Are you weathered or broken?

Weathered:

I lived in Downtown St. Louis for several years, in fact, that is where my daughter was born. The neighborhood I lived in for a year or so was less then appealing to most. I would even venture to say that it was a scary neighborhood. By this point I had seen enough negative things and been exposed to enough that it didn't seem to phase me that on a regular basis you could hear gun shots at night, drive through the neighborhood to see drug raids through near by drug houses. It was a high crime area.

One day I was sitting at a stop light a few blocks from my apartment and witnessed a young man get shot. As I sat at the stop light, the first thought I had was not "RUN!" it was, "Is a shooting like a car accident? Am I supposed to stop and be a witness?" As i watched and thought, the light turned green and I continued my journey to the grocery store as if nothing unusual had just happened right in front of my eyes.

Broken:

Going to years and years of counseling the term "trigger" was used a lot. A trigger being something, whether it be a sight, sound, smell, any thing that will trigger a certin memory or event in your life.

For most of my eating disorder I was considered an anerexic, but by after a year or so of sticking to a strick 200 calorie diet, my body craved food so bad I just had to eat... EVERYTHING! Thats when I entered the balemic anorexic phase. I would binge and binge and binge and then purge everything I just had.

I was working at the Wal-mart bakery at this point, and I remember so many times I would sit there and stuff my face with a whole dozen donuts fresh out of the fryer after work and then purge all of.

Too this day, when I see, smell or think about those donuts it brings me right back to that time in my life, a time I never hope to return to.

HOW DO YOU LET EVENTS EFFECT YOU?

I look back at these two times in my life and now I can make light of them because it seems so far in my past, and a time and place I never want to revisit, but they are burnt in my memory.

People often take events and carry them their whole life, which is natural. The real question is how do they affect the rest of your life. Do you let them weather you? Or break you? Neither is a heathy solution. Either you stop caring completely, or you let the fear overwhelm you and can't seem to face your "triggers" without feeling the original emotion.

Really, any event should be what it is, an event. Learn, grow realize who you don't want to be, or who you want to become, but don't let mistakes or judgement errors consume your life. This is something I am still working on. An event or tramatic event only has as much value as you give it.

Not to say that you may not have been hurt, or felt completely lost during the event but as we move on or away from that time, let that event's value stay in its own time. Otherwise the burdien will never be lightened and the event will always bogg your mind, thoughts and actions with the "what if's" and the idea that you can't handle it again.