Unknown

Everyone loves a good mystery. The kind that keeps you up at night, the words that leave you on the edge of your seat. The stories that leave you with more questions than answers. The stories that give you goosebumps and leaves you with chills.

Many times they start with death or someone around the local community goes missing. But this story starts completely different.

It starts out with an adventure.

That adventure takes many drastic twists and turns before some awful and terrible even happens to leave the readers or viewers in complete disbelief.

But as it seems no one ever talks about these things.

The horrible, disastrous, tragic things that disrupt lives, throwing them into a catastrophe that feels like it will never end.

Because tragedy never really ends. It only grows and leaves its echoes with the people and places it has impacted. It's left marks and scars forever altering these things until a new darkness takes over and molds its features into something new and much more frightening.

Stories can just be stories.

The things that give these monstrous adventures and scary creatures life are those who believe in them. Many people aren't scared of the dark itself, they are scared of the things that can lurk inside these shadows. The things that lay in wait for the perfect time to strike, right when the chills crawl up your spine and your hair stands on end. It leaves you on high alert. Frantically waiting for the next jump scare or the next creepy sound that gets your heart racing and adrenaline pumping, the themes that make your hair stand on end, giving you nothing by goosebumps and chills running up and down your spine.

It's only when you give in to the things that go bump in the night, is when all things start to break loose. Because there isn't just one thing that lurks in the darkness, waiting for the right time to strike fear and terror into its prey. They call them monsters for that exact reason.

But no one ever talked about how there can be monsters that don't lurk in the shadows but dwell in the light. Those that feed off of their victims' pain and misfortune. It's people like this that are the monsters. They make you feel so many different horrible things if you don't meet their needs, wants, or even expectations. They leave you feeling horrible about everything because you will never know if you are good enough. They go and make something so small into a big argument that leaves you feeling even more like a failure.

Why has this become a new normal? How has toxic behavior become the new normal for families?

Growing up, I had this overwhelming sense that I had to please my parents and when I didn't do something that they expected it was all your grounded and yelling. As I grew older it only seemed to grow. After I graduated high school it got even worse. Then from there on, I seemed to only make bad choices. I will admit that some of them were pretty stupid but isn't that point? Isn't that where we learn?

After that, I think my mother kind of gave up. Where she "failed as a parent." Which I think was a little overboard. My mistakes were the normal ones. The dating ones and then there was another one (Which is all explained in my Journal Entry post). But everyone makes those mistakes.

Mistakes help you learn. No one is perfect and everyone is human. We aren't machines, we have wants and needs.

After everything that my mother has done, I still find myself defending her, and I don't need to. I don't need to defend her actions they aren't mine. Even though you don't agree with something someone says or does you shouldn't kick them out of you're life. You should try and move past it. I know that you can't change anyone or make them change for the better but it still makes everything complicated because that relationship you had with that person (whether it be good or bad) it's still gone. It's gone and it's probably never going to come back.

At one point in time, you're going to have to face that monster. And I'll tell you this, you can come out better for it.