07/18/2013

 Friends:

I'm sorry I haven't written in a long time. I've been having an interesting past few months and blogging wasn't really a priority.


I know most of know, if you've been keeping up, I used to be a serious drug user. In April of 2012, I almost died from drug-related health complications. I was in a coma for 4 days and in the hospital for 3 months. I had over a 100 strokes, was on life-support and wasn't expected to live. I have permanent heart damage and need open heart surgery that I can't afford and do not have insurance to cover, but desperately need. Anyways, I survived and here I am today.





All of the above was a small price to pay to get my life back. That being said, I have been clean from hard drugs for a year and 3 months. Already this year I've experienced a drug-related loss. A friend of mine that I used to use with, but was friends with prior to both our drug addictions, died as a result of drugs. Already this week, I've read about another person who died from using the same drugs I did. I am really struggling with the concept that I lived and these people didn't. I am not special. I am not more liked or more loveable. I didn't make better choices.


That is all. Just a little heartbroken to find out another person died. Thanks for listening... I'll do what I can to post more....

04-23-13

Sometimes, I want to rush things for myself. I want my happy ending right now. But, now I can see that sometimes the best parts about happy endings are the moments, & experiences; the life that happens before it happens. We will all meet incredible people whom we believe we can make truly happy, but will never get a chance to prove it to. I know I have met many people in my life who have changed me in ways I thought impossible. People who made me question what I wanted for my future. People I didn't, can't ever be with. I constantly need to remind myself that I am in no rush to move to the end of the line of my life. I want life to happen to me this time. I don’t want to force it ever again. I want to influence it in positive ways, but not force it. I will never again put a man in a position to be forced to love me. The hardest part is recognizing that if this is true then the opposite is also true which means that I am this ‘incredible person’ that someone in my life will never get to ‘make happy’. It’s when I look at it this way that I am able to put things in perspective and recognize that I am NOT ready to be in another relationship with anyone other than myself for an undetermined time. If and when I meet that life-changing person I’ll know it. I believe this. 

Goodbye you. If you actually read this. You changed my life. I will forever be grateful. I wish the best for you. You deserve to be happy. You will be happy. I believe this.

 

2 (04-02-13)

2

04-02-13

Dear Friends 

I know I set up the style of this blog to speak to you in a letter, but I was thinking about it and I actually think from the point forward I'll just write letters to specific people that have recently entered and exited my life. I feel like that is happening a lot in my life right now. Part of me feels like it’s my fault and somehow it must mean that I am using them in some way. But, then I realize that is how the circle of life is. It is a give and take. As long as I give all I can in return and am not intending to “use” them, I can’t hate myself for it. 

The hard part is letting go of some of these people. I’ve lost a lot of friends along the way because of events that are out of my control. In reflecting, I've realized that I am so quick to give someone a great deal of value as a result of my feelings. People I only recently became friends with, known for a year or less, in other words, people that I don't actually know all that well. I am so emotional and caring and nurturing that I look past “red flags” and internal warnings so that I can continue to feel a great deal about them. I end up having totally unacceptable expectations of them, as people and as friends. In addition to my expectations of them, I end up having unacceptable expectations of myself in order to make it possible for those people to meet my expectations. It’s a vicious cycle. So I am vowing to stop. 

Once again, I’m falling into unhealthy thinking and behaviours. The same unhealthy thinking and behaviour that I considered the norm for me prior to my NDE*, and ultimately responsible for it and therefore almost killed me. Nothing is worth sacrificing your life for, except for maybe your children. I am not a parent though so right now nothing in my life is worth dying for. Not anymore. 

I originally intended on writing more, but life has intervened and I must leave you with this. Just like in life, things change. I am changing. I am evolving. I am learning. I am finding myself. I am figuring out what I want and need to fully appreciate life. Therefore, my blog may be going through a variety of changes in formatting and such. In addition, for some reason, the blogger template doesn’t follow the same rules as a regular word document. So it might look nice and professional on my word program, but ends up looking ridiculous and immature once posted. I apologize in advance for that. It pains the OCD in me. I am attempting to access a real blogger platform to use.

More to follow,

Sending light and love,

Courtney

* NDE = Near death experience

1

Friday March 29, 2013 3:43am

1

Dear Friend,

I’ve been having a really hard time finding inspiration to write. I just watched this amazing movie, The Perks of Being a Wallflower. I read the book when I was a senior in High School in 2000. It was given to me by a good friend that I will call D. D and I were very close friends at the time. In fact, he wrote this on the inside jacket of the book:

          Courtney –

You have been such a special person to me. And have taught me so many things about myself.

