Emma Harris

My name is Emma Harris.
I am a 26-year-old from Trinidad and Tobago.
Bachelor's Degree with Honours in Journalism, Humber College Alumni 2022

The above photo was taken in 2017 of a White-Chested Emerald Hummingbird, photographed in Trinidad.

The above link is to a podcast assignment I did for an audio class and have decided to continue creating. This episode is particularly focussed on anxiety.

Article published through Skedline

The above photo was taken in 2019 of my aunt, photographed in her home in Toronto, Ontario

The above photo was taken in 2017 of the St. Charles Bridge in Prague, Czech Republic.

The above link is an assignment I did for an audio class. This is focused on Trinidad and Tobago Carnival.

The above photo was taken in 2019 of a friend in Montreal, Quebec.

The above video is a project I did based on The 1990 attempted Coup d'état in Trinidad and Tobago.

A reminder to always cherish your loved ones ..This is a long form feature story I wrote for an assignment. It is written about my grandfather, Neil de freitas and his on-going battle with Lewy body Dementia.

Growing up in South Trinidad, I learned to appreciate the simpler things in life. Most evenings were spent with friends in a park. My favourite days were the ones where my grandfather took my best friend and I to the park near his house. My grandparents lived in an area known as Bel Air, right on the water front, and this park had a sea wall that we used as a balance beam.

During low tide, my grandfather would take me out, as far as we could walk, and teach me how to fish. He loves to fish. He would push me on the big swings and every time I asked to go higher, he would say, “yes boss.”He taught me how to use a hammer, and a circular table saw. He taught me how good country music could be. He taught me that two tablespoons of peanut butter are never enough on a sandwich. Neil de Freitas, my grandfather, continues to teach me how to be strong, how to be open and accepting and how women deserve to be treated by their husbands. At 74, he continues to teach me life lessons, but something changed. He started to slow down, mentally and physically. The man who once was ready to climb a ladder to change a light bulb, who went fishing every Saturday for the entire day, who would do groceries, banking and pay the bills, just could not do it anymore.

My grandmother, Greta said she started noticing little signs, “He was slowing down, walking slower forgetting things and he was sometimes in a trance.” That is when she took him to a geriatric psychiatrist, Dr. James Bratt who after several tests, referred him to a neuropsychologist, Dr, Analisa Wittet who did more tests in order to properly diagnose him.In January 2018, Pops was officially diagnosed with Lewy body dementia.According to Mayo Clinic, this means that he has protein deposits known as Lewy bodies, developing in his nerve cells in his brain regions that are involved in thinking, memory and motor control. It causes a progressive decline in mental abilities and can cause hallucinations, changes in alertness and attention as well as slow movement and tremors. It also causes cognitive problems such as confusion and poor attention as well as memory loss, similar to Alzheimer’s disease. Pops sometimes experiences episodes of drowsiness, often we see him staring into space and falling asleep on himself.

Lewy body dementia is a progressive disease, meaning that as time progresses so do the symptoms. The life span of a person with Lewy body dementia, is eight years after the symptoms start. How can someone put a timeline on the life of someone who I care about so deeply?Regardless, time goes on and we choose to cherish every day. In June 2018, my family went on a Caribbean cruise. He was constantly dazed and contracted an infection. When he reached back to Trinidad, his infection got worse and he spent a week in the hospital. He lay in a hospital bed, consistently drowsy, falling in and out of sleep but still asking the nurses to sneak him a cigarette.
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After more tests, and in-house physiotherapy, he was diagnosed with an aortic stenosis. This is an issue which causes the narrowing of the aortic valve opening restricting the blood flow from the left ventricle to the aorta. This is an issue that runs in the men in his family, three of his brothers have had it, two had the surgery to fix it and one brother, Peter, died from it. Later in the year he flew to a hospital in Florida for a trans aortic valve replacement. Luckily, he has “a heart of a teenage boy,” according to doctors.Since his surgery in November, we get little signs that the increased blood flow is helping him, keeping him more upbeat than before. According to my grandmother, throughout everything his humor stays intact. “We have been married for 50 years, and he still manages to make me laugh, he still has his humor and that has never changed.” Pops has the sense of humor that is almost offensive but extremely funny. He still tells stories of him growing up as a child, his long-term memory is almost perfect.“Growing up in Point-à -Pierre, there were five families with about forty children, we were all Catholic, so we named it the ‘Vatican City.’” His family alone was almost the size of a hockey team, him being one of ten, they used to play hockey in the grass. Sometimes they would ride horses or ‘kick the pan’ which was basically a game of soccer but with an empty container from the kitchen. He said it was one of his favourite memories.He also gleams with pride from his days as a supervisor in Caroni Ltd. where he looked over the cane-farming department with over 6,000 employees, it was the largest department in Caroni limited. From supervisor he went to manager where he stayed for nine years until the company closed down.He loves to share different stories, of his childhood and of raising his family. My favourite is the one of my mother in her Sunday dress, cursing at the age of five in their car on long drives to different areas of Trinidad, somehow, I remind him of her.Among other things he taught my mother how to drive a go-kart and a manual car, how to build and fly a kite, he taught her to love everyone equally and to make friends with strangers,
from all walks of life. He is the type of person who would talk to people in long bank lines and add his two cents to any issue you could be facing. He taught us both how to be kind and generous. Pops taught me to always “stand by what you say,” something he has proven time and time again. He also taught me how to love and that I deserve to be loved.

