Tired of Wishing I'd Never Been Born

So in case you didn't guess from the post title or the image, today is my birthday and I'm not exactly happy about it. That being said, today's post is going to be equal parts trip down sad memory lane and affirmations for my life and birthdays going forward. Thank you for being here and coming along for the ride.

Just four months after my first birthday my father took his own life. I spent the rest of my childhood being sexually abused by my stepfather and his friends and feeling more like an object for their pleasure than a human being. At sixteen I ran away from home, got emancipated, and never went back. I didn't enter into my first serious relationship until I was almost thirty. All of this resulted in me feeling just as isolated and alone as an adult as I did a child. When my birthday rolls around each year, it is very difficult for me to look at my birth as something to be celebrated. To be honest, most birthday rituals center around me cursing my mother for the day she brought me into this world. Hell of a way to spend nearly forty years on this earth, huh?

If you've been following along on this blog, and thank you if you have, then you know that my life started changing in many ways this year. I joined The ManKind Project, disclosed my abuse for the first time, started attending Adult Children of Alcoholics 12-Step meetings, and started blogging about my recovery from my childhood sexual abuse. That's a lot for only eight months of my thirty-seven years of life. When yesterday came around and I began to feel those old self-pitying emotions beginning to bubble up, I entertained them for longer than I care to admit. When I look back on my life, most of it sucked. There's no denying that my life up until this year was mostly a living hell. The question is do I want my present and future to be a living hell too?

The answer to that question is a resounding HELL NO! I have wasted too much of my adult life and the freedom I could have had allowing my stepfather's legacy to keep me stuck in the past and dead on the inside. I know that I still have a long road of recovery in front of me. I know I'm not done revisiting my past, but that doesn't mean I have to live there anymore. The gloom and doom I wallowed in yesterday marks what I hope will be the last pity party I ever throw myself on my birthday. I'm tired of wishing I'd never been born. 2017 is the year that I have begun to transform myself and my life for the better which makes this birthday one to finally be celebrated!