oh to be discouraged, what a feat the universe has for you.

     i was just journaling my heart away, pages upon pages of getting the gunk energy and thoughts out of my head so that maybe i could write something real. yeah, that is a thing i do. journal everyday to clear my mind for something real or profound to come through. sometimes for hours, but less and less the more consistently i do it. i was writing and i found myself within a paragraph of disappointment of self. 

i wrote this:
i’ve lost the fun. i just feel so discouraged sometimes. i've been doing this for ten years and i don’t make an income yet as a media influencer. all my income comes from my body being shown online and i just feel exhausted. i’m grateful to have everything i have, seriously, but i am so hard on myself. of course in my own head, every time i feel this way, i tell myself to push past just a little longer because it’s always when you’re just about to give up that everything shifts and your whole world changes. but damn, i have had that hope so many times and not seen that change that i really don't know anymore. like the fact i am thinking about going back to normal jobs and just living the way everyone else does, and that i am thinking about going back to college, i really did not like college, why the fuck am i resorting back to thinking about that? this is when dori comes in and says just keep swimming just keep swimming just keep swimming swimming swimming.   

     i never share my raw journals because i always wanna be the inspirational positive one. that's what i have seen people love. i've watched posts over ten years of time and consistently without doubt, it's always the positivity that gets the love. people just wanna feel inspired, they wanna matter, they want to feel like they're here for a reason and like they're doing something that pleases - either themselves or the world, kinda depends on your mission on earth. i really only felt like sharing this because i think it's so important. successful people who have actually worked their whole lives from nothing to everything always talk about this but never when they're in it. nobody says things while it's happening because nobody really listens until after you've blown up somehow, become someone. and I, am in the midst of that. hard enough to believe because some people think i'm killing it, and others wouldn't even look at me because they're too famous. trust me, i've seen it all, been around so many different people. but that is a gift to me. what I want is really to inspire others for when they are in moments like this. i just want you to know you're not alone. 

     one of the first lessons i ever learned in my life is that you are not alone. and it was a few years before i really even needed it but when i learned, i needed it then too. i struggled with depression really badly when i was younger. i am even guilty of trying to take my own life. i always talk positively about everyone because people are mean to me and have been for so long and i don't wanna be another one like that. but sometimes, there is a difference between talking shit and sharing your truth. i love my dad, he is literally my hero, but so many of the things i think that hurt me growing up also came from thought patterns that my parents shared with me. my whole life my dad always said that killing yourself was the worst sin you could commit and that you would literally go to hell. and yet somehow, i still felt so alone in my life that i tried, knowing my father would look down on me if i had succeeded for the rest of his human life. obviously, i was still meant to be here. but this depression was so bad that i ended up at self esteem camps. this is where my life really started to change for the first time. 

     weirdly enough, so much of my character today is built from the things that inspired me at these camps. firstly, they always had 3 screens(like projectors) going while they were teaching and one would always be the lecture, and the other two would be scenes from nature for both a calming effect and to give your mind something else to visually take in so you could apply more attention to the class and information coming through to you instead of your mind wandering. it was really cool. and then every class session, we started out with an inspirational video that would basically be the most inspirational things said over time to remind us how worthy we were and how worth it, it was to keep fighting to be alive, even if life shouldn't be a fight. these camps were a week long and there was this special thursday class session where we did this practice. everyone would walk in and the teacher would walk us through this process of realizing how not alone we were. basically she would start the class and tell everyone it was a safe place and the things said never needed to be shared outside. so obviously, I am not going to be sharing anyone else's experience, only mine. but she would begin by having everyone sitting down and then she would stand and say something like, stand up if you have siblings. and then anyone with siblings would stand. then she would do it again, stand up if anyone has ever been mean to you in school. almost the whole room would stand. stand up if you have ever felt alone. literally the entire room would stand and she would say, "look around, YOU ARE NOT ALONE." the class would continue and anyone would get the option to stand and say something they felt they were alone in and some of us would say the hardest things we'd ever been through and i never once saw one person standing alone. we were together. we are together as a human race and we through humanity experience so much of the same things. i feel like right now, even in my disappointment of myself for not being where i think i should be or by having made choices that i battle within my own mind now and again, or just being on my own, it's so important to remember that you are not alone and i am not alone. everyone goes through experiences like this, in our own ways and if you need to push past wherever you are within your own mind, just remember you aren't alone. there is someone out there who is feeling or experiencing similarly to you, and they also need to know how not alone they are. 

     we've been given the gift of this online world to connect and choose to be vulnerable and inspiration and real with others and you never ever know who across the world you might inspire or keep alive today because of something you said that is kind or of love. my dad was the one who took me to those self esteem camps, and he never even knew i had tried to take my life. he saved me without ever knowing he had done that. there are angels all around you. i promise. just keep swimming. you never know what island is right around the corner softly awaiting you.