Lets talk about 13.

Hello you beautiful lot,

Well first i have to start this off with a HUGE thank you to those who read my recent blog post ’13’. I had a really really great response to it and it quickly jumped to my number one most read post eee!

It created such wonderful conversations with friends who remembered me in my ‘My Chemical Romance’ days (Yes ha ha very funny) and lead to wonderful memories being thrown around with lots of giggles (Even if they were at my expense).

It also created some conversations with you lovely readers talking about your younger years and how all your lives have changed so dramatically since you were young. I also had some wonderful conversations on how My Chemical Romance also helped a lot of you through tricky situations too.

Now,thats all very well but

And more to the point how completely unexpected that was. It sounded like a great idea to do at the time and something that after recent events almost needed doing. Never did i think that i would spend the majority of my evenings sat thinking ‘Well what on earth do i say?’

Starting the post was that sudden realisation of ‘This was actually me’ Yes, I’ve had this realisation at many points in my life like during therapy for example but after that moving to New Zealand,starting a new job and getting a new house well id sort of forgotten.

Don’t get me wrong i talk to people ‘under the topic of abuse’ (as i like to call it) daily. Talking about past experiences, difficulties and mental health and even using parts of my experiences to help answer those questions. Still i dont sit and think directly about my abuse like ’13’. made me.

I obviously will never forget what happened to me and when i think back to those days i can remember it all. Its just weird how it almost doesn’t feel like it happened to me. I was genuinely in shock when i sat there and thought about how i use to move all my furniture to behind my bedroom door to protect myself and all that i was thinking in my head was

But i did. Every single day for nearly 15 years. 15 years of being terrified. Now nearly 7 years on i can’t think of a thing that even scares me a little bit. Even besides the abuse i was genuinely scared of pretty much anything and everything. Meeting new people, going out in public, my own reflection. Now theres not a day where i dont meet atleast 5 new people due to my job and its not until i wrote ’13’. that I realised that doesn’t bother me in the slightest and id never really noticed that change before. All these little reasons and changes in my life has made me completely seperate myself from the person that i was when i was under 15 years of age. Life is so so different for me that i just can’t believe it happened to me.

The tears were brought on by lots of aspects of ’13’. The shock of it all definitely brought tears but it was also for how saddened i felt for this little person who had been so terribly hurt. As I say, I’ve separated myself that much that all I wanted to do was protect this little person. ’13’. Made me realise how young i really was back then although I had so much responsibility and so much on my shoulders. The thought of living like that now is just unimaginable but before it was just well, life I guess.

’13’. made me so incredibly gratefull not only for life now but my resilience and determination to stay in the world. It would of been so easy for me to not want to be here but I am so grateful that something inside of me knew that life wasn’t all like that and that if I just pushed through life could be so different for me. I guess its another reason to keep doing what I’m doing. I so desperately want people to push through abuse and recover as this side of life is so wonderful I can’t put into words.