Trip down memory Lane

Well Life for me has been pretty darn busy lately and a bit hectic and emotional on top of that. I completed my training for Wilderness a little while ago and I start my internship on the 13th of August which from right now is only two days away! AH! In the time I had free which was from the 3rd of August until the 13th of August I decided to drive myself to Kalispell Montana! I haven't been back to Kalispell since I graduated high-school there back in February of 2013, so it was a crazy drive down memory lane! I also spent about a day in my car if you add both days of driving which was about 11-12 hours from Provo to Kalispell, so in all I did around 24 hours worth of driving all by myself! I had a lot of time on my hands while driving to reflect on life and listen too all my favorite songs. The thinking to myself part was probably my favorite part of the long drive, because when else do you have a full 11-12 hours completely alone to think with no one else to bother you(other then when you are sleeping)
I thought about a lot of things, but what I remember thinking about the most was about how far I have truly come.
So lets take a trip down memory lane and I'll illustrate to you just how much I have truly changed.
Lets jump back a few years, to the end of 2011 when my life was not going to well and things were falling apart back at home.

p.s. I am going to share things that I've never shared before, so this is going to be a very emotional and vulnerable post, but I hope someone out there in the world reads this and has hope if they have/are going through a similar situation.

Insert picture(s) of before I went to wilderness

Who is that girl I see? Staring straight back at me? Well thats not me anymore, but it sure did used to be...

These photos were the last photos I took before I "disappeared" so I would guess that they are from September of 2011. Can we just be horrified of how tiny I let myself get? These were the days where I would hardly eat anything, not because I didn't want to but because my body was under tremendous stress that it couldn't function properly. I would have these heat/cold flashes and end up on the floor crying because I felt like I was going to die. My body would throw up when ever I ate too much because my nerves were on edge so much that I couldn't keep anything down. It may seem like I am exaggerating but I'm not, that stuff actually happened to my body, I just never really told anyone before. 

So lets take a look at why my body was flipping out at me. 

Well the causes were pretty clear, I was emotionally, mentally and physically exhausted with life. The life I was living at that time was not healthy what so ever, I got myself stuck in a hole that I couldn't climb out of because I was too weak and too tired to even try. I put myself into a relationship that was literally killing me from the inside out. People talk about abusive relationships all the time but only see them as abusive when it involves physical abusive, but honestly I wish my relationship was a physical abuse rather then emotional/mental abuse. Because I would rather be hurting on the outside then in the very core of my soul and being. I could feel myself dying, literally and actually dying. Sometimes I would lie in my bed staring at the blank white ceiling in my room simply asking God if he could just let me die and take me out of this situation because I knew I couldn't help myself. I remember so clearly the thoughts of just not wanting to exist anymore, I even thought of taking my own life, I even tried taking my own life. But I couldn't do it, This one night I swallowed who knows how many pills but I made myself throw them up right afterwards because as I was laying in my bed I heard this voice say to me that It was not my time to die, that I was important, that I had things I still needed to do, and that even though I didn't want to live through my life at the moment I needed to live for my future. In a way I was mad that God wasn't going to just take me out of the pain, that he wasn't going to save me from myself, but that I had to endure whatever I had to endure because I had a future. At that time I couldn't see what that future could possibly be because the place I was living in then was not going to offer me any happy endings. 

But then something happened. My parents were not blind to the fact that they saw their baby girl withering away, not only physically but spiritually, emotionally and mentally. The later part of 2011 was a battle with me and my parents, They were the scapegoat and the enemy, they were the target in which I blamed all of my problems and mistakes. But they were the ones who loved me the most, no matter how many times I screamed and cussed at them, they could see past my anger and see my sadness and my hopelessness and my call for help. Even though at the time I didn't always think I needed any help, they knew otherwise. 

