1.0

I've been waiting a really long time to write a personal blog post like this, mostly because I wanted to wait until I was completely comfortable with sharing some of my stories.  I am going to make several posts instead of one monstrous one, mostly because there are a lot of pieces to the story and I don't want to throw it all out into the open at once.  Since January of 2015 I have been living at home while working three jobs, and taking some classes here and there.  I live in North County San Diego, California and I work as a soccer coach and retail sales associate.  Before making this decision to stay home, I attended BYU Hawaii for a year and a half.  Some people reply to this information with a concerned sigh and respond, "Oh well, I guess working is fine for the time being" or something of the sort; as to say that I made the wrong decision to take a break from being a full-time student away from home.  Part of me would get really peeved by this and wished that I could blurt out everything that has gone on to lead me here, but I know that anyone who is that quick to judge my decisions is someone I shouldn't pay much mind to.  So I'll be talking about one specific time that has impacted me a lot.

Going all the way back to high school, I felt like I was in my element and was extremely social.  I hung out with friends, played sports, and school was fairly easy for me.  I did very well and things seemed to go my way.  Then came junior year.  I do not believe that there was one main cause for my initial signs of anxiety, but I noticed it when I began to lose my appetite.  I spent every day playing sports, so for me to not want food was absurd.  I was confused when my self-esteem plunged; but I was able to talk myself through most of my negative thoughts and was able to remain happy most of the time. Without the stability of my family and peers, those times would have been a lot harder.

As a result of my anxiety and stress, I became very extreme with my exercise and eating habits.  I would work out a ton on my own outside of the sports I already participated in, and would only eat snacks or small meals here and there.  It was easy to get away with because I spent half of the day with my peers, and half with my family. When I decided to open up to some friends about it, I was caught off guard because only a couple of them actually believed me and were proactive to assist or talk about the situation.  I am not and was not at all upset with any of my other friends.  I have been in situations where I have not known what to believe about a friend or how I could possibly help them. At the same time, this made me glad because I didn't want to be a charity case to my friends and wanted things to remain as normal as possible.

Finding peace through my religion, remaining positive and motivated, and with things working out with school and sports, I was able to get better and feel happy again.  Now when I'm having a tough time, I think back to this period of time and remember how important it was to keep a positive mindset, as cliche as it might sound.  I don't necessarily mean "positive" in the same context that someone else might.  It can be so difficult to tell yourself that the struggles you are going through are only temporary and that everything will be totally fine.  So instead of going that route, I fed myself positivity by saying things like, "You're strong, you're good enough, you're loved".  One thing I noticed when I told my friends about my eating habits is that they would reply, "But you look great!" or, "You don't even need to worry about how you look".  These habits didn't result from me hating my body, they resulted from my anxiety.  Although I did have those feelings about myself sometimes, that was not that main cause of my problems.  It is so important that we are very very careful when we have friends going through these same problems.  Something like this messes with your mind, and as a result your logic doesn't quite match up to other people looking in.  At that time, I didn't need to hear people say that they approved of me, I needed to hear it from myself and believe it.  In hindsight, this experience was beneficial to my emotional health; I know how to talk myself out of bad thoughts and how to release anxiety in a healthy way.

Alright, I'm cutting it off right here! More to come.