Life is about making choices.
I choose to be a Victor, as I choose to be empowered by all that I have gone through. I am choosing to allow my personal experiences to strengthen me, rather than defeat me.
There is no way I am going to live my life as a hermit, afraid of people and places out of fear of the unknown. I just don’t have it in me to live that way and will fight with everything I have to get out of it! I did that in Ontario the last couple of years before I left, and I was miserable. I may be disabled, but I am still deserving to avail myself of all that this life has to offer to me! I am just not done with living yet!
Living with such severe anxiety that I would throw up with the thought of leaving the safety of my own space, was very hard to deal with. Going to the Doctor was a nightmare, though it was only a few minutes away. Getting over those feelings of extreme fear was hard for me to do, but I pushed myself every day to do just that. The affirmations and rituals I did then to get myself out that door with the fear I was feeling, became a lifeline for me at the time.
With the feelings of safety I have gained over the past couple of years, I don’t need those affirmations and rituals anymore. They started easing off after my first year of living in NL!
I refuse to feel sorry for myself for too long, as that does not help me live a quality life. As the poster above says, it is a choice I have to make, no one else can do it for me. I will always choose to live, not hide away and give in to my fears and many health issues.
I can choose to live in misery seeing plots and Bullies all around me, or I can strengthen my boundaries and keep trying to go out into the World and see what it has to offer, even for a Retired person like me!!
I refuse to sit and wallow in all my issues, I choose instead to face them head-on and find solutions. If I can’t find a solution, I find a way to live with it and integrate it into my life. You can always learn new ways of doing things if you want it badly enough, as I do.
I am disabled and there are a lot of things I simply cannot do anymore, but I find new ways of achieving what I want. I live in pain, every day, but it doesn’t stop me. There are a lot of tools available to help me and I have no problem learning new things, especially if it helps me live how I want to.
I have a mental illness, but that doesn’t stop me either, I live with it and find ways to maintain my symptoms. I have never been ashamed of my mental health struggles just as I have never felt ashamed of my physical struggles. It is a part of my life that I have to accept.
It is all about my quality of life, not the quantity! I have no interest in living to be 100 yrs old, I just am interested in how I live with the time I have. I prefer to go out in the World in a wheelchair, than give in to my health issues and stay home, dependent on others. I know what is coming for me, and I am prepared for that. I can deal with a lot of pain, as I have built up quite a bit of tolerance over the years!
I choose how my life looks like, as it is mine.
As the poster says, I really don’t care anymore if people love me or hate me and it took me a long time to reach this point. I have rebuilt myself after all I went through in my last job in Ontario and I am more free than I have ever been.
It was hard work, looking into myself and healing all the parts of me that were broken and lost, and no one will ever get me back to that dark place ever again.
