Heart Topics: Is Suicide Selfish?

Greetings to any and all who stumble upon this blog article.

This is the first in a series. "Heart Topics" are, in short, any blog posts I write on a topic close to my heart - animal rights, depression, LGBTQ rights, womens' rights, pro-life topics, the effects of porn, etc.

As you may be able to guess... these topics and some others are very personal to me. This means they can sometimes trigger negative memories and emotions, or at the very least, cause me considerable pain.

I tell you this so that you know - it takes great effort for me to write on such things. But I will write, for people need to hear about them. All I ask is that you treat any and all of my Heart Topics with respect when commenting on them.

Now that that is out of the way... we move on to my first Heart Topic.

Suicide. Or, rather, whether or not it is selfish.

As with most aspects of life, this is not black or white. There is no clear-cut answer: no 'yes, it is selfish' and no 'of course it isn't'. It is far, far more complex.

Do I believe suicide is selfish?

Well, I believe it is about as much as I believe all apples are rotten.

(Hint: that's not much.)

Just as not all apples are bad apples, not all suicide cases were because of selfish choices. In fact, eight out of ten people who commit suicide do so because of other people. Observe the following thoughts:

"Everyone will be better off without me."

"If I do this, my parents/spouse will have more money for debts and bills."

"At least now my failures in life won't upset Mom and make her cry."

"I won't be able to constantly upset my friends anymore. I could never help them anyway - like this, they have the ability to go find someone else, someone who can help them."

I can promise you that those thoughts and ones just like them are what goes through a person's mind when they consider suicide.

Why?

Because I have seriously considered it more than once. I've sent out the goodbye notes and had plans to end everything. I never did succeed.

But I can say with complete certainty that my thoughts were not centered on myself - some of them may have been, but the majority revolved around other people.

How much better their lives would be, how many things that would be set right when I was gone... always other people in my mind.

Was I correct? Probably not, on most counts.

I may have been wrong - but I was not being selfish. The definition of selfish is 'concerned excessively or exclusively with oneself'. Which I was not - I had a few thoughts for myself, of course; one of them being, "The pain will finally be gone". But the rest of my thoughts were excessively about other people.

That means that - if I had succeeded - my choice to commit suicide would not have been considered selfish by the dictionary definition of the word.

Neither would the suicides of any person who had felt and thought the same as I did in my situation.

If a soldier kills himself or allows himself to be killed for the greater good of his comrades and his country, he would be considered a hero for 'doing what he had to do for the sake of all'.

When a person ends their own life, often they are doing the same thing - trying to do what they feel is best for the greater good of those they know.

Are they correct? No. But the pain, the feeling of being lost and drowning, make it so that they believe that ending their life is the best thing to do. They are no more selfish than the soldier is - the only difference is that one's mind is clouded by pain, and they are believing something that isn't true.

It is not logical... but it is definitely not selfish either.

Now... can suicide be selfish in some cases? Yes. Sometimes, a person commits suicide and is only thinking of themselves. How to end their pain, why they deserve death, etc. I do admit that.

But I'm going to give anyone who immediately wants to announce to the world, "That was selfish and wrong!" a quick lesson in something called empathy.

I know how hard it is for those of you who have never been truly depressed to understand. Trust me, I do know. When you've never been that low, never been drowning in the dark and lost, unable to find a meaning to anything...

It is only too hard to understand how it feels and the motives behind what happened. Sometimes, it is impossible to figure out the exact motive.

That never - never - gives you cause to be callous and proclaim to anyone who will listen about how selfish and wrong and disgusting a person is for... simply trying to end the agony in the only way they knew how.

My mother's cat died from kidney disease. In her last weeks, she was in agony. Finally, my mother made the decision to euthanise her - to end her suffering instead of prolonging it.

Elderly folk in many places have a choice - if they are getting sicker, and in a lot of pain, they can ask to be 'put down' in a peaceful manner so that they no longer have to suffer.

Why, then, is it so much more 'selfish' and 'cowardly' for another sufferer to try to end the pain in the only way they can think of? Yes, it is wrong, but one who has been in their shoes cannot blame them for it. We can grieve, but knowing the pain they were in, it is impossible to condemn them for their choice.

They were only doing what animals and the elderly have a legal right to do. It isn't logical, yet it is nearly no different, but for the stigma around it.

Not only that, but you never know who might be reading your posts or listening in on your conversations at the store. A severely depressed person may come across something you said about the horrible wrongness of suicide.

The resulting emotions you give them may have disastrous effects.

When Robin Williams committed suicide, and I found out, I was heartbroken and devastated. I still am - I was crying over it the other day. He was the man who did everything for everyone else, and gave them joy... but was going through so much pain, he could never do the same for himself.

Someone on Facebook spoke harshly against the people mourning the loss of the bright soul who had lit up their lives for so long - implying that those who mourned him were foolish. In the comments, more people started to talk about how selfish a choice it had been, and how Robin Williams would surely end up in Hell.

I saw this. I took part in an attempt to explain things to them, as did several others who understood.

