I miss how we were then. So much. It breaks my heart every day.

The idea of someone else having you drives me crazy.

It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.

I can’t play your games. I won’t put myself through this anymore. You came over and kissed me in a way that I can’t even describe, playing with my hair, telling me that you’ve missed me, and then you become distant and tell me its all pointless.

I can’t do this. I can’t. You’re killing me inside and I can’t and won’t do it. It’s time to make a choice. It’s time to make a choice now. If not, I’ll walk away and the years that we have had as friends will become nothing more than a fading memory. I will cease to exist.

I’m not angry, I’m hurt and absolutely devastated.

First, the amount of information that the human mind can filter through absolutely amazes me. Think about it. Everything that goes on around you, whether you know it or not, is picked up by one of your five senses. You can see, touch, taste, smell, or hear it. The fact that we are able to focus at all in any capacity is amazing. Somehow, our brains are able to filter out certain things when they’re not important. The best example of this is the chair you are sitting in (or the bed you’re laying in). Your mind isn’t consciously thinking about the feeling that it gives you, but at the same time if you think about it you are able to feel the chair under you. That honestly is amazing to me. 

Second, I’ve come to the conclusion that some amount of people (I’m not sure if it’s 1% or 99%) are absolutely awful, vile, horrible things.

That is all.

You may be gone now,

But your memory still shines

So tell me you love me

This one last time

These years have been rough

I’m glad you were mine

But tell me you love me

This one last time

You’ve called my bluff

My hearts no longer mine

But tell me you love me

Just this one

last

time.

So I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately. I mean REALLY thinking. Throughout my entire life up until about 7-8 months ago, my outlook and method of success was based on the idea that other people will always let you down and you are the only person who you always will have. That theory didn’t exactly take the best care of me, and it led me down a road of pain and brokenness. By living my life thinking that I was the only one who I could trust, I grew farther and farther from my friends, and perhaps most importantly my family. Everything I did in my life was for me and my benefit. Other people, in my mind, just were there. Why did this not work? Simple, because the way that life works requires us to work with the people who are closest to us.

The healthy human mind craves and strives for relationships. I am a strong believer that the reason for this instinct is to make life easier to manage. As people experience good things, they can share this joy with the people around them. If people experience bad things, they should be able to rely on people around them to carry them through those rough times. This completely contradicts the idea that I lived by for so many years. 

Then I sat down and thought about why I felt the way I did, and why I practiced the isolationist methods that I did for so long. I guess that after a lot of the things that I’d been through I thought that people couldn’t be trusted with anything as important as someones well-being (for more info on that see my story). Honestly I think the way I was thinking at that point made me feel like the weight of the entire world was on my shoulders. My thinking was along the lines of “If they didn’t help before why would they help now? Why should I let myself get hurt by someone’s failure to act?”. So I kept it bottled up and tried to hold it in. It didn’t exactly get me anywhere positive. 

I don’t think that it was until after I returned home from boarding school that I really started to realize that maybe I could trust people around me. For so long I hadn’t given anyone the chance to help. Then I was put in a place where my only option was to accept help. I opened myself up to my family, and that made all the difference in the world. 

All in all, I’ve found that it’s absolutely detrimental to the human spirit to try to handle everything on your own. The people around you have been put in your life for a reason. Whatever your spiritual beliefs, even if you think it was just by chance, those people are who they are for a reason. I’m of the unwavering belief that everyone has their purpose. The people who surround you each have traits that can help you through a rough time, just as you can help the people around you. It’s a complex idea, but in my experience it’s an essential one to understand.

-Michael

livelifebyliving.com

Tonight my post is gonna be about missing someone who you love. Why this topic? Simple: because I’m experiencing it right now, therefore I can share my own feelings on it.

First: what’s it like to miss someone? Missing someone who is important to you is like… Well I don’t know how to describe it. It feels like a part of you is missing. For example, when Reem (my girlfriend) left for her trip to Europe, saying goodbye was hard enough. Then when I woke up the next morning I reached to text her good morning. Then I realized she wouldn’t get any of my messages. (That didn’t stop me from sending them to keep from going crazy)

Second: What to do? Anyone who has a solution to this should let me know like ASAP. Cool? Cool.

Michael

livelifebyliving.com

I love it. I want to pour my heart out right now but it’ll sound absolutely insane if I do and I’ll probably get crap for it. 

Ok screw it… It’s my blog, I can write what I want, right?

