Becoming Lindsey

Becoming Lindsey

This will be the most emotional blog I'm going to have to write...but it's a story worth telling.    

          By this point I've dropped several hints to the course of your love life. In fact, I wrote an entire brief post on the matter...but I know that you are wondering what happened to the very first person you fell in love with. And I'm going to tell you now...you're not going to like what I have to say. 

          You get engaged on October 31, 2010. It's...less than exciting for you. Actually, it's terrifying and you'll want to scream "No" and run but you don't. You say yes. You're at school and he's in Florida with his family (where they end up moving after graduation) and things are hard. The fact you're engaged now is something very little people know, not even your mother. One day, you tell her, right before you fly to Florida for a visit and you explain how it is, how there's no ring, and how you don't even know at this point if it's as serious as you think. Then you go see him and his family for Thanksgiving and what do you know, there's a ring. 

          But it isn't given to you in the romantic way you have always dreamed of. You and him had gotten in a large argument before you landed which resulted in him launching your engagement ring down the empty terminal and telling you to go find it. You'll spend almost an hour looking for it before you finally find it, get to the car, and head back to his home and his family. He will never apologize for that but you will move past it like it never happened and finally make the big announcement to his family and your family and all of your friends. 

And then things really change. 

          You've heard horror stories and a lot of things you never thought would happen to you. Right now, you're the model student. You have great friends, a supportive family, what you think to be a charming boyfriend, you play high school sports, you get good grades...bad things don't happen to you. Bad things like abuse. 

          The first time it happens it takes you a while to realize what had just occurred and you lay there for a long time, refusing to move and refusing to accept that this...this is your life. You search for things you could've said wrong or things that you did to bring this about and you nit pick yourself for almost 6 months while this continues to happen on either a physical or emotional level every day of your life. For a portion of time you lose who you are and your identity goes missing. The person people came to know and love at your University begins to rapidly fade away and you become a prisoner of your own mind. 

          There comes a certain point where you give up. You just resign yourself to a horrible life and the ring on your finger feels more like chains binding you to this atrocious future you feel your forced to go through and you cover the physical and emotional scars by simply alienating yourself from the real world. But someone finally sees it...

Someone will save your life. 

          You survive and you push through and you break free of the chains and send the ring back and you never speak another word to him again. It's hard, adjusting to normal life and dating after that...well that's even harder. But in the end it's worth it. There's not a day that goes by that I regret leaving. There's not a day that I think he could have changed. There's not a day that I believe I made the wrong decision. My life is so much brighter and better because of what happened and the manner in which I left. It was clean cut and it was to the point. 

          After that semester goes by you spend a little time at home and while school is still in session you open up an assembly at your old high school focusing on self worth, self acceptance, and respect in relationships. It starts in high school. Young women are impressionable and they don't know the differences between love and obsession. In the time since I escaped the cage of my abusive relationship I have held 4 small gatherings at my old high school in which I spoke to over 200 girls about their relationships, past and present, and how they believe they should be treated as opposed to how it really should happen. I've spoken with numerous girls on a personal level and I've even stopped any abuse before it's even happened at the very first sign. 

          There's not a day that I regret what happened to me. Is it unfortunate? Yes. Is it something that I'm ashamed of? In some cases, yes. But it has shaped me into the person I am and the person you become. You help so many girls because of the experience you have and even though it is nothing short of unfortunate you will turn it around into something positive for your community. I wish, on some level, that I could stop this from happening to you, to me, but I know that if I were to change that then there would be so much more hurt in the world, even on a small scale like our home town. 

          Life after abuse is brilliant. The things you've experienced make you enjoy life with every piece of your soul and they make you appreciate the amazing man you will have in your life when you get to be my age. God teaches us lessons in funny ways...and I use the term 'funny' very loosely, but he really does. And then, when you have pushed through it, he rewards you with something even more brilliant than you could have ever dreamed of, which in this case is your college career, your amazing friends and family who have become even more supportive over the years, and your loving boyfriend. Besides, if God didn't think you could handle it, he wouldn't have put it in your life. If God thought it would have broken you, it wouldn't have been in your plan. God gave you this hardship because he knew that in the end it would breed positivity. God just needed you to figure out who you were and who Lindsey was. He needed you to stand up for yourself and become who he always intended for you to be. 

And you have.

          For a moment I would like to break the mold of my blog and address every young girl in the world who could be reading this. If you are in danger or if someone is physically or emotionally hurting you, tell someone. Don't be afraid to use the voice God gifted you with and speak up. The only power they have over you is the power you give them. So don't allow them to have it.

You are strong.

You are beautiful. 

You are worth it. 

Never forget that.

-LNL