I have depression. It was so much worse at that point, because someone I had looked up to had been struggling for years with the same thoughts and feelings I did - and had, the night before, lost his battle with the agony.

And because those feelings of pain were so much more intense for me at such a time, the words those people spoke were a personal blow. I found myself, yet again, suicidal as well.

I wasn't planning on doing anything - 'being suicidal' means that one wishes to die, and may even entertain thoughts of it - but does not plan on going through with it. And I was wishing for death then.

Why? Because I felt like a disgusting human being - I struggled with depression, and I had so many times thought of suicide... and here, I was seeing implications that that made me a bad person, selfish, horrid, and that if I ever made such a mistake, I would end up in eternal damnation.

Do you know what that does to a hurting soul?

I wept the rest of the night, mainly for Robin, but also because of the pain I was going through.

The point I'm trying to make with that anecdote is... you must be empathetic. You must be loving. You must be gentle, and kind, and understanding.

Because you never know who might hear your words. You never know who might feel your words are validating how they already feel - worthless, horrid, and hopeless. You never know who might make the ultimate decision to end it too, solely because they feel from your words that it's true - they don't deserve life and they are horrible for having a medical condition they cannot change.

The bottom line is - even if suicide is done for selfish reasons, shouting it to the world and acting in such a way (without compassion and understanding), is very wrong. You will dig a knife into the wounds of people already hurting from the loss, and possibly cause pain to others.

When something like this happens, offer condolences and reach out to the family and friends who lost their loved one. Pray. Post comforting words.

Do not condemn or judge or make assumptions about how selfish the person was, when you do not know the whole story.

In conclusion to the question - is suicide selfish? - my answer is that it's complicated. It is not black and white. Sometimes people will commit suicide for themselves and not for the perceived good of others. (Most times, as I said, however, it is for the perceived good of others.)

Even if something does seem selfish, it may not be.

Even if it truly is, being callous and uncaring about the gravity of such a situation... is wrong.

And that's all I really have to say on the matter for now. I may write a follow-up in the future.

God bless,
~ Theodora Ashcraft

The Negative Effects of my Addiction

Some of you might remember my confession, earlier this year. I posted it on my blog because I felt it needed to be out in the open. You can find it here.

I'm back to talk about the same subject - porn - using personal examples. But this time, I'm not going to be confessing things. In this article, I want to talk to all of you about some negative effects porn has had on me and my life, personally.

I'm going to attempt to keep this article organised, but I may ramble - I hope the message gets across regardless.

Now, I will most likely not be using Bible verses to prove my points in this particular article. My focus for this is to show you how porn has negatively affected me and the people around me - some of the things may sound selfish, and certain people might feel the urge to say 'well, if such-and-such was negatively affected, it was the person's fault and they need to man up'.

Please ignore the urge to say that. I am listing all the things that suffer when one is addicted to the things I am, in an attempt to show people that it really does change things. This takes a lot of effort to write, and I do hope that people will respect that.

That said, we'll get on with it.

One thing that is negatively affected by questionable online activity is trust. Trust is impacted, big-time, believe me on that.

My mother doesn't trust me on the internet. Heck, I've proven to myself that I don't trust me on the internet. But that's just one aspect. She doesn't trust me alone with males much anymore either - she thinks that my online activity might leak into my real-life interaction. I don't think it would... but her trust in me is severely limited because of my addiction.

Because of what I've done, my mother doesn't trust me with technology or with guys as easily as she used to. And she has every reason not to trust me - I acted in a way differently than who she thought I was, and I wasn't honest with her from the beginning about what I was doing. Four years, I kept silent and hid it.

Four years. Letting it fester. I would think I had stopped, but then I would start back up again. I stayed away from it for about a year - though my mind often strayed - but then a friend died from a heart attack and the sudden plummet of grief and anger sent me back to what I had thought I had gotten rid of.

Four years of hiding the truth and letting people think I was a perfectly innocent teenage girl.

I finally confessed. And I lost trust. That is one consequence of lying, in general - not just about this, but about anything. If you lie, you inevitably lose the trust of others. You don't always lose their love and respect - but you do lose their trust. And it often takes a long time to rebuild that.

It doesn't even lose you solely the trust of non-strugglers... it can lose you the trust of other strugglers as well.

Someone I love struggles with it. I only recently found out. They hadn't been honest with me about it. And yes, I stopped trusting them with certain things. One day I was highly emotional about it and, since they're older and stronger than I am, I went into breakdown mode - when they tried to hug me, I pulled a knife on them.

I didn't hurt them. It was just to scare them off.

But what I'm saying is that, even though I'm a struggler, I can't trust as easily either. Do I still love them? Yes... oh, yes. God knows I do. And I do trust them not to hurt me, most of the time.

I can't trust them as I did before though. And that not only hurts me, it hurts them too.

Losing someone's trust usually hurts everyone involved, depending on whether they feel remorseful or care about you at all; which is nearly always the case in my personal experience so far.

Another negative effect that such an addiction has had on me is guilt. The guilt is always present - sometimes stronger, sometimes weaker, but always present.

When someone shows they don't trust me as much as they used to, the guilt is there - because I failed. I failed everyone, including myself.

