#kellynieman

now comes the (probably too) personal story and waaay too long story of why I left, and what I’ve felt/did since then. It was actually really cathartic to write this, so I am not gonna apologise for the length.

I had a really rough time 2 years ago, My father got cancer and needed surgery, I was failling all of my classes at uni (making me doubt myself) and to top it all off the plane that my aunt and uncle where in was shot down above ukraine (mh17. . .) and so my father was sick and miserable, my sister had a break down, my mother was left to pick up the pieces and I was at the other side of the country alone in my dorm room. It was the worst year of my life, it literally felt like all the air had been blown out of me and the ground had disappeared. And there was a period where I was genuinly depressed I think, even though I never really let myself feel it because I needed to be there for my sister (and my mother, and my father) and I needed to pass my classes during my last chance at uni and I just knew that if I gave in to that feeling that I would never stop crying. And because of that I couldn’t be on here anymore.

I didn’t know how to be the sad one, or how to ask for help. I have always hated feeling like I was burdening someone with my problems, and I’ve never been good at sharing my grief and I did try, just because I couldn’t do it alone and I hoped it would help, but it didn’t. I couldn’t bring up the energy for it, and there was a time where I locked myself away from everyone really (not just tumblr) because I couldn’t give anything but anger and I couldn’t receive anything either and if I couldn’t be good, I’d rather be nothing.

Which was enhanced by the fact that I felt like a cheat, I had always told everyone who needed it that everything eventually works out and life is worth living and to just have faith and love, and then here I was not believing that anymore. It felt like I had lied to everyone I had ever helped (including myself in a way) and it made me feel like I didn’t deserve help (as much as I know it’s ridiculous and if anyone told me that I would tell them that’s bullshit, and hit them in the head before hugging the hell out of them). But I guess that’s just what being depressed feels like. And just being sad I could’ve handled, I’ve been sad before, it was the anger I couldn’t deal with. The only way to get rid of anger is to forgive, and that is precisely what I couldn’t do.

This was my happy place, and I did it not just for myself but for everyone else, I always loved sending nice messages and making people happy and reblog funny things and  just making this a nice place to be, but I couldn’t do that anymore. And because the only things I wanted to reblog where sad things, or rants, and I didn’t want this blog to become a depressing place and so I just stopped altogether. 

I instead focused on helping my sister, like doing everything for her could make up for not helping anyone else (and it helped, as much as my support helped her recover, it helped me recover myself just as much) and I focused on gaining my bachelor degree. I had a weird time at school, because I didn’t feel really motivated and I largely also felt that learning wasn’t the most important thing in life, not if everything else was falling apart.  But I also didn’t want to throw away 3 years of studying because life decided to become unfair. And also maybe because a small part of me did still believe this wasn’t gonna last all my life and so throwing away my future because of the present seemed like a bad idea, not to mention it pissed me off that external events could fuck everything else up so much that I wanted to prove that at least this I could still do. And because I stopped caring about it as much as I used to, I stopped having failure anxiety, it was almost a “fuck it I’m doing it if it kills me” vibe and it got me through, despite everything I (finally, after 6 tries) passed my classes. This year I will hopefully get my bachelor degree and after next year I’ll have my master and I’ll be an honest-to-god engineer!

 And it finally felt like I was at the other end of the storm, I felt proud (and maybe a little shocked) at my own strength, at the fact that I made it. I started enjoying my classes again. I started talking to people again, making friends, being happy-ish. I say happy-ish because the grief isn’t gone yet, sometimes it comes back and hits me like a freight-train. It also changed me and I am still trying to figure out what that means exacly. I am less naive, I stand up for myself more and I know what I want more. But I am also less forgiving, which I don’t like but my friends and family say is not a bad thing.

I am stronger now, there are things I learned from this that have made me better but I still feel like I was fine before too, and I’d rather not have gone through it all (or at least later in life, I am 23 and I have lost more people than some people lose in an entire life time). So as far as acceptance I still have some way to go I guess :P 

But I can see myself getting there, I am still scared the pain and the anger are never gonna go away and maybe they won’t, but I can feel grateful again about my life, I can be happy. And so now I am here again, on tumblr, spilling my guts to all of you :P which is actually a sign I am doing great (or better, let’s not get carried away) because I have always been better at talking about feelings/situations after I stopped feeling them :P 

anyway, for anyone who has read this far, I wish I had some profound findings or wisdoms to give you about all of this. But I don’t, I'm still not sure what it all means, or if it means anything at all, so for now I’m just gonna say thank you for reading this entire novel and I hope you have a nice day :)