I love you so much, always and forever.
I hope you enjoy this book as much as I did,
It changed me. <3

D

But, we weren’t friends forever. 

Things in my life quickly took a turn for the worst shortly after high school, not to mention I moved to Tucson to attend the University of Arizona. So D and I slowly fell apart. 

Shortly after I moved back home I started my first relationship. It was a disaster. It lasted 3 years. Not long into that relationship, D and I had a falling out and have never spoken again. It's probably getting close to a decade since we last spoke. I miss him terribly. 

The worst part is I don’t associate with the person I use to be. I have her memories, but no feelings of attachments towards any of the events that took place. I can see clearly now. I can see what I lost, gave up, destroyed, ruined, and I can see how and why and I can choose to live differently now. I am free.

 

 

D, 

If you ever read this, I miss you. Please give me another chance to be the person you spoke about in that quote. You and I were supposed to be friends. We were always supposed to be friends and I’m sorry I lost sight of that.





 
If you read everything else I wrote in my blog you‘ll see how bad things had to get in my life for me to learn the value of myself. I promise you I will never treat myself like shit again. I will never lose sight of what’s most important in life. I will remember:

          “...we accept the love we think we deserve”. Chbosky (1999, pg. 29) 

That is a quote from The Perks of Being a Wallflower. It is one of my favourite quotes. It was one of yours back then. Is it still? That’s the best quote I’ve heard in a long time. I wish I would’ve paid more attention to it when I first read this book. Maybe, I would've made better choices. 

I'm glad I didn't. I wouldn't be the person I am today if I hadn't made so many mistakes. I wouldn't be the person I am today if I hadn't learned from them. I am so grateful that I saw this movie again and was reminded of this time in our lives. I just want you to know. You changed me.

Courtney

Friend:

You probably are wondering why I’ve chosen this style for this blog post. For those of you who aren’t familiar, this is similar to the Perks of Being a Wallflower method of story delivery and it makes more sense to me. It’ll give me topics of conversation. And, since I won’t be using any real names, people will retain their anonymity. 

So I digress, I’ll get back on topic. It’s in the beginning of this blog post. After my NDE, near death experience something inside my mind changed. I became clearer, focused. My short-term memory is shot, but I’m working on that. Technology has been very helpful in that area. I can commit to myself for the first time EVER. For the first time in my life, I am living my life. I am living in the moment. I am starting over. People know who I was, but I want people to know who I AM NOW. I hate having to reassure people that I’m not that girl they knew. I have follow-through. I am reliable. I am alive. 

“I was blind, but now I see.”

My life is brighter. I can see more clearly. I see things with a different perspective. I see everything. It is refreshing. I feel like I’m awake for the first time in my life. Everything is just very clear. I am more empathetic. I am more care-free. I smile more. I laugh more. I laugh almost all day. I sing. I listen to music. I love being alive. What you may not understand is I didn’t use to feel this way. Not even close.

I used to be repulsed by myself and by my life, but I was powerless to change it. I had become a prisoner of my own mind, of my own guilt. I was so obsessed with punishing myself that I was willing to risk my life to stop the pain. That’s how I ended up on drugs. 

Not a lot of people will experience or have experienced recovery like I did. For most, it’s a daily struggle to stay clean. The only difference in my situation is that I used drugs to mask the pain my life was causing. Once I had my NDE, my whole life was ripped out from underneath me. I had to start over from scratch. I was pulled from my environment and given the freedom to start over. It was overwhelming. 

I’m not going to lie; the first 9 months, after I returned home from the hospital, were rough. I was introverted. I was scared. I didn’t want to go out in public. I felt ugly and was embarrassed to be seen. I quickly fell back into my old mentality. I became overly attached to the first guy I liked. Luckily, he’s not a local; we are online friends so it was extremely safe. In other words, it didn’t require me to leave my newly acquired shell. 

Well, needless to say, things didn’t work out the way I had planned and it broke my heart. So much so that, for my own protection and sanity, I forced myself to reflect on how I was living my life and the choices that I was making. Suddenly, it dawned on me, I didn’t want my life to begin and end with a guy. It always had. Look at how great that worked out for me before. I almost relived my greatest mistake, again, so soon. How was this possible? Had I learned nothing? Did I deserve to get this second chance at life if I wasn't not going to live it differently? I was embarrassed. I felt crazy. He opened my eyes. 