The guilt about what I've done is always there, usually when I get urges to go there again, or when I'm reminded of the past by others. There are triggers for memories and the guilt is usually worse then as well.

Guilt really messes up your life too, in an emotional way.

The most prominent thing guilt has done to my emotions is convince me that I should never get married. I still think that. I'm too much of a mess, and who knows whether or when I'll backslide. And anyway, I've made so many mistakes, any man that I could trust deserves far better.

Do I believe that? Yes, I do. The guilt solidified those thoughts and I cannot believe any different.

Guilt will almost certainly change your perceptions of yourself; you'll beat yourself up about things that have happened and passed. You'll most likely consider yourself a less important person than others, and you'll have a hard time believing people when they tell you differently.

Everything about porn will make it hard for you to enter a relationship most likely, but guilt will possibly be one of the hardest things of all. If you ever even allow yourself to enter a relationship in the first place, you will constantly think - subconsciously or not - that you do not deserve this man or woman, even if they do accept you've made mistakes and love you anyway. You won't believe them when they say they forgive you and love you no matter what.

Guilt makes it nigh impossible to be in a decent relationship because you will never believe it's real, or that you deserve it. Guilt makes it impossible to love yourself again, if you ever did before - I had a hard time of it even before the guilt factored in.

A third thing porn negatively affects is your friendships.

Look, your friends most likely love you. They did before, and most of them will probably still love you afterwards.

But the sad fact is, they will no longer trust you as much as they did. Sometimes they may lose their respect for you.

This did happen to me. The majority of my friends still loved me unconditionally - they did not at all condone what I had done, nor did they like it. But they continued to love me.

There were a few who lost all respect for me - and rightfully so, I have to admit - and decided they no longer wanted to be friends with me. Yes, I was called quite a manner of things by a few people; disgusting, a liar, impure, a whore, etc.

Were they right on some counts? Almost certainly. Did it hurt any less? No, it didn't.

All that to say - your friendships very well may be impacted by this, negatively or not. You won't lose all your friends; there will always be a few who will forgive and love. But even your relationship with them will change somewhat.

Perhaps where you once mentored them with a problem, they now have to mentor you with yours. Perhaps they still love you but can't trust you as much now. Perhaps they need to stop talking to you quite as much until they finish mulling everything over.


Your friendships will be affected. Oftentimes negatively in someway or another. But this does not mean you'll lose all of them. Some, maybe. All, no. Just know that there will be negative effects on your relationships with friends and family alike.

Another thing that will be negatively affected is your faith. Now, as I am a Christian, this will be focused on that - though there's no saying it can't be applied to the religion of whoever is specifically reading this.

I'm not saying you'll just all of a sudden give up on your faith - you might, but you might not. I'm saying that your relationship with God and the Bible will be strained.

You'll stop praying, you'll stop going to church, you'll stop reading your Bible...

Part of this is the guilt factor - and in my case, most of it was the guilt factor. I felt that I was unworthy of love and forgiveness. And, since the Bible's foundation is love and forgiveness, I found it highly difficult to believe or accept. As a result, I stopped praying, because I got the impression somewhere that because I had messed up so badly, God would not listen.

I've managed to break myself of that guilt-induced haze, but I still have a long way to go. If I hadn't fallen into the addiction I did, it would almost certainly be easier for me.

Being addicted to these things messes with your faith, because it's so hard for you - guilt-ridden, depressed, feeling like you're undeserving of anything - to accept what the Bible's very foundation was built upon; love, forgiveness, and salvation.

--/\--

I'm sure there are other negative effects that I've forgotten, or that I didn't experience - these are just a few.

But it's very clear that... believe me... porn does have a bad effect on your life. If not your life personally, on the lives of those you care about.

If you struggle with it, please, try to stop. It's not worth it. Trust me on that. If you need someone to talk to, to hold you accountable, or just to listen, I'm always available. You can find my contact information here. I will get back to you as soon as I possibly can.

If you have struggled with this addiction in the past, and have advice to share, I ask you to consider shooting me an email about it; you could even write a guest post, if you so desired. I would be ever so grateful.

To everyone, just remember - there is a way out. There is always another chance. There is hope.

God bless,
Theodora Ashcraft

A Letter To K.

I'm not going to use your name, before you start to get angry about me spreading your name and reputation all over the internet. You know that this is addressed to you. And I know you'll see it. I know you follow this blog and keep an eye on it so that you can find whatever you can about me and what's going on in my life - you wouldn't have found my personal email address otherwise.

So now that the fact you know this is addressed to you, and the fact that I know you can see it, have been established, I'm going to move on.

I would just send you an email, but as you've probably figured out... I've blocked you everywhere, now. I left you the ability to send Facebook messages in the hopes that that quirky guitarist was still somewhere inside; that he'd come back, and the new version of you would be gone, and we could go back to being friends.

It didn't happen. I gave you many, many chances. And I just cannot handle the messages of harrassment any longer.

You say you care about me, and that you hope I'm doing well.

And then you turn around and send me photographs that are designed to trigger me and make me want to hurt myself.