Up to March 14, 2012, the majority of my life had been based on the philosophy “Struggle through the day and sleep through the night”. Then I started becoming even closer with a girl who was one of my best friends. After having my heart shattered in the past, the one thing that I was afraid of most was a repeat of the past. I had completely shut off my ability to love. (Yes, I’m using the word love. The strongest possible emotion that any human being can ever feel, in my opinion). I couldn’t handle having my heart broken like that again. I had the mindset of resisting all form of attachment to any girl who I may become close to. I literally resisted love with every fiber of my being. But then I started to feel it towards her. After shutting off my heart to love for so long, I fell in love with my best friend. Since then, my entire outlook has changed. My shattered heart has been held together and stolen by the girl who I happily call both my girlfriend and my best friend. After so many years of being friends, I finally can call her my love. So Reem, if you’re reading this, I love you. (I told you I would broadcast it to the world somehow).

This concludes my emotional spilling my heart out.

-Michael

livelifebyliving.com

I was thinking, why on earth do people go after people under the idea that ‘I’ll change them’. No, you won’t. Do you know why? Nobody can change someone against their will. You can’t go to someone and want to change who they are, you can’t fall in love someone wanting to change them. If you change them, they’re not the person who you fell in love with to begin with.

For example, a very close friend of mine and I were talking earlier. We came to the conclusion that it doesn’t matter what has happened in the past, the things that we have done in the past are done and over with. It doesn’t usually change what happens today, or at least it shouldn’t. So why do people allow things that have happened in the past to impact what happens today? I don’t know, I don’t have the answer. This friend and I essentially came to the understanding that the things we have said and done in the past are history. These things make us who we are. 

Isn’t that all that matters?: Who we are now?

Yeah, I thought so.

-Michael

livelifebyliving.tumblr

Tomorrow, February 7th, is a huge day for me. February 7th of last year (2011) was the last time I self injured. I can’t even tell you how amazing it feels to be free of that terrible addiction. It became my life. I would sit at school and if something happened, I’d start thinking of the next time I’d be able to get my release in the form of a blade to my arm. It was my only release, but it was such short term relief. I would literally cut to escape the emotional low of my previous cut. I started it to be in control of my life, and in the end, it ended up controlling me instead. It really did nothing except hurt me. Seriously, I started and it just dragged me down. It hurt me, even though I didn’t exactly feel like I was physically hurting at first, the stinging and itching and constant hiding it. It seriously became my life. At one point I couldn’t get to sleep at night with one more cut. It calmed me down, or so I thought. The moral of the story is if you are even considering cutting, theres nothing anyone can say to stop you, but I hope you really think about what you’re getting into, and I urge you not to. Second, if you have already started cutting and are struggling with it, you should know that there IS hope. You don’t even want to know how many times I relapsed before I could get to the point where I was able to give it up. It IS a constant battle, and it never will disappear, but it WILL get easier in time. Plus, I’m always here for anyone who needs help.

-Michael

livelifebyliving.tumblr.com

“You are not alone, and this is not the end of your story”

Reposting this from months ago, it needs to be seen.

Whoever you are, whoever you may be,

I won’t sit here on the other side of this page and tell you that ‘this is bad’ or ‘you can’t do this’. What I say doesn’t matter. The choice is yours. If you want to injure yourself that badly, there is nothing in this world that I can do to stop you.  There simply aren’t the words.

Before you cut, know something. Once you start, you won’t want to stop. Most people will look down upon you. You will feel ashamed. You will be stuck. Even if it’s just once, you will be hooked. It doesn’t matter how resolved you are to jut go once. Once you make the decision to self injure once, you will do it again. The once will turn to twice, the twice to three times, and so on. You will continue this habit whenever you feel anxious, angry, afraid, sad, or even when you aren’t feeling anything at all. 

This will continue until your entire life has become cutting. When you constantly wear long sleeves, or long pants. When you’re always afraid of someone finding out your secret. There’s always help, but once you start, it becomes much harder to listen to anybody (who are just trying to help). You will see the help as attacks on you. You will get defensive. 

Think about what this would do to your family. Imagine if they found out. Well, you may want to start finding excuses. If you start, someone will find out, and believe me, they will question it. It doesn’t matter how much you try to hide it, they will find out, and even if you give them an excuse for what happened: they will figure it out. 

I don’t know you; I don’t know your situation, all I know it that the life I once lived was not one I enjoyed. If you’re going to do this, be ready. If this is the life you want to live, by all means: it is your life. As someone once said: “As long as you’re happy”.

