Sorry I can’t do read more and this is super long.
Today I heard a song on the radio and it reminded me of a YouTube video I made in 2010 as an entry into a young adults travel competition. I can remember everything about that day, the day I made that video. I was wearing my cool ACDC tshirt and it was when my hair was cut really short in a pixie bob and bleached silver blonde. I was wearing one of my crazy colourful headbands and had my nose ring. I made the video sitting outside on the sidewalk.
I made this video just months after coming back from Africa and Thailand.
Looking back I realise how incredibly different I am now to how I was. That girl was constantly bubbly, bouncy and adventurous. That girl bungee jumped into the Nile singing ‘we are the champions’ in her head and loved it so much she walked up the top to do it again. That girl went to Thailand by herself for a week just because she could. And came home with piercings, braids and henna tattoos. That girl loved being around people more than anything, and if she had to spend more than a few hours by herself she would get antsy and have to do something.
That girl salsa danced, wore high heels, and loved life and adventure. Who went to every meeting and helped out in anyway because that’s who she was
She was the kid the who begged her mum to let her go on state church camps even though everyone she knew dropped out. New people were fun!
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What I realised with a shock tonight was that I am a very very different person now. Of course some things are still the same and that girl has got to be in there somewhere (please God please) but really I am very different. Honesty time: I spend most of my days off sitting in my room on my bed watching DVDs and playing on the Internet, I rarely catch up with friends and occasionally cancel because I just can’t handle leaving the house. I often don’t go to church events/meetings for the same reason. I often can spend days alone without seeing anyone. I rarely dress up, put makeup on, wear heels or dress funky. I haven’t been dancing in a year or so because I just can’t…I’m too unfit/ridiculous/have nothing to wear/don’t want to go out. I got invited to a roller-rink party and turned it down because I thought I was too old for goodness sake. I don’t get excited as much, I am more cynical, more sad, more anxious. I don’t bounce.
And it breaks my heart.
And I know bits of why this happened…an unhealthy relationship with a boy that left me quite broken, getting Bell’s palsy and losing a lot of my confidence and tbh trust in God, being disappointed a lot, not dealing with emotions healthily but running away from them, not growing in intimacy with God but hiding behind distractions and probably heaps more i guess.
I hope this is a wake up call. I hope this stirs me to change. I want to be that person again or preferably a better version of the person. I want to enjoy my life and I want to be someone that others enjoy being around. I want a bounce to my step again. To be joyful, not just sometimes but constantly. I don’t really know how to go about it so if you have any ideas that would be fantastic.
This isn’t a sad post. I want this to be a ‘Rebekah is going to get better and be herself’ post. I am sick of people asking me if I have depression/ anxiety. That is not me. I don’t want that anymore.