Do you really think I can believe you when you say you care? Real friends show respect, concern, and politeness. They don't get angry and send hurtful messages, guilt trips, and images designed to give nightmares.

Since you never seemed to want to hear my side of things without going into long, several-page rants, I want you to at least take the time to listen now.

I blocked you because you were speaking inappropriately to me, refusing to give me any peace, saying cruel things about my other friends, and basically harassing me.

It is not appropriate to insist on starting arguments about religion and politics with people you know disagree with you, and refuse to just drop it when they say they'd rather not discuss it - and when they try to end the subject themselves, it is not appropriate to get upset and guilt-trip them/send them pages-long messages stating how you feel on the subject.

It is not appropriate to take the words I've said about my closest friends (how much I appreciate them, how they've helped me, how much I look up to them, how much I care about them, etc.), and insult them outright in emails that sometimes span fifteen pages long. It is not appropriate to call the people I hold most dear to my heart 'power-hungry snakes' and to say that I worship them, that they're my owners, that they have control over my mind, solely because I appreciate their opinions, value their thoughts, and - horror of horrors - actually agree with them on many points.

It is not appropriate to see a blog article a girl writes confessing her struggles with porn, and then go talk to her in chat about it to say that she 'shouldn't feel guilty' and that you had considered or still wanted to 'teach her about it'. I don't know if you realise how creepy and wrong that sounds, but trust me, it does.

It is not appropriate to come to a girl's house after they have explicitly told you that you can't. Lack of warning isn't an excuse. Even if it was, if the girl tells you nearly a week in advance you cannot come over, you have plenty of time to call off any plans you may have formulated.

And another thing... when all of this, plus insults and hurtful words to my beliefs and a mutual friend's beliefs, causes us to block you for our own sanity... it is most certainly not appropriate to send them death threats when your attempts to guilt-trip them into friending you back don't work.

Am I a bad friend for not having time to let you come over very often for nearly a year? Maybe I am.

But look. I turned 15. I entered college. At the same time as high school. My time became severely limited. It wasn't like I decided to completely cut you out of my life but went around visiting other people behind your back. You thought I did when you saw photos of me visiting with friends in Seattle this March, and got really upset.

Here's the deal. They were and are some of my closest friends. I got to spend maybe two hours with them that day; I was meeting two of them in person for the first time, and seeing another of them again for the first time in six months. So yeah; I did take some time off from school to visit with friends that I rarely, if ever, see. You spent a year or more getting to visit with me once every month or every two months. You had no right to get upset because I decided to take a few hours out of my day to spend with friends that weren't you.

Am I a bad friend for starting to chat to you less online before I blocked you? Maybe I am.

But when I came to dread coming online in the evenings because I knew I would find pages-long rants on what I believe, how I live, who my friends are and how awful you think they are... I just did not want to talk to you, because you would expect me to respond to those rants when all I wanted to do was forget them.

When I never knew what would be waiting for me on Skype or in my inbox - whether it would be more verbal abuse towards my friends or my religion, or another inappropriate comment on my addictions - of course I began to dread messaging you.

Am I a bad friend for not telling you exactly how I felt, and for oftentimes not explaining to you why various things you did or said bothered me? Maybe I am.

But I knew you wouldn't listen. Both me and our mutual friend tried telling you over and over and over again to please stop saying and doing stuff, but you refused. I knew you wouldn't stop doing things, so I stopped asking.

I rarely tell anyone exactly how I feel and what my emotions are. I only tell people I completely trust, and there are only a handful of people I do trust with everything. Even less now, because time and time again, people prove they can't be trusted.

After the dramatic disaster in 2012 due to making the wrong friends, my trust in people was lowered considerably. I apologise for not trusting you, but quite honestly, I knew that if it was something to do with my religion or my beliefs that I was having trouble with, you wouldn't be able to focus past that to help me - you'd only be able to rant about them.

Am I a bad friend for blocking you? Maybe I am.

But I needed to in order to protect my already fragile sanity and emotions. I am dealing with college homework and crazy emotions I've never felt before. I'm trying to get back into writing, and I'm spending as much time as possible with people I've sworn to protect, comfort, and try to help. I'm trying to figure out what to do with my life, because I've tried to push reality away for so long, I find myself nearly 18 and completely uncertain about where I'm headed, what I want to do, what is going to happen to me, and whether I can handle whatever life throws at me.

I did not and do not have the energy or the strength to have to wake up every day terrified of what rants, guilt-trips, or innuendos were awaiting me online.

Even after I blocked you, you could not respect my wishes. You railed at our mutual friend about it, managed to work in a few more jabs at my friends, and then sent me guilt-trip after guilt-trip by whatever means you could.

And then you sent me and our mutual friend death threats.

You fell silent for a while, until you found out that you could still send me messages on Facebook. You would claim to care about me and miss me... and then make jabs about people, or jabs at how I was a bad person.

I put up with it, still hoping beyond hope that the quiet, musical guy I met at the lake would come back, and I wouldn't have to worry about... this new person I didn't recognise.