So they took action, and you know it was scary for them. They saw my troubled soul, they saw my brokeness and they had no idea what to do, they couldn't help me themselves because I flat out despised them at the time. But they knew that their little girl was most likely not going to make it if they didn't intervene, so they did. And they had me taken away, "kidnapped" but also known as transported to a wilderness program in the middle of no where Utah in the very early morning. My mom has told me since that day that the night before they came to take me, she was up all night praying that I would go peacefully and not put up a fight. And her prayers were answered. When I think back to that moment of waking up with a strange man and women in my room telling me they were taking me, I would assume that on any other given day I would have not been cooperative and I definitely would have ran. But on that night I slept peacefully for the first time in months, and when I awoke to 2 strangers in my room who were taking me away from everything I knew and loved I had an odd sense of peace about me. I was a bit confused and sad about it, but the biggest emotion I felt at that moment and that day was relief. I knew I was being taken out of the hole I got stuck in and couldn't get out of alone. I was literally being removed and flown out of the pain, and the stress and the overwhelming sadness, I was being freed from the chains which bound my life to darkness. That day marked the start of my second chance on life, that day was the start of my Future. 

Wilderness was the best thing that ever happened to me. It saved my life and I can never be more thankful. Its taken me a while to realize how much my life really needed a restart button, because even in wilderness I couldn't see how bad of a hole I got myself stuck in, because it was easier to not think about the truth then to see how far down the wrong path I let myself wander. I was in denial for a long time about my problems, even though deep down I knew my life was falling apart at the seams back at home, its hard to accept the fact that you were killing yourself slowly from the choices you were making. Its hard to accept that you really need help, Its hard to accept your own brokenness because you just don't want any of it to be true. But acceptance is the first step to start recovering and changing your life around. Being out in the middle of no where for 72 days allows you to really face your demons. Being surrounded by nothing except nature and a few other people in the winter of Utah really gives you that chance to start repenting(or changing) from within. 

Before Wilderness I had thrown God away, I had stopped going to church every Sunday. I never prayed- because what was the point of praying when it was Gods fault for letting me get into this bad situation, because I thought that if God was real and that if God loved me then he wouldn't have let any of this happen. So I stopped believing in God even though my whole entire life I had believed I threw it away when I started making bad choices that went against everything I had been taught. 

But my first night there, I knew I was broken, I had no where to run, no where to hide. Just a tarp above my head and a sleeping bag to stay warm. That night I looked up at the stars, I cried up to the Lord and I wept for an hour or longer. And ever since that first night I prayed and I prayed and I cried forgiveness, I cried for hope, I cried for help and for love and for understanding. But I had a lot of demons to battle, I had a lot to overcome and to work through, but I knew I would not fail because I now had the Lord on my side. 

I was in Wilderness for 72 days, by the end of my stay there, I had started healing, I started understanding, and I started hoping again. When I first got there a staff named Kate asked me who would I choose, either my Boyfriend at the time or my parents? For the first month I chose the boy, I was still bitter and angry with my parents because I hadn't yet realized that I put all of my shame on them and I blamed them for everything when in reality it was my boyfriend who was the one causing me problems, but I loved him too much to blame him for anything- nothing could be his fault I used to think. But by the end of those 3 months I had forgiven them, and let me tell you forgiving is a hard thing to do. I had grown to love my parents again, and when I saw them for the first time we all broke down in tears of happiness. Also at the end of those 3 months I gained a lot of weight, ALOT of weight, and when I first saw myself I was a bit sick to my stomach because I didn't even look like the same person. But the thing is, my body hadn't been properly eating and getting proper nutrients for about 6 or more months before then, so when I was in wilderness and presented with a jar of peanut butter every week and a full food bag my body was like GET IN MY BELLY, because I needed it.  

So what came next after Wilderness? Boarding School. And that is how I came to live in Kalispell, Montana. The picture above is actually a picture of me and my parents in Whitefish and the lake. 

