Hello, again. Thank you for visiting this blog, I will be your tour guide through the mind of Layla Lee Gilmore. Please hold any questions for the comments section and we must insist, no eating while in her brain. Crumbs may affect brain cells. Thank you and enjoy the ride.
Alright so I'm gonna jump right in, I've been dealing with anxiety at very high levels lately. Very. High. It's becoming very hard to keep my emotions under control and mainly in certain areas mentally. I've been able to handle things like being patient with people who are not accepting of my transition or when it comes to waiting for the train to come but when it comes to things like me wanting to perform a certain act and unable to do it in the time I need to. or if I have to leave work and my coworker is late, those situations have become so much worse emotionally.
I'll give you an example of something that has really been draining emotionally for me:
I was at work, I'm a cashier, and a person I used to know came in. Now the last time I saw this person, I was being yelled at threatened and had to call the police to assess the situation; said person came in and got what they needed to get.
In my mind, I went through a thousand different scenarios of what was going to happen when they got in line.The person was polite and said hello, which I wasn't expecting, then I did my job and was polite back. This whole thing took about 9 minutes from the moment they walked in till the moment they left and afterward I felt like I had run a marathon.
My emotions in that situation (or non situation) just blew me away at how my overthinking and over...fearing, I guess you could call it were so encompassing that I physically felt drained. Not exactly like the same as running a marathon but draining nonetheless. I've hit a few situations like this that have drained me more lately than in a long while.
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| Michael Patrick Bossler |
And now for birthdays...oh birthday, how you never want to leave me alone. I am not a fan of my birthday and I don;rt know how to deal with it or come to terms with it. To explain that, my uncle Mike never missed my birthday, not when I had nowhere to live or when I was at my biological father's or when I was at Bible college. No matter what was going on he called me or visited and I counted on that, he was the only reason so many times that I even cared about celebrating my birthday.
All that ended in November of 2012, he took his life and with it he took a giant piece of my heart. The last serious attempt to take my own life was the birthday after that and I created a short film depicting that night
(trigger warning: suicidal issues confronted in this video)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQfpNVVl7gE
Anyway, ever since November of 2012, I hurt the most during my recognized day of birth and it seems to be harder each year. I remember a time when I had been sleeping in a baseball field in Camden for a few weeks, things were really bad and I barely had any food to eat throughout that whole and on my bd, he got in touch with me and sent me some money. It wasn't about the money that made me feel so much better, it was that he cared enough to find me and he wanted to help.
And on my bd in 2013, my friends tried to do something nice and people tried to say something on facebook and that was very nice but I needed to hear from the only person who has ever made the word 'family' not feel horrible...the only person I couldn't hear from.
To this day, it hurts to go through that day every year and I don't even know how to pretend to be okay on that day. I guess that's one of my dark days. My uncle's passing anniversary is another and his birthday is although I'm trying to make that a good one. So if you know me and want to do something for my bd, here's steps to actually be positive:
1. Do not leave a comment about the day I was born on my birth anniversary. You can feel good about yourself while hurting me at the same time or you could just not.
2. Pick a random day in the summer and do something nice like draw me a picture or buy me a piece of cake but don't say why. The summer is a long and at times grueling season for me and I'm sure I'll forget I wrote this by then so I won't be affected in this way if you do something nice for me. DO NOT SAY HAPPY B******Y TO ME THOUGH.
3. I love chocolate chip cookies or strawberry flavored cake...or limes if you want to be a little healthier. Also I don't want to sound like I expect or deserve things that take your money, seriously the most meaningful things I own and hold onto are things that took way more thought than money. I have a friend who made me a poster by gluing crayons to a canvas and used a blow dryer to melt them in a rainbow. I will never choose to get rid of that ever. It took thought to make something for me and that is more valuable than anything she could have bought me.
And finally, I have been trying a lot more to be positive in my thinking. I've been working on being grateful for specifically small and daily things that I have made a habit of ignoring because my life sucks.
Every morning I've been reminding myself of the good things that happen to me and I've been praying thankful prayers for those things and for the people in my life that mean something to me. Doing this has had a small but noticeable affect on my moods at times and I hope to make this more of a routine than I ever did before. I've put a lot of negativity on God and whether I'm right or wrong, I am trying to take all of that off Him and just focus on the thankfulness I should have. I want positivity to be a stronger force than depression
Thank you for reading and make sure you please deposit any trash in the waste basket that on your way out. Hope you enjoyed the tour
