Lessons Of Life

Chapter 1: The Beginning

I remember.
I remember when life was easy. When it was fun and enjoyable. When I was a kid and nothing in this world mattered. Nothing hurt me as bad as I feel now. The only hurt I ever got was a scratch on my knee from falling off my scooter. Although I was very clumsy so there actually was a lot worse than that. But that's not the kind of hurt I feel now. The hurt I feel now is within. It's deep inside me and medicine or bandaids can't help it. What helps it is to learn how to help it. And that's my journey throughout this story.

Hi, my names Haley. And I'm sure as all of us can agree, life fucking sucks. Don't get me wrong, life is beautiful....yet so ugly. It all depends on your perspective of it. Let me begin by telling you a little bit about me before I go into this whole life thing.
Like I said, my name is Haley. And the first thing that comes to mind when I think about me is fear. Fear plays the biggest role in my life. Yes it's not the best role, but it's there and I have to deal with it. When I was around the age of 5 or 6 years old, I was diagnosed with Anxiety. Anxiety is a disease where you are literally anxious about everything and anything. Well not necessarily, it's different for everyone. But for me? It's being scared of almost everything. Not only is it fear, its discomfort, it's sadness, it's everything. My anxiety attacks every emotion and feeling. Sometimes I will have an attack over nothing. Well not exactly over nothing, it's just I don't know what it's from. The thing with anxiety is, it will literally cause an anxiety attack over something so far deep into your mind that when you are having the attack you don't even know what caused it because most of the time you don't feel anxious about anything yet your anxiety decides to come out and play.
My anxiety was a lot worse when I was younger. I'm 16 now and I've overcome a lot with my anxiety. Like when I was younger I couldn't watch anything but kid shows....anything! I'm telling you, if anything else was on that screen I'd throw a fit till it was off. Everything scared me, everything about life in general. Now that I think about it I think that's what my fear was. My biggest fear was and probably still to this day is life. Life is scary. But I'm learning to overcome it. So back to what I was saying. I couldn't even take a shower without someone sitting in the bathroom with me, I couldn't be alone. I needed someone to sleep next to me every night. If I wanted a drink, someone had to come with me from the living room to the kitchen. Everywhere I was, someone else needed to be right there with me. It was bad. I went to therapy as a child to help me but it didn't help at all. All the therapist did was lock me in her room, alone, in the dark, for 5 minutes as they waited outside the door. Then she made me watch this show called Nancy Grace because I told her I was afraid of it. Nancy Grace is a show about real life murders or crimes and what not. So yea, she tried to use that whole method of, "face your fears" but that's not how it's suppose to be done. Over the years I've taught myself how to overcome my anxiety. No, it's not gone, but yes I did overcome a lot. Now I sleep alone, shower alone, and do anything alone. I can actually watch anything now, except I'm still not a fan of scary/horror movies but that's just me. But as I grew up I learned that fears can't be faced in order to overcome them. You must learn how to deal with them and how to cope. You must learn to help yourself through these fears.
This story is going to be mainly about what I've learned in life, and what life is. Yes I'm only 16 but there's a lot a person can learn in 16 years. And the purpose of this is to simply share these thoughts with you and help you with this fucked up thing we like to call "life".