened during the day was triggered by someone you passed in the hall about two minutes ago? Or was it because your mind was elsewhere, and there was no telling what you were thinking, but it made you feel this way? All of those things, could have attributed to that downward slope that my roommate had felt as soon as we walked into our room, and there we were again, talking, crying and hugging. I did everything in my power to make sure that she was alright and happy. The one night, I had come back to our room around 1 in the morning. She was asleep, or so I had thought. I went to my bed quietly, and as soon as I had gotten under the covers, she sprung up and ran for the door. I said “Rachael are you okay?” and her reply was “Yeah.” which was obviously a lie. So as soon as that door had shut, I was up out of bed and frantically looking for my keys. I called Sam, our neighbor who I was just with, and told him there was an emergency and we needed to go find Rachael. Sam and I had looked all over campus and searched the park that was next door, no Rachael. We had gone through all of the buildings that were open on campus, still no Rachael. At that point, I had called probably 20 times and texted about 15 messsages, no response. Finally, call number 21 she answered. She isn’t from around here, so she had no idea where she was going. I ended up driving about 9 blocks away from campus, down a few side streets, and down a dark alley with a light and a bench, where she sat. I gave her a hug and she said “I don’t want you to see me like this” I simply looked at her and said “Rachael, I’m here to make sure you’re safe. I car about you, and I could care less what you think you look like, to me, you look like Rachael, my roommate, who is dressed in shorts and a jacket and flip flops, not exactly proper walking shoes” she smiled through her tears. We get back to the dorm, say goodnight to Sam, for the second time, and walk into our room. She lays down for about 3 minutes and then says “I need to go to the hospital”. I looked at her and I said “If I were to take you to the hospital, would that make you feel better?” and she replied “Yes.” So, that was that. We headed down to the hospital, emergency room to be exact, and that was the first time I had ever admitted someone into a psychiatric ward at 3 in the morning. I had stayed with her until about 7:20, and then I needed to leave because I had a math class that started at 7:45. I hadn’t slept at all that night, and that was okay with me. I had called her parents and woke them up, and they were frustrating to me, because they have the mentality that “oh well, Rachael is out of sight and out of mind” that type of thing, and it pissed me off. So anyways, to make a very long story short, Rachael ended up unenrolling herself in the middle of September, we had only been in school since August 24th, and I am now living off campus and enjoying that to as much of the extent as I can. I want anyone and everyone to be able to contact me and vent about any sort of problem they may be facing, regardless of the content of the problem. I want people to know that there are people like me out there, and I want to support you as much as I can, because I’ve been down some nasty roads and I had the strength, God knows it wasn’t easy, but I had found it, and I know that all of you can find it too, sometimes it just needs a little push from a friend, or a stranger. Well, it’s about 11:12 right now, and I should be in bed. I wish you all a good morning/good night/ good day, wherever you are, and just in case it doesn’t show this on my post, I am new to this site, then I’ll post it now. My email to best reach me at is amanda_paris333@hotmail.com. Please get a hold of me whenever you need, just shoot me an email with your name and we can strike up some conversation.

With love,

Amanda