a poem..

Of all the things I ever hoped to be,
what I've chased most is "happy.."
But looking back won't get me anywhere,
faith is what will take me there.
I may be facing a wall of doubt,
but my flame will never flicker out,
that little light shining in the dark,
comes from the bottom of my heavy heart.
The ones who said "you've got it all wrong,"
and the ones who believed in me all along,
have equally pushed me to shine,
to take my life & make it "mine."
Hard times will come & go,
but there's one thing that I know,
when odds stacked against me, I took them down,
the quiet one, never making a sound.
The places I've been & the places I'll go,
the people i've met, & those I've yet to know,
the broken pieces fit together beautifully,
they are what makes me, "me."

~Holly Nichole, 4/13/2009

La di da..

So I went and visited my mom on friday, and she had gotten a few letters from the people who sent them to me already. I asked her if she liked it & she said it made her cry to see that people that don't even know her were reaching out to her. I'm the same way, all of the people who have been commenting on these personal blogs & giving me some encouragement have really helped. It makes me emotional, too to see people reach out to me when I'm basically a stranger to them. I've been pondering the idea of going and talking to a counselor, but I can't really afford it right now. I may be able to see if I can get in somewhere, some places offer a program that allows people who don't have jobs to still get help. I actually worked up the courage back in Jan. of 2007 to call and tell our mental health center that I needed to talk to someone, and had the appointment scheduled and everything. I was shaking in my boots when I got there because the idea scares me. Kinda silly since I'm going to school to eventually be a counselor. But talking about my problems face to face with someone is hard for me because I tend to get emotional and then I feel silly. But I got there, and signed in, and they told me that they didn't take the insurance that I had. It would be $90 for the first visit and $60 for visits after that. I was making about 6.00 and hour at the time, so that was pretty much out of the question. So I basically wrote off the idea of talking to someone since then. And I have had friends over the years that I felt like I could talk to, but it seems like they're not there when I need them, only when they need me. And with as much as I've been going through, I think it's a lot for one person to hear & process all of it. I can't process half of it myself. It really is like a bad dream sometimes, because I want to have some sense of control over everything, and I feel like I have none. i want to help people, but I have to realize that their problems are just that, their problems. I cannot fix someone who doesn't want to fix themselves. I think that's the hardest part of it for me. Anyway, I feel like I'm rambling here, so I'll hush now. :)

When it rains, it pours.

Well, it's been a little while since I've blogged anything here. But believe me, that doesn't mean nothing has been going on. Quite a bit has been going on, actually. On the 23rd I moved into my apartment, and I've been working on getting it all set up and comfortable. I'm starting to feel pretty settled into it. I wish everything else was that simple right now, but it's not. I'm having a hard time making the smallest decisions lately. I went out to eat with my boyfriend last night and I started feeling a lot of anxiety all of the sudden. I've been getting dizzy lately, and I'm wondering if it's just stress. It feels like everything is just building and building, and I'm here waiting for it to all fall down on me. I feel so many emotions inside of me dying to get out, but when I open my mouth to talk about it - nothing. I can't put anything into words. Tonight is another night where I haven't talked to my boyfriend in about 5 hours, don't know where he is or anything. I feel like he could at least let me know where he's going, so that I don't sit here and worry or think the wrong things. He knows me, and knows everything I'm dealing with emotionally right now, I don't know why he'd want to make that any worse on me. I don't feel like I can handle much more of it. Sometimes when I go and see my mom, she holds herself together and we just talk like nothing's wrong. Then other times, her anxiety and her fears are getting to her, and she breaks down and cries. And I'm sitting there, looking at her through glass, I can't even reach over and give her a hug, and that's all I want to do. Then in my mind I realize it could be many years before I get to hug her. And my mind goes back to the week before she was arrested, she was staying with me. It was really the first time in a long time that I got to spend time like that with her. We stayed up some nights, watching tv and just having fun together. I was 10 the last time I lived with my mom, and I feel like I've missed out on so much. But all of that runs through my head when I'm sitting there talking to her, talking into those static-y phones, my tears running down it. It makes me realize how much I've taken for granted, and how much I miss her. I've watched mental illness and alcoholism change her into somebody that I know she's not. That has been so hard. It probably plays a part into why I'm studying to be a psychologist, I want to help people with problems like that. Because maybe then I can save somebody else's kids from going through the kind of heartache I've been going through. It's hard for me to open up and write about all of this, but I feel like I need to. I can't keep it inside, and there's nobody here to talk to. Sometimes just writing it out takes some of the pain of it away.

If anyone here would be interested in writing my mom a letter of encouragement, either comment me here or send me an email, hollymarkafterdark@hotmail.com I've gotten several people to help with it already, and I think it'll mean a lot to her to see that people care. Just a prayer, or a few words of wisdom. I'm taking emails or if you wanna do snail mail, that works, too. I've blasted this idea on my Twitter so most of you have probably seen it already, just thought I'd throw it out there.

Thanks for listening.