The first photo is of him and I in 2000 at a Holiday party and therefore not taken by me. The second is of him and my grandmother on their anniversary in 2019.

Seven ways to fall in love with the right person:

#1 Wake up every morning and walk to the mirror, look at yourself and laugh at the bed head, that guck in the corner of your eyes, laugh at the way your voice sounds crackly and the way your morning breath fogs up the mirror.#2 Dress to impress.. yourself.. always. Dress in clothes that you feel most comfortable and outstanding in, even if it is those sweat pants. Each day, dress so that you feel beautiful and amazing just for yourself, regardless of what others may say.#3 Download those throwback songs your iPod, the ones that you can always scream at the top of your lungs because you know every word to it. The ones that make you feel like “The Best Damn Thing” even if it’s only because Avril Lavigne thinks you are. Or you feel to be that “Lady in Red” tonight. Just listen to happy music, that makes you feel euphoric and spectacular because you deserve that.#4 Be selfish. It sounds awful, but you need do this sometimes. You need to turn your phone off and ignore your best friend for three hours because you need time alone. Instead of going to that party that you have been dreading for weeks, stay home and drink a glass of wine simply because you want to and you damn well deserve it.#5 Find a group of people that bring out the best in you. They may be a whole new group of friends but being around them, boy would it feel good. The ones who enjoy nights at home, midnight adventures and a party, because you aren’t the only one who loves a change of scenery.#6 Allow yourself to feel. If its driving alone for hours or venting to a friend, thinking out loud or screaming at the top of your lungs. Whatever it is, however you do it. Just feel what needs to be felt.#7 Allow for closure. Say goodbye to the old you. The unhappy one. The lonely one. The one who needs to be drunk to feel comfortable. Say goodbye to that person but allow time for yourself to settle into the new you, slamming the doors to the past.
Finally, this is how you do it, how you fall in love with the right person. You. You are the right person. You will always be who and what is right for you, because you know what you love and what you hate. You know you best. So fall in love with you, first and always.

"I'm learning to love the sound of my feet walking away from things not meant for me" - A.G

In the past few months I've learnt so much about myself and reiterated things that I've always known.I've learnt that cat fur sticks to absolutely every surface.I've learnt that getting drunk in a small pub in the middle of butt-f**k nowhere on a Tuesday is the only right way to get drunk.I've learnt that the most amazing friendships come from people who are all so extremely different that it's almost questionable.I've learnt that working in a restaurant is one of the most beautiful and stressful jobs in the world but it creates families.I've learnt that some 30-year olds have kids and husbands and some are bomb-ass bitches who focus on their selves and careers first.I've learnt that everyone has something they love to do and everyone should be doing that thing.I've learnt that punching a bag is the most amazing stress-reliever.I've learnt to appreciate positive numbers (especially those double digits).I've learnt that with enough alcohol you can successfully whine to any genre of music.I've learnt that some 18-year olds are the more wise than older people.I've learnt that aunts are the best second moms & grandmas there can be.I've learnt that family isn't truly appreciated until you don't see them everyday.I've learnt that writing is any and everything to me.I've learnt that I am exactly where I want to and should be at this very minute.

This is a long-form feature story I wrote as an assignment. It is about my own personal struggle with an anxiety disorder.