-Michael

If you need to talk, leave me a message: livelifebyliving.tumblr.com

‘Letter to a Self Injurer’ by Michael Garrett is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Heartbreak… It’s perhaps the only problem in life that man hasn’t found a solution to (other than death). I’ve had my heart broken just once at this point. It’s a long, painful process. The only solution that I’ve found is time. Drinking won’t help, cutting won’t help, drugs won’t help. The only possible solution you’ll ever find is time. Time to compose yourself, time to realize that you are able to live without that person. I won’t sit here and type lies, it just wastes both of our time: It will be painful, it will make you want to just lay down and cry. You also will overcome it, and you will do so with the support of your family and your friends. 

Michael

livelifebyliving.tumblr.com

There’s that familiar feelings that creeps on all of us. 

We could be with friends, or being with the ones we love. having a great time. Smiling, laughing, enjoying ourselves for a short period of time. But the happiness doesn’t last, does it? 

The feeling that slowly but surely crosses your mind. You try to let it pass and think about something else, but no. It doesn’t go away—Does it? It sticks with you until it takes over your mind. All the feelings you wish would just go away. The feeling of sadness, pain, and hopelessness. Sometimes, there’s nothing to be sad about, and sometimes there is. But you feel trapped, don’t you? You feel like there is absolutely no way out. It’s like being in the largest darkest tunnel and not finding a way out. No light, just pure darkness, with no way out. It’s like falling into a trap. No control. You can feel it all over your body too, can’t you? Everything starts to feel numb. You feel all alone too, don’t you? It really sucks. Trying to be happy, faking smiles, trying to get yourself through the day. Feel like your losing control of yourself? You can’t calm yourself down cant you? THE FEELING JUST DOESN’T GO AWAY. All of these racing thoughts and there’s only one thing you want to do, you want it to all stop and you feel all the adrenaline start up and everything is rushed and then it goes black. Everything is gone. ”So you want to kill yourself? Because no one cares about you. Your family hates you. Right? No. Your parents walking in your room in the morning to only find a dead body. They’ll try their hardest to not think negative, and to just think that you’re fooling around. Then they’ll start shaking you. Why aren’t you breathing? They’ll be broken. Tears. Many tears. More tears than you ever shed. Was it them? Were they the reason you did this? More tears. Pain. Every day. Every night. Every single second of every day. Guilt. More guilt. What about your best friends? They’re not going to care. Right? No. What’s the first thing that will go through their mind when your principal comes in and tells the class that you’re not alive. While your best friend sits there in tears. That girl that you’d smile at but never talk to? She’s now crying. The boy who used to kick you under the table just to annoy you? He’ll be shocked. He’ll be devastated. He’ll blame himself. What about your teacher? Thoughts crossing her mind. She’ll question if you did it because she didn’t make school comfortable enough for you. Pain. Devastation. All in one. Who organizes your funeral? Who has to go through your stuff? Clothes? Notes? Those few older girls who used to give you daggers at school? They’ll feel regret. They’ll blame themselves. See, if you killed yourself today, you’ll never know what might of happened tomorrow. You’ll never know because you’re dead. Plain dead. Not breathing. Not alive. Just dead. Your family hates themselves for it. Your best friend then falls into depression. Tears. Tears. More tears than a river. All because you killed yourself because you thought noone would care. Right? You are loved. By many. Someone right now is thinking of you. And right now, I’m thinking about anyone who has thought or is considering suicide. You are beautiful. No matter if you’re black, white, homo-sexual, tall, short, overweight or anorexic. You are beautiful. You want to kill yourself? Think about it first. There’s no coming back. And I promise, if you do it, you are not only hurting yourself, you are hurting many. You are creating more tears than you led yourself to. You are making everyone miserable and making them all feel guilt and pain. Never will they feel whole like they used to when they had you. You are beautiful. And you are never ever alone.”

I just want to say, anyone out there that sometimes feels the way I do, before you take a bottle of pills, pick up a blade, burn yourself, or do any sort of self harm to try to end your life, think about this; It’s not helping anyone. It will bring more pain to people then you could ever imagine. Just remember, you. are.  loved. and there are people to help you get through whatever you’re going through. 

-http://h-e-a-d-l-o-ww.tumblr.com/

This was a submission from a friend of mine, who’s really more of a sister to me. She has captured the words I’ve wanted to say for so long. Thank you Erin.