Being Non-Violent

I always thought that I'd be someone who had everything under control; everything from school life to social life, but upon growing up, I realized that I didn't have a much control over as much as I'd hoped.

When I was told by my doctor that I have anxiety, it wasn't a surprise. Everything was piling up, it was mental breakdown after mental breakdown, getting nervous at any little noise in the classroom and just feeling off the whole day.

I wasn't shocked in that doctors office.

Since then, things have changed. I feel as though my anxiety is under a lot better control. Switching schools did raise my anxiety, but I now have friends and I know that people are there for me, so it's alright now.

Things might be feeling better, but I also have bad days.

I have days where I'm really on edge, I have days where I just hate myself.

I rethink every little thing that I did and I hate myself for doing it.

Since going to the doctors to be diagnosed, I've signed up for a yoga class to help with the anxiety.

At the begin of the class today, the instructor told us about her other work experiences and a few other things that I'd like to share with you all.

When we hear the words "non-violent" or "stopping the violence", the first thing many people picture is someone who's beating another person, but they stop. We picture someone physically hurting another individual, but they stop.

Then, our brain reminds us that there's not only physical violence, but also mental violence. There, we see someone playing mind games with someone, telling them that they're never good enough and insulting them, but then they suddenly stop.

Most people only recognize physical and mental violence when it's performed on someone else, but what about ourselves?

Physically and emotionally harming ourselves is like physically or emotionally harming someone else.

We think awful things to ourselves about how we aren't ever good enough, or we can't do something, but how is that any different from saying it to someone else?

We don't realize it, but we're violent to ourselves, some constantly and others rarely, but we're still being violent.

I understand how hard it is to change a frame of mind once you're stuck in your previous one, but we do have to change the way we think about ourselves.

We're being violent to ourselves and slowly we're destroying ourselves from the inside out with the little remarks such as "I knew you couldn't do it," or "Are you serious? I can't believe you did that, you're such an idiot."

You might believe that you can only be violent both physically and mentally towards someone else, but I hope that I've persuaded you all into seeing that that's false.

Being negative to yourself is just as violent as you being negative towards someone else.

Working together to stop violence is an important thing and it must be done.

One of the first ways to do so is to stop being violent towards yourself.


One More Girl, no longer online

Jumping In Feet First

I've been struggling a little bit to make friends in my classes. I have the same group of people that I chat to in classes, but I don't know if I can call them friends yet.

They're all really nice and funny, but I don't talk to them during lunch or outside of school, it's only been in a classroom.

One girl from my softball team is in my grade, she's not in any of my classes, but she's having an easier time making friends seeing as she's really outgoing.

I, on the other hand, am not.

The other day, she was talking about all of her friends and said that she as texting a few of them and I don't really have the contact information of the few people I talk to in class.

Today I went to the library with my friend so that we could get homework done, and she told me that one of her friends was coming with us.

We planned to go to the library at 12:00pm, but apparently it only opened at 2:00pm.

My friend was bored at 12:00pm, so we decided to meet up at a coffee shop not far from the library. I was there maybe 30 minutes before her and I started an English paper and got about halfway through before she showed up.

We got ourselves some drinks and we sat in the comfy seats, talked and I typed my paper.

Not too long after, her friend walked in, got himself a drink and joined us.

I was actually a little nervous, I haven't seen him around school, I didn't know who he was at all and I was nervous to make a fool of myself.

We spent about an hour and a half in the coffee shop, and for the first 45 minutes to an hour maybe, I wouldn't look at him.

Whenever I was talking to the both of them, I would look at my friend and I just couldn't make eye contact with him.

Eventually, we started talking a little bit more, realizing we have a lot of similar interest and we have a really similar music taste.

I pretty much finished all my homework at the coffee shop, but I had some extra things to do at the library which was to write down my thoughts about certain passages from an exert from a book that we had to read in English.

I wrote down one, maybe two, lines.

We spent almost two hours in the library, but none of us got any work done.

We had a little corner to ourselves, so we just messed around, had a laugh and we just had a good time in general.

I definitely feel a lot more comfortable around him then I did when I first met him and that's great because now I think I have my first official friend whom I didn't know going into the new school.

During the day, I learnt that when it comes to new things, it's best to just take a breath and jump in.

It's better to jump in feet first, don't test the water because then you might decided to not get in the water, but if you jump, you'll have a bigger chance of enjoying yourself later on.

My friend had an easier time making friends because she jumped in feet first.

I stood on the side testing the water, it's as if I've been playing things too safe.

Because I'm too nervous to say hi to the people around me, I haven't been making many friends so far.

Today defiantly helped boost my confidence and I hope to jump in and make new friends this week.


One More Girl, no longer online