All I had to do was close my eyes to see it. It was like I was alone in the audience of a scary film that played in my mind, except I was also the lead actress. It was always the same scene; I was standing in a kitchen washing a sink full of dishes and gazing out a window. There was an older lady on the other side, someone I did not recognize, hanging up bright clothes on a clothesline, dressed like any older Caribbean lady, in her house dress and messy hair tied in a bun. She calls out to me to come help her. That’s when I would see this family, my family, driving away. In the movie, they were no longer my parents. They had abandoned me to live this life with this strange Caribbean lady that I didn’t recognize. In the movie, the only people I cared about left me to live a life I didn’t know or understand.The first time that I remember ‘seeing’ the movie, I was seven years old. I couldn’t possibly understand what it was or why this was happening to me. Every time my parents would go on vacation and leave me with my grandparents, I thought they were never coming back. In my mind, my dad who worked on an oil rig offshore for months at a time, was never returning. Even on nights when my parents would leave with me with my older sister to go out to dinner, I would tell myself that was it, I wasn’t loveable. In my mind, I was constantly being abandoned by the people that loved me the most.A few years later, I was eight or nine, my parents got a divorce, my dad moved out and my mom got a job during the day. The movies kept playing in my mind every night. I was not afraid of the dark, but I had to sleep with my TV on. The light and noise distracted me from the pain.My entire life in Trinidad and Tobago most people joked about their anxiety, and overall mental health. If you admitted to having an actual problem, most people would tease you about going to the “mad house.” That was St. Ann’s Psychiatric Hospital, the only known specialized hospital in the county and somewhere you definitely would not want to go. Whether it was the loud screams of patients or the overall eerie vibe of the grounds, it was the place of my nightmares. Now that I live in Canada, the conversation around anxiety is handled a lot differently, and better off. In the year 2011, approximately 4 million Canadians admitted to suffering with a mood or anxiety disorder, according to an ongoing study prepared by Risk Analytica on behalf of the Mental Health Commission of Canada. That’s 4 million people, that felt confident enough to talk about how their anxiety affects them. The word ‘anxiety’ is often tossed around so lightly, that those like me who suffer on a daily basis aren’t often ready to share their stories.In the beginning, I kept my movies to myself. I had no idea what they were, I even wondered to myself if I was psychic and was predicting my future. That changed for me one day when I was watching TV with my mom. I closed my eyes as if to blink and the movie flashed before my eyes. It wouldn’t stop even when I opened them. I gasped for air and clutched my chest. I felt the vein in my neck pumping and I just yelled at my mom, “It’s happening again, mom, it’s happening again” but she looked at me like I was crazy. She had no clue what I was talking about.From then on I told her about it every time and when it happened, I would repeat that line to her while she held my hands and told me to breathe slowly. She would turn on the tv, hold me in her arms and distract me somehow until it stopped, and then I would run to my room and go to sleep.As I got older, between nine and ten, she sat me down and explained it to me. She said that that my movies were part of something much bigger that ran in my family, known as anxiety. It was something she had, my dad had and my older sister also had. She was unsure of anyone else in our family had it but knew that the possibility existed that it would affect me as well.Eventually I learned that anxiety is a normal part of life. But having an anxiety disorder can be debilitating. People with anxiety disorders tend to have more frequent, excessive and intense worry about everyday situations, it often takes control over your life and makes it hard to function normally. In other words, anxiety is more than just being worried about the outcome of an exam or panicking over not being able to find your keys.By the age of 40, one in every two Canadians has or has had a mental illness according to the Center for Mental Health and Addiction (CAMH). While mental health is a huge umbrella term, anxiety disorders are considered the most common class of psychiatric disorders, said author and doctor Vladan Starcevic in his clinical guide, Anxiety Disorders in Adults. It is something that researchers and doctors have begun studying intently because of its scope and severity. Dr. Gordon Asmundson, a Psychology professor at the University of Regina in Saskatchewan is one of those people who has been involved in anxiety research for almost 30 years.Anxiety is a disorder that can be caused by your surroundings and environment, but because my parents have it as well, I always wondered if it could be genetic. Asmundson told me that it’s likely a mix of both. “Gene-environment interactions likely occur in many instances, where there may be a genetic or heritable susceptibility to respond with anxiety to environmental (and sometimes internal) stressors if or when those stressors are encountered.” In other words, many people have the gene in them that affect how you respond to a situation. If you’re parents have the tendency to respond anxiously to an environmental or internal situation, it is possible that you will as well. He reiterated to me something I always thought, while it is possible to be the first person in your family to suffer with anxiety, it can definitely be inherited.The movies that played in my mind were part of a panic disorder that changed over the years. When they started at age seven, I was being dropped off by my parents at a stranger’s home, but now, at the age of 22, I close my eyes and see death. I watch the world literally exploding in front of me. I watch every person I love die in front of my eyes and I simply have to sit back and watch it happen.I had a self-diagnosis at the age of nine, and then divorced parents two years later in 2008. In late 2009, after a really long time of holding it in, I spent a lot of time on Google trying to figure my life out. I started journaling to lay out my feelings every time I had a panic or anxiety attack. On July 11th, 2010, I wrote, “Maybe if this thing swallows me, I won’t want to wake up tomorrow and go through this for the rest of my life.” I was twelve years old and talking about dying. Depression and anxiety tend to go hand in hand. Julie Muravsky, a social worker and professor at Humber College put it in a different way by saying, “In my experience, anxiety is a stand-alone disorder but most often when we talk anxiety we can’t not talk about depression.” She said that the constant cycle between being too anxious to do something and beating yourself up because you haven’t done anything sends people into a deep hole, something she’s seen in her line of work many times.I continued to journal through the possible depression and severe anxiety, On January 20th, 2013 at 11:47 pm I wrote, “To put it simply, I’m scared. Scared of how quickly it’s moving. I’m scared of how sleepy I am and my lack of motivation to do anything. I’m scared of my attachment to certain things and people…Why am I scared? It’s all I want to know. I know we die and I know everything has to end and I know goodbyes exist but why? Why am I afraid of disappointing my parents and becoming nothing? Why am I afraid of other people dying when I know it’s inevitable? Why am I afraid of the unknown and what I have no control over?”Between then and now anxiety has led me to do things that I never thought I would do. For example, I was sixteen when my parents left me and a friend at home alone. We got into the liquor cabinet and decided to take