"You know how, or I’ve seen this on Facebook before but you know how people say that there’s been psychology studies about how if you’re friends with someone for seven years or longer then you’re going to be friends for life.
I remember seeing that like, I don’t know, a year, year and a half ago and I was like 'Oh yeah that’s totally true, like that makes sense,' because at the time I had a really really close friend. I had been friends with her for seven years at the time.
We went to high school together, we were so close, we went on a lot of trips together, but last year we just went our own separate ways because we disagreed about some things in our lives, but it was just really weird, we were so close. I’ve never been so close with someone before and then we just stopped talking to each other and I felt like it was something she was supposed to come to me for. I always felt like I didn’t have anything to apologize for. Some things I could apologize for, but I’m not going to reach out to her.
I always was hoping that she was going to reach out to me and say something, but it’s been months now, I don’t even know how long, but it’s been a long time and she hasn’t and I feel like I’ve always still wanted her to reach out to me and tell me that I understand what you thought and I think you were right and I’m sorry, but I think at this point I just need to get rid of that and not think or expect or hope that she’s ever going to do that, because I think that that bridge is just burned and I have to live with that."
“My confession is that I’m not as sad as I should be about my uncle dying. He had three failed back surgeries and he was in a lot of pain all the time.
He started buying non-FDA approved medication off of the streets and then one day one of the medications he bought, I don’t remember what it was called, but it was laced with carfentanil so he overdosed and died but to this day my grandma just says that his heart gave out from all the medication. She doesn’t want anyone to know that it was an overdose even though it’s fair that he went to the streets to get stronger pain medication.
A few weeks before he died he texted me asking if I could send him pot in the mail and I told him no even though I knew he was going to use it for pain relief, but I didn’t want anything to go wrong and I was super paranoid and then he died a few weeks later. I really don’t think like a year down the line I don’t think he would have been very good cause he was starting to lose the ability to walk and he was in a lot of pain and I think he was being tested for cancer when he died. Pretty just sad, obviously, but it’s a lot more relief than sadness. I don’t know if that’s how it should be, but it is and part of me is a little, not happy, but just relieved that I don’t to see him deteriorate, because he was the strongest person I know.”
“I don’t believe in the same religion my parents believe in anymore. The reason being, at some point in high school I just decided that I no longer, I could no longer stand going to a church that I felt was full of hypocrites or believing in a religion that I thought was not totally truthful or wasn’t factual.
At some point, junior year of high school, I told my parents that I wasn’t going to church anymore. They were weird about it, they were kind of like ‘Oh yeah yeah, no worries, just come once every other week or something,’ but I was like, ‘No, I’m not coming to church anymore.’ I wanted to find out exactly what I believed in myself.
I didn’t know what that was and so I felt like I needed space to at least figure out where I wanted to go. College rolls around and I’m still not going to church, I still don’t really know what I believe in. I would tell people I was agnostic. I didn’t believe in a God, but there could be something out there. Freshman year I still wasn’t sure where I landed and one day on campus this guy approaches me and asks me if I had ever considered doing a bible study. This is still something I want to find out and I still want to explore, because it was a large part of my life. I went to church for sixteen years every single Sunday and did Sunday school every week and multiple church events. Most of the community I was involved with was based around church. To have that kind of go away was weird.
So, I explored this bible study thing for a while, but I kind of realized half way through that I was just convinced that I wasn’t into it, I wasn’t going to believe whatever he said. It was kind of pointless from the start. It was a waste of his time and a waste of mine, because even if what he was saying resonated with me, I would just not listen. I would convince myself that it wasn’t true. Instead of exploring that I shut myself off to it. Instead of actually experiencing or trying to understand what I believed.
Every time I go back home, my parents ask me to go to church and for a while I always said I’m not going to do that. I’d rather spend my Sunday morning sleeping in and eating the left-over bacon from my parent’s breakfast, but now I just humor them and I go to church anyways. I don’t know, it kind of feels sacrilegious in a way, because I don’t necessarily believe what they’re saying but I’m still there. If they pass out communion, it’s for believers, I always take a cracker and a cup of wine just to not be awkward, but it’s really something that I, you know, I don’t know what I believe and I’m still trying to find that out. I’m not sure if I’ve closed myself off to certain possibilities because of my own insecurities or my own wants or desires.”
“I was in high school, it was sophomore year. My friends and I started drinking. I was really depressed for some reason, I’m not really sure what caused it, but it was right after my boyfriend and I broke up we started drinking a lot.
My friends all thought I had a problem and so they stopped talking to me for a while. It was really shitty and I didn’t realize how weird it was to not have friends until after I had to go through a whole semester of high school with almost no one and then I realized that it wasn’t worth maintaining all the drama just to prove my point. So, I kind of just gave in and was like ‘Guys, I’m really sorry that I never heard you out when you were trying to tell me shit was wrong before.’ It was really weird. I stopped drinking for like a year and a half after that.”
“When I was in the third grade, my parents got divorced. Growing up in a conservative town, that wasn’t the norm, it was all nuclear families. So, when I was in the third grade which you’re only eight years old and I told everyone in my class that my parents were getting divorced a lot of things came up in my life and I’m the oldest in my family.
I have a younger sibling so she didn’t really understand what was going on and I did. I don’t know if your parents are divorced, but when they do get divorced there is always a part of you that feels like you’re the person that is the reason for it. That maybe you did something wrong, because you’re so young you don’t understand that it’s obviously your parents falling out of love and not your fault.
Growing up in this conservative town I was just not the norm. I didn’t fit in with everyone, because people’s parents would come to school dances just to take pictures and stuff like that and I was the only that my mom would just be there, because my dad ended up leaving. I guess growing up not having the parent, that kind of messed me up in the head for future relationships, not just romantically but with friendships, because I felt like I always had to outdo myself.