I arrived at Summit preparatory school on December 15th. It was a hard transition because I really just did not want to be there. I thought that I could have gone home after wilderness and just go to a therapist there. But my parents knew better, because I know that at that time if I were to have gone back home after 3 months away I would have gone straight back to my Boyfriend because I still loved him and I still wanted to fix him and help him and be with him. And if I went back to him then everything I had learned in Wilderness would have been for naught because the cycle would have just restarted and I would end up in the same hole I was just in 3 month prior. 

I was at Summit from December 15th 2011, until February 15th 2013. Which is a total of 428 days, which is 1 year and 2 months. Even though it seemed like I didn't really have that many problems compared to the other kids at Summit, I was there for a reason. Its true I didn't do drugs, I wasn't addicted to drugs, I didn't get in trouble with the law or have clinical depression or anger issues, I had my own issues I needed to deal with, like being addicted to a boy, depression that was brought on by my situation, an abusive relationship, lying to my parents all the time, sneaking out, making bad choices, giving up on everything and everyone except for my boyfriend, because I made him my world, he was more important then myself back in the day. Its kind of funny how people just didn't understand why I was there sometimes, Just this past week when I went to visit Jim and Alisha both said to me they would ask other people why I was there because I was just the sweetest girl. And Its true, I've always been sweet and kind and caring, but I was throwing my life away because I was blinded by love and digging myself down into a pit of hopelessness and suffering because that boy I was in love with was no good for me. 

It took time to be accepting of the fact that I was going to be at Summit until I finished the program(which has 4 stages) and finish school there too. I didn't want to be there, I wanted to be out in the real world, with my old friends going to my old high-school. And it took me a a little while to be happy with where I was and make the best of what I was given. And after I was happy being there I started to have a really great time. I made a lot of friends who I will always have a bond and a friendship with, I came to know myself better then I had ever known myself before, I read a lot of books, I did pretty darn well in school, I flirted with cute boys, I did some crazy things I never thought I would ever do before on our team Challenge trips like bike 80 miles through the mountains of Montana, go on a weekend Wilderness adventure with a bunch of girls to relive the glory days of Wilderness but this time in the Beautiful Glacier Mountains. I started going to church again after about a year of not going, I started drawing and doing a bunch of art stuff and I discovered that I really really love art a lot. (Its because of my art teacher at Summit that I went to VCUarts) 

Here are some photos of my life in Montana :)

And then I graduated High-school and from the program in February 2013!

And then I traveled Europe with my Mom for a about a month

Then I got a job at Dunkin Donuts/Baskin Robbins 

Then I got a car

Then we bought a Town House in Richmond for me to go to school and live in, we renovated it then I moved in August 17th 2013.

And then Schools started. But thats the end of the pictures because I could go on forever with this blogpost. This blog post is a ride down memory lane because that was what I thought about when I was in the car driving to Montana and back from Montana. The person I am right now is completely different then the person I was back in 2011. And its only been 3 years time between now and then. I've finished my first year of college, I got into the major I wanted, I decided to move to Utah and take time off school to work at a Wilderness program. I've done a lot of stuff since I graduated high-school, and boy does it feel good to know who I am and what I've gone through. 

Life is great, even though sometimes it sucks a lot, we all have a future and potential no matter what low spot you are at, you can always overcome it. I hope my story is able to help someone else out there in the world. Because I remember how awful life used to be for me, how miserable I was, I was stuck in a pit of depression, with no hope, but yet there was light at the end of the tunnel awaiting me. Just like that voice told me that day back in September, I had to live for my future, and I am so glad that I did. Because I love life so much, I am so happy now, I have so much to offer the world, and we could play the what if game forever, like what if I never got sent to wilderness - well I know how my story would end, it would be over by now. But I was given a second chance, a chance to restart my life, and I am beyond Grateful for all of the people who saved me, who help me change, who gave me hope and made me smile. You are forever in my gratitude.

with love,

Arianna