It never happened. And a few nights ago, you sent me a picture - whether it was photomanipulated or not, I don't know, but it doesn't matter - of a person who had cut the words 'I'm fine' into their arm with a knife, and told me that I should make that my avatar.

That was the last blow. I was online late, and I already find myself paralyzed by fear most nights. But that message set me to shaking and I couldn't stop. Talking to some of my brothers helped comfort me, but it didn't help completely.

I feel worthless and guilty about my own existence enough as it is. I don't need you trying to reinforce the guilt and the fear.

I blocked you there. So I'm writing you a message here. Because like I said, I know you watch this blog.

You know something else? I did research. What you've said to me and our mutual friend could land you in prison for five to ten years if you actually meant them - harrassment and death threats. You could also receive a heavy fine. Think on that for a second.

And I have one last thing to say before I close.

I won't be adding you back until you show me in some way that you've changed and that you aren't only trying to manipulate my emotions.

My entire life and my entire emotional structure have been messed-up because of your threats and your words and your stopping by my house when I told you not to, like some real-life stalker.

Because I was already scared of leaving the house, but now I'm terrified, because I have no idea whether your threats were real and whether you're lurking in the bushes somewhere. I'm terrified in the mornings to go outside without a rock in the hand because I'm afraid you're going to appear from around the corner and attack me.

Because I can't even turn my back to people anymore. I go to the post office and I have to edge awkwardly along the counter because I can't bear to turn my back to the people behind me. I go on walks alone and I can't stop looking over my shoulder. I spend the afternoon with one of my best friends, and I can't even sit down at the table to eat until I have my back to the wall.

Because I can hardly trust any of my friends anymore except for the few closest ones, all due to the fact that someone I once thought was a friend suddenly started to treat me the way you did.

I already had anxiety disorders before all this happened. Now I'm point-blank terrified if I try to leave the safety of my house. I don't want to be left at home alone because I'm afraid you'll randomly show up.

I have nightmares about you showing up to make good on your death threats. Nightmares where I'm trying to hide but you get into the house anyway and the people, whether friends or police, that I called, to beg for help and ask them to come over, don't arrive in time.

I feel the need to carry around rocks and knives in my pockets because I don't know who might try to sneak up behind me.

I regret not knowing how to shoot a gun. I regret not remembering half of the stuff I learned in my martial arts class years ago.

Do I believe you'll do something? Maybe. But mostly, my irrational anxiety has turned into full-blown, irrational fear to do anything without someone I trust by my side. Because I was threatened, manipulated. My emotions were ignored. My thoughts, beliefs, and feelings were put down as wrong. Someone I thought was a friend disregarded my wishes and came by my house without permission, invading my personal space multiple times.

This is why I cannot and will not friend you again. Not until I've heard you've changed.

And even if you do change, please know that it's going to take a long, long time for me to trust you again. I've been betrayed and manipulated too many times, and the way you acted and the things you said were the things that made me snap. I'm completely broken and shaken-up, and feel as though I cannot trust anyone. I have tons of friends and acquaintances - I only fully trust seven now. And only three of them are guys.

Please keep all of this in mind and think about it instead of just throwing it out as me being overly-dramatic, ridiculous, or stupid again. Because it took a lot to write this letter to you and have to post it on my blog where everyone can see it. I wouldn't have done so, if I actually had an outlet I hadn't blocked you from in which to send it.

Please actually consider my words important for once.

And please think about them. That's all I ask. I'm not telling you to change or do anything against your will. I'm just telling you why I did what I did and asking you not to put it off as stupidity like you used to when we argued about everything under the sun. If you respond, I probably won't reply, because I need time to try to mend, to get rid of all the emotions brought on from what I personally consider as traumatic, whether others do or not.

Thank you in advance. I sincerely hope you're doing well.

Regards,

Theodora Ashcraft

A Confession

I want to say something before I continue—certain readers, especially those of you who are younger, might do well to proceed with caution. I don’t go into explicit detail about anything, but the following subjects might not be something some people should be reading. If something said starts to make you uncomfortable, definitely stop reading if that is what you think you must do.

~~

It was a fairly ordinary day when it started. I think I had recently turned thirteen. I was browsing YouTube. It started out as an innocent search for something-or-other (I no longer remember what), but the videos in the sidebar, the ones I continued to click on, began to get considerably less innocent.

I kept going. Something was pulling at me; and while a part of me knew that my mom would be very upset if she saw me, another part of me… wanted to keep going. And I did.

At first, it was just YouTube clips and videos. But then it progressed to other websites.  I began actively searching things out, sneaking onto the computer late at night when I wasn’t supposed to, simply so I could proceed with my dealings in secret.

Well, there’s the premise. Here’s the main point of this blog post in one simple statement:

I was, and still am (though to a lesser extent), a porn addict. Another lust-based addiction developed some time after that addiction began.

Those of you who are squeamish probably want to stop reading here. As I said, I don’t go into explicit detail, but I do go into the very basics. 

I regret to inform you that this isn’t a blog article with a happy ending—not yet. I’m still struggling, and I’m still giving in. I haven’t found healing or redemption yet.