a video of ourselves drinking and dancing in our bathing suits and show it to our male friends. I craved that aspect of attention. When I was old enough to be in relationships, I would twist whatever my partner would say, cause a fight, just so we could make up and I would be reminded and told that I was loved.My first therapist, after the liquor cabinet incident in 2013, suggested I turn to exercise. I became addicted, I would wake up at 5 a.m. every day before school and work out for two hours before I started my day. I was fit and strong and feeling like my absolute best self. I was also in a relationship that after two years destroyed me a little bit. Every day I worked out and every pound that I lost, my partner would tell me it wasn’t enough and I wasn’t enough. For anyone that is hard to hear but for someone like me who is obsessed with being the best, I exercised so much, I became sick. There was a toxic combination of my anxiety, extreme weight loss and a bad relationship. I was eating less and working out more. My heart was constantly racing, I was dizzy all of the time. I was working out so much that I was throwing up and blacking out in the driver’s seat on my way to school. I was convinced something was actually, physically wrong with me. It was a Monday morning that I had feinted in the gym and my trainer had to carry me to the locker rooms and put me in the shower until I gained consciousness. After that, I went to a doctor who sent me to a heart specialist. I was hooked up to a small battery powered Holter monitor for 24-hours that tracked my heart’s rate and rhythm and I did an electrocardiogram (ECG).The doctor said that I had essentially damaged some of the muscles in my heart because of that toxic combination. I was only 17-years old. This was the first time that I had actually been told by a “real” doctor and not just a therapist that something was wrong with me physically and not just mentally or made up in my head. Mursaskvy said, “I think anxiety for me like I said, is a stand-alone disorder … I think it can definitely lead to some physical ailments for sure, the teeth clenching, your blood pressure, or if you can you and when you are eating, are you eating too much.” As she mentioned, it’s about finding a balance that works for you in order to keep it as just a ‘stand-alone’ disorder and not the physical aspect that I went through.When I moved to Canada for school in 2018 away from my parents, I had to face that separation anxiety I had felt as a child once again. I tried to stay busy, working part time in a restaurant, exercising as often as I could and Facetiming my family and friends multiple times a week. I was able to control, everything was seemingly going better for me. I always knew that I was going to go home for Christmas and summer vacations and always had a ticket booked. That all drastically changed when the COVID-19 pandemic hit. I had to cancel my tickets to go back home. I had to stop working. My gym closed. Suddenly I was faced with my anxiety at the forefront of my mind all over again.One night in July, I lay on my bedroom floor overcome with anxiety like I hadn’t felt in years. I was living alone at the moment, it was 11 p.m. and I was listening to ‘If the world was ending’ by JP Saxe and Julia Michaels. I closed my eyes and felt my world shatter into a million pieces. My heart was hurting, it hurt to breathe, and I just didn’t want to feel anymore. I lay down, crying so hard that I was choking on my tears, I wanted it to all be over. I got up, walked myself to my bathroom and lay in my tub turned on the cold water and just let it rain on me. I picked myself up, googled therapists in my area and made an appointment to see my current therapist, Jeannine. She is a psychotherapist and registered social worker, with special attention to anxiety disorders.As part of my anxiety disorder, I constantly create situations in my head that don’t exist based off of someone else’s words or actions. This started happening as I got older and into more serious relationships and friendships. Jeannine told me these are “cognitive distortions” which are irrational thoughts that can influence your emotions. Everyone experiences them to some degree but in their more extreme forms they can be harmful. It’s something like those moments when someone says, “I need to talk to you,” that send you into straight panic mode.There are approximately ten different types of cognitive distortions according to Mount Sinai Hospital. The most commonly occurring for me is ‘jumping to conclusions’: this is defined as making negative interpretations even though there are no definite facts to support your thoughts. It also goes into ‘mind reading’ and anticipating things will turn out badly before they even happen known as ‘fortune telling’. Another very common one is ‘personalization’ - you see yourself as the cause of some negative external event which you were not primarily responsible for.After learning about these from Jeannine, I realized the idea of cognitive distortions were something I experienced every single day of my life. I have them in situations when I overhear someone say something and automatically think it was about me. I have them when I feel someone’s mood change and think it was my fault.My anxiety comes in forms of panic attacks, being out of breath, cognitive distortions, having my heart beat so fast and loud I feel like other people can hear it across the room. It’s not being able to sleep at night and being tired all of the time. It’s not being able to focus or concentrate on what’s in front of me. Anxiety manifests itself in so many different forms for different people.Something else I have worked on with Jeannine is Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT). It is something that many therapists teach their patients as a way to control their anxiety. Dr. Asmundson, who is certified with the Canadian Association of Cognitive Behaviour Therapies said CBT is simply the umbrella term for a number of treatment strategies that are evidence-based, “that is a considerable body of careful research has shown that they work well, and typically better than other treatment options.” It is a short-term and goal-oriented psychological treatment that takes a very hands-on approach. Asmundson said that an example of CBT he uses with his patients is helping them challenge their fear of dying when they are having panic attacks. He explained a scenario to me, “It often goes something like this. “So, you fear you will die when you panic?” … “yes, almost every time!” … “and how many panic attacks have you had?” … “Well, a lot. Hundreds” … “And how many times have you died?” This tactic often helps the person to recognize how they are thinking and how this influences the way they respond to sensations in their body.”With the help of my first therapist and now Jeannine, I’ve learnt to lean on my writing, on exercise and staying active, I work with challenging my thoughts in moments of panic and I have amazing friends and family who are there to support me. I have a lot of friends who turn to the unhealthy coping mechanisms. They smoke marijuana or drink alcohol to numb their pain and distract themselves from anxiety. The key is knowing how you calm your anxiety. It won’t always be healthy or safe. Sometimes all I want to do is jump in my car and drive on a long road, a little too fast to get my adrenaline pumping. Sometimes I drink too much and I want to go for a midnight stroll by myself. But being conscious and aware of it makes you want to pick a better solution for your anxiety. The idea of anti-anxiety medication also exists and at the age I was diagnosed, the cons outweighed the pros in terms of side effects. That may change for me, but for right now I look for different approaches. I know people who meditate, do yoga, bake cookies, my friend Toni-Marie Mansoor said, “everyone has their own special way, and I love that, it brings people together talking about what works for them, because we’re all a little different.”

