Life Update: March 2017

Life Update: March 2017

Monday 6 March 2017

We both know if you have read my other life update posts they are jumbled and often don't make sense so I have about ten or more points that I want to talk about so I have sub-titles and well here we go.

Moved
This may explain the week or two gaps in blog posts. I didn't intend on leaving such a big gap between the last post especially because of what that blog post was, which you can check out here. That blog post was also something that was very much an in the moment thing and I typed it up, copied and pasted the letter and pressed publish all within ten minutes. Okay, so what this is actually about I have moved back to Auckland and I am still getting in a routine although I have been down here for two weeks now and I love Auckland, however, I also can't wait till I have finished my BA so I can move cities. I love exploring new places and I definitely have the next two cities I want to live planned out, literally already started saving for my next move.

Started uni again
Okay, this semester is going to be super stressful although I am prepared for the stress.... well sorta. I am doing my second year of a BA double majoring in Psychology and Politics. It is a slight change from what I was doing although I am so far (I say this a week into this semester) loving it and I really enjoy learning and this semester I am doing papers that are all related to the politics part of my degree which I find a lot more challenging than psychology and something I really enjoy learning about. I have always liked politics and some people in my family are very strongly viewed when it comes to politics, it is also important to understand the politics that happens around us and what is happening so that is why I am doing politics.



Epiphanies
I have had a few epiphanies hte last couple of weeks that i will probably talk about in the future so i won't so too much here.

Now lets talk my goals and resolutions

Fitness & Food
Ummmmm what was this new years resolution. Admittedly I have done minimum exercise in the three months more the last two weeks I haven't exercised which makes me a little mad ~awkwardly laughs~ that is something I definitely want to start doing and am going to start doing eeek okay in all seriousness I have put it in my planner for the week because I have a very busy week ahead of me.

The Unknown
I am learning to not convince myself to not do things, which is a process. i am also going to do a blog post on.



My Past
See my last post. umm this is something that I have struggled with and I am definitely learning to come to terms with it. There is definitely a huge part of me the last few weeks that has moved on more from that and I have definitely made a huge leap in improvement in my PTSD and anxiety.

Anxiety & Mental Health
This is something I am continuing on improving and my mental health has definitely improved so much, I have never felt better and my menta health is in the best place it has ever been so yay

DEAR THE BOY WHO SEXUALLY ASSAULTED ME

DEAR THE BOY WHO SEXUALLY ASSAULTED ME

Friday 24 February 2017

I have about six draft posts I am working on at the moment about various different things however this is something that is more important. I am seeing an increasing amount of posts about mental health and sexual assault on my newsfeed and every time I see one my heart breaks a little more, for the men, women, and children that have experienced these things, it is heart-breaking and as a society we need to start doing something rather than blocking it and pretending it is not an issue. Sexual assault affects too many people; it is the time we start doing something about it. 

Sexual assault is something I avoid talking about, I can count on my hands the number of people I have talked about sexual assault too and that isn't because I don't see it as an issue. It is because I see it as a massive issue but sometimes the hardest things to talk about are the things that you have experienced. I was sexually assaulted six and a half years ago. It took me six years for those words to even come out of my mouth and it took me five years to get help. That night my life changed forever and it is something I will never get back. I have avoided talking about this for all this time on eve type of social media because I didn't want people to know, I didn’t want it to affect friendships or potential relationships, it was something I was ashamed of for so long and I shouldn’t have been because it is not my shame to carry, it is his. If people don’t want anything to do with me because of what happened that night and because I am speaking out against it then so be it, I don't want anything to do with them. I have met some amazing people because of the position I was put in and I have seen sides of people that are caring and supportive because I have told them. Although some people have asked why I didn't report him, why I don’t report him and the reason to that answer is simply because I do not want to, I don’t want to put myself in that position. I have laid awake at night thinking about whether I will report it, I have talked to friends and gotten their opinions and some responses where "what if he does it to someone else?" people have asked that question as if I have never thought of it, as if I hadn’t laid awake at night thinking but what if, but at the end of the day I can't answer that question and I have to do what is best for me. I have learned that some people will have that what if response but some people have had the best response I could have asked for and told me to do what’s best for you and you need to do what will give you closure. 

I have no current interest in reporting what happened to me or pursuing legal action simply because I don't want to and that is enough of a reason for me. I have to focus on myself and I have been doing that. I still struggle every day with what happened in ways that some people can’t even imagine, I don’t get nightmares anymore, but that isn’t to say I will never have them again, I still get anxiety going into places he may be but that doesn’t mean I will always have that. There are people I am close to that are close to his family, and that is hard to deal with, but at the end of the day, my safety and my mental and physical health will always come before any friendships.

