Pain Reconciled by Love

RECONCILIATION: THE RESILIENT

Taking my life was not what I genuinely wanted. I had tried it twice before December 2017. The first was a cry for help and attention. I was a teenager and had no attention from my family—I was an only child, and the oldest cousin to my dad's side of the family and we were all super close. At sixteen, a lot changed when my dad's brother and my dad had a fallout, on mine and my cousin's account.

The second attempt was more to see if I could actually survive taking an unknown amount of Doxepin (a sleeping med). I had been on drugs at the time, for I had started dating a guy, who was very nice, just addicted to cocaine. But a little piece of advice: if you are on anti-depressants and/or bi-polar meds, cocaine makes you super confused. I actually enjoyed life, for all the wrong reasons of course, for the first several months of 2017 because of cocaine. 

In August 2017, after deciding to "restart" and "renew" my life, I moved to Texas to live with a friend I met in boarding school when I was seventeen/eighteen. I will go into what happened with this a later, in Part 3, but let me explain this part: 

Reconciliation is what helped my family forgive each other and love each other again. It took 4 years for my uncle and my dad to reconcile, and for my cousins and me to see each other again.

When I was sixteen years old, my twelve year old cousin told me something that would make me second guess everything, and feel the guiltiest I would ever feel. She said that my aunt and uncle were abusing her. My uncle wasn't her real father but was the only father she ever knew, and was a good dad. My uncle and his wife had three other kids all within two years of age. Julianna was five years younger than Lauren, while Evan and Sofia were six and eight years younger.

Lauren asked me not to tell anyone, but I had to. I couldn't just keep that all in. At first I wanted to go to my grandparents and ask them what I should do. My entire dad's side of the family was super close due to our love of family values, traditional and Italian. Every Sunday my grandparents would host family dinner. It was at my sixteenth birthday dinner that my cousin spoiled the news.

Though it was all a lie, it didn't much matter. After telling my Bible teacher at school, he was forced to report it. When I was just trying to find guidance in a religious and good-hearted elder, I was made out to be the bad guy. CPS was reported, and they investigated my aunt and uncle and the four kids. This all happened within a matter of days. After it happened, I drove to their house and tried apologizing wanting to save an almost broken relationship. I cried and they yelled. Said they didn't want to see me again and said it was a lie, which I already knew.

Four years of my own torment later, a long time family friend, who was also a Catholic priest, died. Father Joe Scherbo was the one who had brought my grandparents peace and love after they had lost their three year old son to cancer. At the time of my uncle's death, my father was ten years old, my uncle's twin brother, Cameron (father of Lauren), was three, and my aunt Amber was to be born eleven months later.

At Father Joe's funeral, the whole family was there, and that begun the process of rekindling a relationship between cousins and family that was lost. Though there was a chance of reconciliation, I did have to truly forgive my family, for the blame I had put myself through, the blame I had taken though was told by many, it was not my fault, at sixteen years old.

At 20 years old, I had already been through so much as a teenage girl, so I felt weird when the family started hanging out again. When my aunt asked my mother and me to go dress shopping for my dad's cousin, Nathan's wedding, we jumped at the idea. This was after Father Joe died and after we had all seen each other at his funeral, but I still felt judged. I had to completely forgive my past and theirs, so that our relationships could once again prosper.

My dad had sent letters for four years straight, to try and get his brother back. Many of them were probably tossed out, but he did it anyways. For me, I gave up after going to their house a week after the incident had happened. The drive home that day, was the first time I ever thought of running the car off the road. Not even one month after this, I started cutting, but not in the usual visible place, on the wrist. I would do it in places no one would ever be able to see.

I started a relationship with a friend, that turned out to cause even more pain to me after a year and a half of on and off dating. In junior year, after our final break up, I went to my first mental hospital, after very much wanting to end my life. I was there for three days and was almost raped. A month later, December 2012, I lost my virginity to a random boy I met online. In February 2013, I found out one of my best friends and my ex were dating and had been since December. All my friends had hid this fact from me. I was too wrapped up in my own pain to realize it until two months later. I felt abandoned, lost, and worthless. I was done with life and before I even had the chance to think of how I would die this time, my parents whipped me up to Texas to go to boarding school. I was there for eleven months.

Though Heartlight, the boarding school, may have kept me alive for eleven months; going back home, to reality at eighteen years old felt wrong. The boarding school was for troubled teens aged 12-17 in east Texas. The last six months I was there, I was the oldest. All these younger kids had tried drugs, had had sex multiple times, had done all these bad things I had never done. So, after graduating from Heartlight, I decided now it was my turn to do all those bad things.

I went back to my high school, which my dad was a history teacher at, and was in senior year at nineteen years old. All my "friends" had already graduated, so I figured, why not. I had one long-term friend in that year anyways, Brianna, whose father was also a history teacher, and who I am still friends with to this day. I decided to graduate high school instead of getting a GED, and maybe go to college. 

In senior year, I published my first book of my trilogy, "The Journey", and had a book signing where half of the money would go to financial aid for my school. Many students and teachers bought it, and not only that, but the year I graduated with, was far better than the year I would have graduated with. Class of 2015, my graduating class, was full of great, beautiful souls, where the popular kids and the student council actually cared and mingled and had fun with every other sect.  Nerds and jocks, and popular kids alike were friends. Not once was I asked why I was in that year and didn't graduate with the 2014 class. They didn't care why, and even if they already knew, they let me talk about it. They didn't seem like the type of people to get all up in your business, rather they'd just have fun and hang out, and look forward to going to college and do good things with their life, which they all are!

But through all this, through all the good in my senior year, all I cared about was getting even. Doing bad things, because I was still completely broken. Starting to smoke weed, as well as cigarettes, sleeping with guy after guy on Tinder and other online websites and apps. Though I had the pretty Christian face at high school and church, behind it all was a person I never knew I would become. Someone I definitely never wanted to be. Someone I hated. Someone that rebelled against everything I had ever learned and believed in. I may have been born and raised Christian, gotten baptized twice, once at nine, and again at eighteen before coming back from the boarding school, but I wanted to hate the God I had once loved so adamantly. Because, though I had blamed myself for everything I went through, I also blamed Him.

Let me say this before you delve into my next poems: If I never forgave certain people, like my family, it would have been much more difficult to move forward in my life. If I had never forgiven myself, I wouldn't be where I am now. If I didn't ask my Heavenly Father for this forgiveness, I wouldn't be alive. 

Forgiving, however, is not forgetting. People may tell you that if you forgive someone, you can forget it. No. Certain things people do can never be forgotten. Forgiving someone who did you wrong is probably the hardest thing for a human to do, in my opinion. However, true forgiveness (whether it is expected or not) is very, very freeing.

Just like God will never forget every sin I have ever committed, that is something I have to live with and die with. And whether He forgives me, and whether Christ, at the end of it all, gives me a good word to His Father, I may still not get into Heaven. But that is why I do this. I know the truth and in Part 3 of this memoir, you will witness just exactly what I got to witness, through my own words. Maybe then, you too will see the truth.