If it’s one thing I have learnt over the years is to not be ashamed of my anxiety. To suffer in silence is to suffer more than we need to. I sit back and I watch people in my life zone out of a conversation, bite the inside of their mouth, clench their jaws and not realise that that could actually be anxiety, what Jeannine refers to as “tells”. Understanding and being aware of your anxiety is what saves people. Those guy friends of mine who drink and smoke in excess to numb their feelings don’t realise that people with a mental illness, like anxiety, are twice as likely to have a substance use problem. Even if, marijuana and alcohol are legal, they aren’t exactly healthy, and who’s to say that it’s not worse for other people.Anxiety is something that people make subtle jokes about all the time, “Ugh I’m so anxious, I’m running a few minutes late to my appointment.” They don’t realise it is something that is real and it is severe.According to the Canadian Mental Health Association, anxiety disorders affect five per cent of the household population, but that’s only what is diagnosed. So many mental health disorders go undiagnosed because people are under educated about them or have a stigma against them and do not see it as a real problem.My journey with anxiety began when I was seven years old. I’ll be 23 by the end of the year and I still deal with it every single day of my life. It actively affects my relationships and my job and my ability to study. I close my eyes and I still watch my movies. I clutch my chest. I gasp for air. I take five deep breaths and it stops for a moment. It doesn’t end but I am more aware of it now than ever before.