He allowed for me to open my eyes, to change my perspective, to change my life. We are still friends. He's not in a position to read this so I don’t have to worry that he will any time soon, but some day he will.




And when you do, I just want to thank you from the bottom of my heart. 

You thought I was beautiful in a time in my life when I felt most ugly. You helped me realize how much more important and valuable inner beauty is than exterior. 



You also taught me to value my health. I eat better now, I exercise regularly and changed my entire lifestyle. I did this for myself so that I could live longer and enjoy my life longer by giving myself the opportunity to spend more time with the people I love. I hope you find the happiness you’re looking for.

In closing, life is a series of choices. Your mistakes do not define you. Your choices define you. If you don’t want to be stressed about money then work more, find another job, spend less, save more. Life is full of options. Choose the path you want. Choose happiness. Choose kindness. Choose love. Be free.

Start new, start fresh, start your life, because this life is all you have.

Don't waste a moment of it.

 

Till next time. Sending light and love your way.


Courtney

Chbosky, S. (1999) The Perks of Being a Wallflower, MTV Books, New York.

The Possibility: Corrections to previous posts!

The Possibility: Corrections to previous posts!: March 11, 2013 Welcome friends and family and strangers! Some of you know me personally and some of you used to know me. Some of you are ...

Corrections to previous posts!

March 11, 2013

Welcome friends and family and strangers! Some of you know me personally and some of you used to know me. Some of you are complete strangers. I welcome all of you! Please add me as a friend on Fakebook (info. can be found on my profile page) and be sure to follow this blog!


As it turns out, I was wrong about a lot of those dates and time frames from my last couple of posts.


I was brought into the hospital within days of Valentines day of 2012 (before or after, not certain). I was in a coma for 4 days, not four weeks also not medically induced. I was brain dead for a week, living only off life-support machines. They said I had no brain activity and expected me to never recover. My family planned for the worst.


I may not be 100% now or ever, but I'm 100% better than I've ever been before in my life. I am still learning about what happened to me. This has to be the most incredible part of my journey. I only know what I've been told and most of what I've been told is not completely accurate or is altogether false.


You will be forced to experience this journey with me if you continue to read. I'll make updates as often as possible. I'll keep you updated as I learn new things about myself and my past. Please feel free to post questions and I'll answer them. Also, share my blog please! The more people that read it, the more likely I will get an opportunity to write a book about my life.


Thanks for taking the time to read this!

February 13, 2013

Written February 13, 2013

I am living my after-life. 

 

The Courtney I was before my near-death experience does not exist anymore. I am Courtney 2.0. I have many of Courtney’s memories, but none of her emotions towards those memories. That’s not to say I’m emotionless, far from it. I just don’t feel the same emotions towards the memories of those events.

My brother, Jonathan, told me something right after I awoke from my coma and it stuck with me. First of all, I had to relearn how to walk, how to sit up, how to stand, to move around like a normal person. It was the hardest thing I have ever done in my entire life.  He told me that I should feel lucky for getting the opportunity to experience everything for the first time again as an adult. At the time, it didn’t seem important.

Here I was, a 29 year old, having problems holding my bladder, not being able to go to the bathroom on my own because I couldn’t physically get there, knowing my whole family knows that I’m a former IV heroin and speed user, my boyfriend of 7 years a no-show for the extent of my hospitalization, and I was supposed to be grateful that I am forced to relive the part of childhood that we aren’t built to remember?

 

That was almost a year ago this month. I can now walk on my own with no problems and I am physically capable of doing just as much or more than I ever was before. I look back now and I realize how right he was. I am so grateful. My perceptions of this world, of my life, are so much different than they have ever been in my entire life. 

 

Everything brings tears to my eyes. 

 

I am moved by so many things these days. 

 

For those of you that have no experience using Opiates, they make you apathetic. This is exacerbated if you use Heroin intravenously. So during my year "living" as an IV Heroin and Meth user, I was emotionally shutdown for the most part. However, I was on some sort of Opiate for at least 2 years prior to that year. Apart from my daily longing for death, I was mostly numb for 3 years. 

 

Perhaps that is why I have such strong emotions today. It is almost like my mind is sucking everything in to make up for all the emotions it’s been lacking for the past 3 years. 

 

Prior to all that, I had not used drugs for 8 years.  

 

 Written March 8th, 2013

I survived so much in such a short period of time. I had to experience the closest thing to hell on Earth in order to get the chance to experience the closest thing to Heaven on Earth and I wouldn't change a thing.