It’s always fun to talk about “your old self.” In my case when I talk about that person I was and had to shed almost two years ago now, I look at the accomplishments, I have started to make mentally. When I first started out I was in a state of Psychosis because, I left the PTSD so long without treatment. When I began to treat the psychosis, I noticed that I needed to change a lot, and I meant a lot. I decided to do something for my health and move away from the toxic side of my bio family. That time I was living with my bio mother.
I moved to Toronto and I stripped myself of everything material and moved into a shelter because I felt that I was being ungrateful for a lot of things. Turns out this was just the start of my journey. I started very small with meditations, daily affirmations and daily journal challenge. This was to help me come out of that bout of psychosis. Well…….at first it was. Then it became much much more. It was a way of reconnecting myself, not only with reality but myself.
You see my mind was in a huge mess, and I had only been sober about a couple of months. The day I quit was the day my Bapchia on the adoptive side passed away from pneumonia. This was July 28th/2019. I had been in battle with a drug addiction since I was 16 years old. I started with pot, then I got into ecstasy for a couple of years at the age of 16 as well, then I was sober for a couple of years after the age of 19 to 24, then I graduated to cocaine. I was on and off with cocaine for a while. To tell you the truth it was awful. When I was with my ex and baby daddy (on and off since I was 16 and he was 19) we did it for a year straight on the weekends with his friends who were living with us at the time. This was until the ex decided that I was not a good person.
I am a good person don’t get me wrong but, I do regret doing drug and fucking with my mental health. Anyways, I moved back to Toronto for the second time and met some cool people. I am not going to name names and such because I am not like that. I am not angry about it because, I did this to myself and I have some guilt about it and such. A week goes by and I meet these people, and we head downtown Toronto where the raptors parade was. We walk through the crowd and we got to the other side of the mall. I don’t know how I survived the next hour this went on but I pushed on.
We sat down and we lit our cigarettes and one shot rang out, then two shots rang out in a matter of minutes, all we saw was people coming out of young and Dundas square. They were scared for their lives. We decided to check it out, and we went into the mall, and we saw more scared people walking towards the entrance we were at. We asked someone what was going out, and someone said someone had lit fireworks or something. So we went out of the same door we came in and we decided to go left, and go around the mall. While we were walking there was no one coming our way, and I was wondering why. Then we turned left again and we saw people running one way, and then the other way. I was like what the heck? That’s when I knew something was horribly wrong.
We walked down to the other entrance and we asked what was up, and someone said the shooter was in the mall. I was horrified and somehow the people I was with knew who the shooter was. This scared me even more but, my gut was not telling me anything or I just ignored it because, I liked the guy a lot. We then decided to go back around to the other entrance where we were when we heard the shots. This time we crossed the road and we walked up only to the queen subway station and I decided that I was scared enough and it was just time to hunker down. Then bang, bang, bang more hun shots. The boys ran towards it, and I was stuck as a statue as maybe hundred of people came barrelling towards me. I was so petrified that I could not even move. I was in the way of the hoard of people running towards me, and I was frozen and scared in my tracks.
The next thing I knew I was on the ground I look up and I get up and I collected the things I had dropped, and I hid in that subway stairs for like 2minutes. Then I ran into the building across from it. I went straight to the wall and I was hyperventilating. Then 30 seconds later the security guard asked me if I was alright, I said I am so scared as tears came rushing down my face. He said come with me and he led me and a group of other people to behind the building and there were a lot of other people there already hiding out. I remember him telling me to wait there with the others and I did.
This is when I started doing Drugs for the last time.
In your journal talk about a time in which you were really scared. Then answer these questions:
- What are your feelings about the situation now?
- What did you learn from it?
- How can you use this situation to help you recover?
- What is one thing you want to tell yourself, thats positive for you right in the now?
- What is one small step towards forgiving yourself for whatever you did during this situation?
Dee
Deejaegh Beck 