That’s not what the point of this blog article is. The point is to confess, because this has been festering inside my mind for nearly four long years. Judge me if you will; and I’m sure some people are going to drop contact with me. But this needs to be put out there, if only because a select few that I can think of deserve to know the truth.

I didn’t tell anyone for two and a half years. The WiFi I used (sneaking onto the neighbour’s) stopped working after about six months, and since the only other internet access was in sight of others during the day, my little secret stopped.

So I had two reasons for not telling anyone—one, I had ‘stopped’ and I wouldn’t ever do it again (or so my childish mind told me), and two… porn addiction was a guy thing. After all, society said so, right? If only guys had this problem, what might happen if I, a girl, were to admit I had the same problem? I thought I must be the only girl in the world like this; something was seriously wrong with me, it had to be!

Well… I did do it again. It started, I believe (I’m not totally certain), right after one of my favourite singers and a friend of mine, George Donaldson, passed away.

You all heard about that somehow, I’m sure (most of you probably heard of it from me). Call me stupid, but the death of that man broke me beyond imagining. My entire life twisted upside-down along with my shattered heart—I became furious with God, and basically defied Him, turned away from Him.

And, I suppose, my subconscious turned back to my poison for solace—porn.

A vicious circle was put into motion. I would spend a few days indulging in my particular poison, and then I would sink into guilt. I would go a short while without looking at any inappropriate images or videos… and then it would start up all over again.

Around this time, another lust-based addiction surfaced. I hate the word, so I won’t use it—but basically, this was an addiction to self-stimulation, because it felt good. Yes, I know. I think it’s disgusting too, but I still do it. It’s a fight to stop at this point.

About a month after George’s death, the guilt and pain got to the point I started to do something I never thought I’d do—cutting.

I never went and I have not gone too deep—my knives are too dull for that. But I have gone deep enough and drawn enough blood to leave scars. I now spend most days, even the hot ones, wearing hoodies or long-sleeved shirts to hide my arms.

Well, at some point—I don’t remember exactly when; the last few months are a bit of a blur—I joined what is essentially an online dating site.

Most, if not all, of you know what roleplaying is; those actions written within asterisks, *like so*. The things I roleplayed while on that dating site started off small, but ended up too hideous for me to put here. The one good thing that came from that is that the guilt and shame I felt after the last roleplay session was so strong, I—with my mentor and my adoptive mama urging me to—left that site.

The viewing of inappropriate content continued, though.

Anyway… I’ve stopped looking at online content. For now. The other addiction of self-gratification continues. Am I trying to stop? Well… I’m trying to avoid the online content altogether. The other addictions (the one I mentioned above, as well as self-harm) will come later. One step at a time.

In case anyone is wondering, no, I haven’t turned back to God yet. I’m confused, and still angry with Him, for various reasons. I’ve tried to go back to Him, I really have—I just can’t yet, I guess.

So… that’s the real me. Or, rather, one aspect of me I hide behind my daily mask. I’m an often-suicidal porn addict with various mental disorders, people. That’s the only way to put it. And I’m the last person most people would have expected to turn out this way. A lot of people call me things like ‘innocent’ or ‘sweet’, or tell me they see the light of Christ in me, or that they’re proud of me.

When I hear that, I want to scream or cry or hurt myself or something. Because nothing is further from the truth. Nothing. Then again, it’s what I wanted people to believe—the mask I wanted them to see as real.

Why did I write this? Because I needed to confess (I’m just now deciding to tell my mom, for goodness’ sake), and besides that, a few people I know who will read this—especially new friends, and old ones who have known me for a long time—deserve to know the truth. And now they do. I’m just… well, like I said above. Just an often-suicidal porn addict with various mental disorders.

I won’t fault anyone if they drop contact with me, so if you feel the need to, or your parents tell you to, then do so. I won’t get upset; I completely understand. And those of you who decide to stay in contact… I will never understand you people, but I can’t say that I’m disappointed that you did decide to stay.

Until next time,

Theodora Ashcraft

The 'Road To Reality' Challenge

I’m back again, doing another challenge put forth by God's Country Boy  This one is called ‘The Road To Reality’. You can find more information at that post I just linked you to; that’s your best bet, really, because I’m no good at explaining it.

(And in case anyone is wondering, yes, that is me behind the bandanna and the camo.)

…beginnings. Can’t live with them and can’t live without them… give me a few minutes to stare at this laptop screen o’ mine and figure out how to start this.

In retrospect, this post is kind of rambling, and probably a bit confusing. My apologies. I'll try and smooth it out as best I can.

~

The farthest back I can remember… I don’t quite know how old I was, but as long as I can remember, I loved animals. My favorite books and movies were the ones in which the animals could talk—The Lion King and Balto movie franchises were pretty much my life for years. The first things I read were Calvin and Hobbes comics from my library, because I loved the fact that Hobbes was a talking stuffed tiger. My everyday activities had to do with animals. I collected stuffed animals and named them things like Mufasa, Kovu, and Balto. My mom would put together animal puzzles and nail them onto my bedroom wall…

Behold, the two animated animals that were my life for years.

But looking back, there was one aspect of my animal obsession that continued to carry on throughout my life, and still does.