This is the letter I wrote to the boy who sexually assaulted me. It is a private letter I wrote around a month ago in the early hours one morning, it was hard to write and I shed a lot of tears. It explains some of my pain and forgiveness and it is the most empowering and difficult thing I have ever written. There is life after sexual assault, and there are people that care about what happened to you. Speak out, don't stay silent. Sexual assault is not okay.

Dear the boy who sexually assaulted me,

I call you a boy because that is what you were, and it hurts me to say your name whether it is you I am referring to or not to say your name it physically hurts. You were a boy; I was a girl. The concept of sexual assault wasn’t something I understood, I didn’t understand that it could happen to a twelve-year-old. I didn’t think a fifteen-year-old could do that. I didn’t understand, I didn’t understand what you did. Now I understand what you did but I don’t understand why you did it, I won’t ever understand. I didn’t know if you knew what you were doing. You told me that your brother said it was okay; so it must be but you knew I said no, I said I didn’t want you, I begged you to stop, but you didn’t, you thought you had a right to take that from me, you thought you had a right to take my body away from me. I begged you to stop. I have never begged anyone like I begged you to stop. I remember trying to push you off of me, I remember you touching me, I remember you putting your tongue in my mouth. You took that away that from me, not only my first kiss but everything that comes after that as well. Now, when I kiss somebody I get flashbacks of that night, you not only destroyed that night for me you destroyed every kiss after that night, but with you, it wasn’t a kiss. I don’t know what I would call it, but it wasn’t a kiss.

It was a nightmare. I remembered for months afterward trying to convince myself that is was a bad dream, that it was a nightmare. I tried to convince myself you hadn’t done anything. I remember the first time I told anybody, it was my sister we were driving home to Te Arai and I asked her if she had ever had a guy force himself on her, she said no, have you? My reply was a simple quiet yes. She asked me to repeat myself, she pulled over the car and explained to me that what you had done, what you did to me was sexual assault, what you did to me was wrong. I already knew it was wrong that what you did to me wasn’t okay, but I didn’t know it was sexual assault. I was ashamed of what happened I didn’t tell anyone for years, not until we had moved away from you. (Edited)*** When I’m driving past my old house my mind is flooded with happy memories but (Edited)*** I am reminded of all those times you were in my childhood.(Edited)*** I knew you for my entire life, and you gave me every reason to trust you and within one night you took all of that away, I will never trust anyone completely again, my childhood my life was changed that night.

I have never felt like my body was completely mine since that night. Some days I feel so dirty, so disgusting that I want to just sit in the shower, I want to lay in the bath. I just want to disappear into it because it is the only way I feel clean, it is the only way I can get you off my skin, and the only way that I can take away that feeling of your touch. The water is one of the only places I feel safe and free from your grasp. I want to take off my skin, I want to unzip my skin and lay it down beside me as if it were a jacket as if my body was a piece of clothing. I want to scrub the feelings of your hands off my body, I want to wash my mouth out until I can no longer feel your tongue down my throat. I want to press delete on the pain you caused me, I want to delete every childhood memory I have that you are in. I want to delete some of my happiest memories because you are my worst memory.

Sometimes I wish I was never born I wish, I didn’t exist. That wish almost become a reality twice. You may have found out, that I tried to kill myself, twice. I self-harmed for years, and I only recently stopped. Suicide is something I still think about, I still think about the first time I cut my skin, that day I felt like I had gained a little part of my body back because I was inflicted the pain. I could control the pain I was receiving and for me, that was taking ownership of my body. You can’t see many of my scars now but the scar that left the biggest mark is one you can’t even see and that is the scar you caused, the pain you inflicted on me because you wanted validation from your brother.

I feel sorry for you; at times I hate you. There is a massive part of me that forgives you, hopes you are doing better and feels sorry for you but there will also always be a part of me that hates you, a part that doesn’t understand what you did, a part that hopes you suffer and you feel the pain that I have felt. But that part that holds that hate is so much smaller than the part that feels sorry for you. I hope you get the help you need, it whichever way that may be. I hope you get a job, earn a living, maybe even buy a house but there is no part of me that hopes a wife and family for you. I fear for your future wife if you do get married, I fear you will hurt her and she won’t be able to get away. I fear that you will have children and take away their childhood, I fear that they too will also want to step out of their bodies and leave it behind like a jacket. I ask you for me do well, get a job, get help sort out your life, but please don’t hurt anybody else. Don’t put anyone else through what you put me through.

