You Are Not Alone

Hi. Kayla here. How many times have you felt like you were alone in the way you were feeling? Or that something was happening to you that you didn't think anyone else was experiencing because no one else had ever brought it up, you had never heard it on a podcast, in a book, or even seen it in a movie. STOP! As much as people think they are alone, they are never alone. Someone somewhere else has felt it, experienced, and never spoken about it.

When I was eight years old I was at therapy (poor childhood, get into that more later), and my therapist had suggested we try group therapy with me because she thought it would be good for me to see other kids my age with similar thoughts and feelings. On the first day of group, I was asked why I was in therapy, and I said because my mom had died when I was six, and that I was hyperactive and the doctors thought it was connected. Then the question came: How did my mother's death make me feel? I stated, "Happy. She was suffering and so were we, and its better that no one is suffering now." The next week, I wasn't sent back to group. Apparently I had made the other kids in the group feel weird when I said I was happy my mother was dead. Had anyone taken the time to learn why I was happy and how what I said made sense then maybe it would have been a better source of therapy.

We spend our whole lives not talking about things, hiding our true feelings from friends and family because we feel that its easy to get by without sharing. I have spent the last year or so of my life realizing that sharing my feelings back then has made me be able to keep beating depression day over day now. Is depression gone? No. Will it ever be? No. Can I better control it some days over others? Yes. My point is, even though it seemed like I was the only kid who had ever said they were happy their parent had died, I wasn't. I am not. And neither are you.

My goal with this is to start putting out there the advice, thoughts, and ideas that other might want to or need to but aren't because they feel alone or weird about it. You are never alone.