When I was young, I didn’t just obsess over animals (I admit, I was rather proud when, at the age of six, I knew what an okapi was at San Diego Zoo but no one else did…)—I also pretended to be animals.

Yes, yes, I know, most kids do that. But I did it excessively. For almost three years, I would randomly just throw back my head and howl like a wolf. For three years, my mom would be cooking or reading to my little brother, and then all of a sudden she’d hear a random howl coming from the other end of the house.

It drove her bonkers, needless to say. Not to mention it scared people.

But then, fortunately for all of them, I stopped randomly howling. Of course, this meant I took up hissing like a cat instead, but that was a little more bearable. Except when I’d hiss at my mom when she gave me an order I didn’t like (such as ‘stop watching TV’)—that didn’t go down so well.

I’d spend hours roaming the house on all fours, imitating the gait of the lions I saw in National Geographic videos. My favorite television show (if it could be called that) was Really Wild Animals—starring an animated Earth named Spin.

That spinning globe is my childhood incarnate, practically.

What I’m trying to get at with all of this, is—even back then, I wanted to be something I wasn’t.

It wasn’t just a silly child’s mentality. That may have been part of it, but not all of it—I was unhappy with myself, even then, even though it was subconsciously. I didn’t want to be Teddy. I wanted to be Simba, or Balto. I wanted to go on adventures and talk with animals. I wanted to wander vast forests and trek through frozen wastelands. I wasn’t happy with where I was, what I was doing, or who I was—it just seemed so much more exciting to be a wolf or a cat.

That’s not all. Remember in the last post, I said I am and was always scared? Well, besides crying in my mom’s arms, there was only one thing I could do back then to cope.

I would talk to my stuffed animals. And they talked back, at least for me. I spent hours, late into the night, conversing with my stuffed animals and telling them stories.

This wasn’t a childish fantasy, not entirely. I was borderline obsessive. If anyone told me my stuffed animals were fake, I would literally fly off the handle and start screaming at them that they were lying. If my brother went anywhere near my room, I had to watch to make sure he didn’t touch my animals. And if he did (and he often did; he liked to throw all of my stuffed animals down the stairs to upset me), I would tackle him. Literally. We’d wrestle and kick and generally just scuffle until Mom broke us apart (and there you see my irrational temper pop up).

I actually believed these animals were real. Mind you, this wasn’t just me at five. It was me at six, and seven, and eight, and nine, and ten—all the way until I was twelve. And I think you’ll all agree that twelve-year-olds know that stuffed animals don’t talk and they’re not real.

Well. I didn’t. I lived in a world of my own, a dreamworld where animals could talk, where they could understand me, and at night I could go across the railroad tracks and visit other worlds through a portal.

At around this time, I discovered something wonderful—writing.

I learned how to use a pen and paper, and suddenly, I had a way to let my wild imagination free—in the form of writing fiction stories.

This didn’t help me get out of my dreamworld. If anything, it made it worse. But it was fun, and it only became more of a part of me as time went on. By the time I was ten, I had written my first completed story—an Indiana Jones fanfiction for the 2008 NaNoWriMo.

I kept writing, and writing. By the time I was twelve, I knew for sure I wanted to be a writer.

However, though my writing could be considered a ‘good thing’, my bad thing—an unhappiness with who I was—only got worse as time progressed. When I was ten, my mom let me and my brother watch The Frisco Kid, a Western movie with Harrison Ford in it.

Ten year old Teddy was positively captivated and put up quite a fight when she had to go to bed, even though she got to finish the movie the next night.

But the shoot-outs and the horseback riding and the careless, sarcastic attitude of Tommy (Harrison Ford’s cowboy character) had me completely enthralled.

Out of curiosity, I asked my mom the name of the actor who had played the cowboy. She told me. When I told the neighbor boy (who had just moved in and loved cowboys and stuff) who the actor was, he exclaimed that that was the same actor who played in both Indiana Jones and Star Wars.

Well, that did it. He had been telling me I needed to see those movies for forever, and now I begged my mom to let me. She gave in to Star Wars quite easily.

After seeing those movies, I fell into another dreamworld of sorts. I was, as one might expect, obsessed with Han Solo. For a good year, I was Han Solo. I had an imaginary Wookiee who followed me around my house, and I would bound up and down the stairs shooting down imaginary Stormtroopers with my blaster.

Unfortunately, these movies were not teaching me how to respect my parents. As a result of wishing I was Han Solo, I also got cocky. I strutted around, being sarcastic and giving my parents a pretty bad attitude.

I didn’t mean to be a bad kid. I just thought, “Well, Han Solo is so cool, and he has all these fun adventures; I wanna be like him!” And I was like him, but that doesn’t make him or me a good person.

I also had lightsaber duels with my brother, but that was just because I liked to swordfight. I was a Han Solo kid; not a Jedi kid.

I think my life really turned upside down when I watched the Indiana Jones movies though.

(Bear with me here; I’m getting to the point, I promise.)

My mom, when the fourth movie was about to come out in theatres, relented and bought the three-movie set from the store so that I could watch it. She previewed it first, checked for ‘bad stuff’, and sat with me so she could fastforward the aforementioned bad stuff.