It was always a fear of not being good enough and not being enough for someone. That’s also not helpful because I consider myself to be a romantic and I really fantasize about my wedding one day and just everything like that. Now a days when I get into relationships, thankfully I’m in an amazing relationship with a man that would never ever judge me for something like that, but it’s just a constant fear and I think it’s something that needs to be talked about more with kids that are victims of divorce, because there is just a lot of self-blame in there and I know now that I’m not the one to blame.”
“I’m really scared that I’m going to become like my dad. Growing up I feel like he wasn’t really someone who I wanted to become, he isn’t very social. He doesn’t do a lot and he doesn’t have a lot of ambition, but I feel like I’m starting to get a lot of his characteristics as I get older.
I realize that I’m doing that. I talked to my brother about it and he’s also doing that. I feel like it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy for us to become like our parents. Even if we don’t want to be. I feel like I do a lot of things to try and spite that and go against that specifically so it doesn’t happen. Even when I do things that seem adventurous for me, something that he would never do now, as I get older I learn more about his past and the stuff he did. How he acted when he was young and it was really similar to the things that I do now. Kind of in that same defiance. I feel like I’m just getting more stressed and more isolated and more apathetic as I get older. It feels like it’s all coming together as I get older.”
“Last year I had a stalker for the full year, he was coming to both of my jobs and it was really not something that I was addressing for a really long time, because my boyfriend at the time, who I also didn’t realize was super abusive, just told me to give this guy the benefit of the doubt, but it was this stranger who was just following me around.
He made me feel really unsafe and then he came to Norlin the other day and it really freaked me out and I had a really bad panic attack. He’s never done anything physical, but he just doesn’t listen to me when I say I don’t want to talk to him. I was talking to my bosses who I trust and they told me that I should file a police report, but I have never really felt the need to do that just because I don’t really have a lot of faith in the criminal justice system anyway.
My bosses convinced me, I did it willingly, but I filled this report and I was super hysterical when this police officer came in and the whole time he was asking me these questions and interrupting me and he ended up telling me that I should go back to counseling, because of this stalker and he said, ‘I just want you to know that I deal with criminal things and what I’m hearing isn’t a crime.’ It was just really stupid and I couldn’t believe that I was in that predicament.
You hear it all the time that women don’t get anything that they need when they report certain crimes. Feeling unsafe or assault, that kind of stuff, and I’ve never even tried to. It’s because I always expect it like that. I finally did and it was just super terrible. The actual process of my Thursday, the worst part was me actually trying to file a report versus just having a panic attack.”
“Coming from a really little town to school was pretty hard, because it was just a big shock. I’ve had friends since I was two years old and then all of a sudden, they weren’t around.
It was really hard to get used to being surrounded by a bunch of people I didn’t know and having to get out there. Try new things.
I was so trusting; the people I’ve know my whole life I knew they were good people so I never second guessed anyone that I met. I fell in with a group of people that didn’t do things that I agreed with, but I was so trusting anyway that I was like ‘It’s okay, they’re fine.’ Then it started getting weird and I got out.
They were doing a lot of drugs and they were lying to people and they stole stuff from people they cared about. I wasn’t okay with that. One girl lied about the rent or the deposit to her family so she could steal $500 from her mom. Which I thought was pretty ridiculous, because she already had money. She just got that money so she could get more drugs. That was the last straw.”
“In high school, I used to hang out with this group of guys who were, I guess you could say, rebels or just bad guys. Not bad necessarily, but they just got into a lot of trouble and were just always trying to rebel or do ridiculous stuff.
I started hanging out with these guys in high school, I don’t even know I got to hanging out with them, but I was dating one of them and kind of just got into their group. Basically, I just used to hang out with them and do ridiculous shit.
They used to have this tree house and I would sneak out of my parents’ house in the middle of the night and go hangout with them at this tree house. Everyone would be smoking and drinking and doing drugs. I was young, I was fifteen or sixteen at the time and it just felt like I shouldn’t be doing that, but at the same time I was having so much fun and feeling cool. It was strange. I would hang out with these guys and they would just get into a lot of trouble. They would do shit like go break into graveyards and mess around with stuff or one time I was with them and they, I didn’t do this, but they went to Walmart and stole a bunch of alcohol. It was just fun to hang out with them, but I usually wasn’t doing the illegal things, I would just observe and be there for support I guess.
I never really got into any serious trouble, but one of the guys who was in that group ended up going to jail for doing some crazy stuff. During the time, it just felt so fun and I always looked forward to hanging out with them on the weekends. They were always planning something fun or crazy or weird. We used to do this stuff which I don’t even know why I did this stuff, but they introduced me to this stuff called Spice. It’s synthetic weed. Basically, it makes you hallucinate. We used to do it all the time. At first it was really fun and I liked doing it. The only reason they were doing Spice was because one of the guys in the group, Adam, was getting drug tested and it doesn’t show up on drug tests. We basically used to do Spice all the time, but there was one time we did way too much and I was freaking out. We were actually in my parent’s backyard. I feel like I would do all this stuff and my parents would never know about me sneaking out or doing drugs with these people. I was sneaky or they were oblivious. I ended up doing too much Spice and freaking out. Tripping really hard.
That was the end of that for me. Whenever they would hangout and smoke Spice I just didn’t join them after that, because I had a really bad experience. For the most part it was all fun and games, hanging out with them and doing rebellious shit. I think I grew up a little bit more and they just kept getting in trouble and not doing well in school. I ended up stopping hanging out with them towards the end of high school.”