Life hands you lemons but lemonade tastes much better. Sometimes you add too much sugar and others not enough. Success is not measured in the number of days you do well but to me it means how you feel about yourself on the inside. You can have others tell you that you are reaching above and beyond expectations, doing well in school, are beautiful, have overcome challenges and know what you want in life but it means nothing unless you believe it. If you are told these things gradually believing them happens but not overnight.
Over the past three years life has been very interesting. I entered an intensive DBT program that saved my life and had to do that during my senior year of high school. Thinking about the challenges I had then when people told me these things about me I was lying to them and myself that I believed them. I didn't do it on purpose or maybe I did. I was sick, but the fact that I have come to where I am today amazes me. I have so much to be grateful for and I have so much good in my life that even when I have challenges that seem unbearable I know if I listen and follow my heart I can overcome them.
Two years ago I entered Westminster College as a freshman and it was a new beginning. It was a new start, to make new friends. It was time to live the new me. I wasn't perfect and never will be. I was still struggling and needed help. I still do, but I was doing it. I was working hard. I cared. I threw myself into this new and scary situation before me and tackled it. Things happened, I had my challenges, ended up having some medical problems, surgery, hospital but I survived.
None of this means I was unsuccessful but quite the contrary. I have been learning. I have been taking challenges and life as they come and dealing with them. I have overcome the challenges presented upon me. I have found more of me and find each more every day. My biggest success I am most proud of was actually dropping school and going to back to treatment last fall. It saved my life by giving me life. It helped me find the true me. I finally was believing in myself. I started to believe that I am beautiful, successful, that I have overcome a lot, that I achieve expectations and that I am a good person. Some days I do. Others I don't. What can I say I am not perfect. Who is?
"Try to discover
The road to success
And you'll seek but never find,
But blaze your own path
And the road to success
Will trail right behind.
~Robert Brault
I make my own way. I still have a ways to go but when I put my heart in it, I can do anything.
