“This Poem Is About Life”

About the Author (Survivor)
Written by IGBATTMHO and a Mental Health Survivor (name withheld)

Credentials of the Author
Overcomer from Drug Abuse
Overcomer from Alcohol Abuse
Overcomer from Sexual Abuse
Overcomer from Homelessness
Overcomer from sexual Discrimination
Overcomer from Severe and Persistent Mental Illness (Depression)

Comments

Life is what you ultimately chose to make it. You can concede defeat and live with the pain others have inflicted upon you or you can use that pain as a stepping stone to move forward. You can chose to hold onto your pain, to spend your energy focusing on those who hurt you, or reinforce your old survival skills.

Survival skills: Things we did or still do to survive the emotional pain of our past or present. Survival skills are necessary but the skills we needed in one phase of our lives can become hindrances to growth in another. Evaluate your self.

For example, in order to shield ourselves from the hurts of our past we may have had to withdraw from people, mask our feelings by numbing our pain, dampen our feelings of hope just in case we get let down again, turn to alcohol or drugs to numb our pain, engage in prostitution, crime, abusive relationships etc.

When we internalize the survival skills of the past we can spend the rest our lives allowing past hurts to control our present, and reject the good things that are happening in the now.

The negative things that have happened to you and the survival skills that you had to implement in order to survive have all worked to create a you that is really not you. Before the pain, the trauma, the hurt and abuse you were created for a purpose. You owe it to yourself to discover the real you.

When we begin to let go of the pain and those defenses that are no longer helpful we can truly begin to discover the person that our past pain tried to dampen.