I will never forget you, I can never forget you. You have shaped me into the person I am. I have many of my ambitions because of what you did to me, I want to help people because of you. My relationship with God is stronger than it ever was before because of you. I am stronger, kinder, more ambitious because of what you did, but it wasn’t because of what you did it’s because of the way I reacted to the situation you forced e into. The help I have gained, the people I have met, the experiences I have had, the pain I have suffered is because of my reaction to the situation you put both of us in.

You and I are the only two people that know exactly, what happened that night. As much as I try to forget that night it will forever be etched into my mind. I will be struggling for a long time to come to terms with what you did, I am prepared to fight the nightmares and anxiety for the rest of my life if it means I can help just one person, whether that be helping a sexual assault victim or perpetrator. I promise the lord I will help to make this earth a better place and provide people with the tools and support they require in order to make peace with themselves, I promise to forever acknowledge my past and use it in order to help others. My experiences that you have caused have made me stronger, so thank you for that.

Good Luck,

Paige 

There is so much I have learned after writing this letter and so much I want to add, but by adding those things, it would be in many ways obvious as to who he is which I have no intentions of doing. This is to help victims; this isn't revenge towards him. Everyone deserves to have inner peace and to be happy. He may have taken that away from me but it is only temporary, my feelings towards him hold a lot of hate but I am not going to destroy someone as they have attempted to do to me. I have been working with my therapist going through this letter and I have made a lot of realizations and there are things I am working on overcoming.

I am sorry if you have ever experienced sexual assault. Please get help because it is out there, people do care and what happened to you, is not your fault.

25 Money saving Tips

25 Money saving Tips

Wednesday 22 February 2017

I am a university student and therefore I will do almost anything to save money, I also planning on moving to another city in three years time and because I am into planning for my goals at the moment (thanks to my passion planner) I am already saving for that. I have also gone through my monthly accounts and cut out the things that I really don't need, and reduced other things that I don't use to its full potential, I also looked into other subscriptions services and it was going to cost me more to cancel it but while requiring about cancelling it they have given me two months free and I've decided I will keep this subscription (It is important to note I do use this service, but it isn't a necessity if it would have been better, in the long run, I would have cancelled it), I am also going to be maximising this subscription potential further as I have not been doing so at the moment.

1. Plan out your meals, this way you know what you're having and when and you'll avoid eating out.

2. Cancel Subscriptions you don’t need anything from Netflix (I know, but do you really need it) to magazine subscriptions

3. Reduce monthly expenses. I recently reduced my phone account by $50 a month and it took about $20 Minutes to do it, that’s  saving of $600 a year.

4. Walk. When you need to just go down the road walk instead of drive, you will feel better for it ad you won't be wasting money on petrol.

5. Make a herb garden. Fresh herbs can cost around $3 per bunch of fresh herbs but if you buy a plant they are $3.99 and they keep giving you produce,

6. When going shopping look at what you want, then walk away and wait 24 hours if you still want or ‘need’ that item then go and buy it but make sure you really need/want it first.

7. Plan your meals, so you know what you're buying what you go to the grocery store and you don’t buy the wrong things.

8. Get cash out, and that is the money you have to spend for the week. This way you are aware of how much you are spening and what you are spending money on

9. Buy drugstore make up, I know it kills me to write this as much as I love my high end brands, it is cheaper to buy dugstor ena dyou can often find dupes for your favourite products. Ehen you are buying high end products do your research and make sure it is a product that you love and will you.

10. Join a library or swap books with friends, this will save money buying new books and most public libraries are free.

11. Stop wasting food, if you made too much freezer it, and all those off cuts of things make a stew or soemtihng at the end of the week with them.

12. Rather than eating out or ordering in cook your food, if you think you wnt have time cook head of time, and freeze it.

13. Stop buying take away coffees. If you really need a flat whte buy the ones in the packets from the supermarket its still more expensive than istant but its cheaper han buying a café flat whute everyay

14. Wash your clothes on cold it will save on hot water.

15.  Buy a reusable drink bottle rather than a bottle of water when you go out this way not only are you helping the planet you will also save on buywater

16. cancel your gym membership. Even if you go to th gym its cheaper to google a hiit workout on youtube, you will also save time and money getting ot the gym.

17. Track your money, have a notebook or even in the notes section of your phone write down everything you buy and how much it costs, keep those receipts so you know what you are buying.

18. Rather than going out invite your friends over, and everyone bring a dish.

19.  Don’t buy Premix alcoholic drinks. A pack of four to six premixes are around 10-$20 A bottle of Vodka can be around $40-$60 yes that costs more but you also get a lot more drinks from it and you can change things up with different flavours and have fun trying new things.