"The world is a book, and those who don't travel read only a page." - Saint Augustine

Most people spend majority of their lives in one place. They become that culture, they conform to the society around them and they learn to live with it all because they don't know any better.
Then there are the lucky people, the ones who get to travel, to experience different places, cultures and societies. They learn to never settle. Traveling allows people to learn things that they could never be taught.
I have never imagined my life settling. Whenever life permits me, I travel. However, with my love for travel I discovered one huge downfall. In spending time in multiple places I've gained a multitude of friends I can't see every day, I can't spend my life with. I've learnt more about people that I once never knew than I know about people I share my day to day life with, people in my own town.
I've learnt to see people's flaws and love them regardless. That it's okay to be dependent on temporary people because they remain in your heart forever. That friendship knows absolutely no boundaries or border lines. That good people are hard to find but once you find them, it's forever. I've learnt that people are so much nicer in small towns. I've learnt that travel can change your life, every single time you get on a plane.I've learnt that airports are both the happiest and saddest place in earth, like a church. I've learnt that not all goodbyes are final.

When you are younger your parents tell you of all these beautiful places in the world, experiences they themselves have gone through or generations behind them have shared with them. You grow up and watch movies and see photos that exhibit these great, fantastic places and you quickly add them to your bucket list of dreams and aspirations. It's not until you stand on a ledge 4000 feet in the air above the Grand Canyon that you truly are aware of all the world's wonders, standing at the Base of the Eiffel Tower, or looking into the distance at the Statue of Liberty or the Golden Gate Bridge, you never really become aware of everything that is around you in the world.Photograph taken by me at the Grand Canyon in 2015.

Episode 1? Part 1?
Not a clue, but here we are.
I am unsure where this is supposed to begin, however it needs to because I am tired of walking around my apartment on a Saturday night, asking my cats if they are ready for dinner ... they always are. No one understands truly how difficult it is to go from working 6-days a week in a job that requires 110% of you to simply being a stay-at-home cat mom in an apartment that really doesn't feel like home.
Actually, I am sure that many people know what it's like, but I am going to pretend it is a unique experience because that makes more sense to me.
Do I pick up my lazy ass and go do a few UberEats runs - to make some money? Do I go into the hell-ish living room that has cat litter, boxes, and empty coca-cola cans and ignore it all for a Youtube-Yoga session? Do I pretend I have my shit together, put on a playlist and go clean-up outside before my boyfriend comes home at 2 a.m. from his ever-so-time-consuming job?I have no fucking idea what I'm supposed to do, really ... or how to feel.

Episode 2
I'm just going to stick with episode at this point, it's stuck and I kind of like it ... and this part of my life feels like a very shitty episode of some coming-of-age show. I feel like I'm disassociating.
How am I supposed to feel?
Bored?
Lazy?
Fucking unhappy?
Numb? That's been a reoccurring feeling we've been having over here. I'm not necessarily unhappy, I left my job of four and a half years, not long to some people but long for me. It was a big girl job, I worked my way up from the bottom to the top, I learned a lot and I definitely matured as a human being but it took so much out of me. I lost my sanity, I forgot who I was and I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing.
I went from being an alcoholic who barely managed to get a degree, working a full time job and partying on the weekends ... to being where I am now, which I refuse to repeat again.What's next ?

Episode 3
Tomorrow is the one-year anniversary of the car accident that almost took my life.
It's my boyfriend and I'd 'one year' of being openly together, since we had to hide our relationship for the first 1.5 years.
It's the one-year anniversary of me being an entirely changed and lost individual.
I lost myself in that accident, in that car. How do I even sit here and pretend like I'm okay when I'm so fucking not. I lost myself in that fucking car and I don't even know where to begin to figure out how to come back from that. For the last year I have been walking on egg shells. I've been scared of everything. I've been scared of public and human interaction.
A few days after that accident, I jumped into being a manager it work. I had a new job that needed all of me and I hadn't had the opportunity to just stop and feel. I haven't felt a fucking emotion about that accident until now.It's been a year of pretending that I am okay and I'm not.