I was hooked.

From then until I was fourteen, I was obsessed with Indiana Jones. This was when I became completely unhappy with who I was (not that I was my own person to begin with, what with all the wishing I was Han Solo or a wolf).

At first, it was small. I bought things from the thrift store to make myself an Indiana Jones costume (complete with a fedora I bought off eBay), at first, and I’d go out in my backyard and pretend I was fighting Nazis for hours.

But then I started to refuse to wear anything feminine. I put up a huge fight whenever Mom tried to get me to wear a dress or a skirt. It progressed to the point where I refused to wear anything except jeans and boys’ shirts.

Then when I was about eleven, after much begging and whining, Mom agreed to let me cut my hair short. As in, crew cut short. Indiana Jones short.

Me and my brother; me as Indy and my brother as Neo from the Matrix movies.

By this time, it was clear to her (and later on to me) that I was very unhappy with being ‘me’. I wanted to be someone else. I wanted to be a boy for quite a long time, actually. Because I wanted adventure, and in the movies, the guys were the ones who got to go on all the adventures.

This thirst for adventure and excitement… it got me into trouble.

I would mouth off and taunt the older kids who walked alongside the railroad tracks during the summer. And you wanna know what they did when I taunted them? They threw rocks and shot BB guns.

Instead of being scared, I was completely oblivious to the fact I could get hurt (I was still scared, but about all of the wrong things—ghosts and goblins—not the fact I could get myself killed razzing teenagers).

I remember the first time it happened. These teenagers started throwing rocks in my direction when I was out playing with the neighbor kids and my brother. I was wearing—what else?—my Indiana Jones costume.

Instead of running for the house, I sensed a chance for ‘adventure’ (also known as, ‘stupidity’), and ran straight towards these teenagers. I hid behind a log where the rocks couldn’t get me. They bounced off the log right above my head but didn’t hit.

When the teenagers paused, I popped up and just gave them this cocky grin. They saw my fedora and khaki shirt, and one incredulously burst out, “Who do you think you are, Indiana Jones?”

This made me so insanely happy, it’s not even funny. I was absolutely thrilled; I thought I was finally getting somewhere (don’t ask why, I can’t remember why). My response? A very enthusiastic, “Yes!”

They kept throwing rocks. My friend from next door, Matt, came running down and hid with me behind the log, exclaiming, “What are you doing?!”

I didn’t even have any regard for his safety. I just sat there behind the log, grinning like an idiot.

Eventually, my dog went and saved the day. Nobody’s going to stick around for long with a German Shepherd running at them—even if the German Shepherd just wants to play.

It didn’t end here.

My obsession with adventure kept me getting into trouble long after I was ten and eleven. I got shot at several times by teenagers on the railroad tracks. Rocks thrown at me more times than I can count. One time, I ran down to the tracks to meet these teenagers who had been throwing stuff at me—me and my trusty wooden staff, which I actually had no idea how to use but was planning on fighting with anyway.

These teenage boys were extremely close to beating the tar out of me. I was saved by my brother, who came running down with a walkie-talkie, through which my mom was screaming bloody murder, horrified that I was in trouble. I was embarrassed, and arrogantly told the teenage boys, “This isn’t over!” before going into the house and getting a sound thrashing from my mom.

Oh, and there was the time I instigated a fight of sorts with a twenty-one-year-old guy at the park. That was a pretty stupid thing to do. He was throwing pinecones at my brother’s friend. So I started ‘threateningly’ towards this adult guy with my wooden katana (sword). The guy took my challenge. Me, my brother, and my brother’s friend all tried to overpower the guy who had hold of my arm and probably would have thrown me in the lake if my brother hadn’t been kicking him. My Tae Kwon Do classes were apparently doing nothing for my self-defense skills. (In the end, my mom had to save the day by shouting at us to knock it off, and that we were leaving the park.)

So yes—I wanted adventure, and I was willing to pull any manner of stupid stunts or get into any sort of trouble to get it.

And yes, there were Tae Kwon Do classes. We needed to do 'P.E' for school, so my mom enrolled us in a Tae Kwon Do class.

I had a lot of fun there; I may not have learned any good self-defense mechanisms, or if I did, they won't be helpful. I met a few people who I thought were friends and they weren't, long story short.

One thing I did learn though was the concept of respect. Our instructors (we had two; one taught on Monday, and the other on Wednesday), Master Kim and Instructor Morgan, required specific gestures of respect. We were to address them as 'sir' at all times, and we were to bow entering and exiting the building, as well as at the end of all sparring matches.

The whole 'sir' thing might not seem like a new concept to some of you, but to me and my brother it was. We were used to addressing everyone by their first names; my mom never really taught us to use 'sir' and 'ma'am'. After we left Tae Kwon Do, though, the addressing of adults as 'sir' and 'ma'am' stuck with me, and I attempt to remember to use those terms as required.

After I turned about thirteen, I mellowed out a bit. Part of this was because my mom stopped taking me places as often, because school made us busier. Part of it was also because the recklessness I felt started to fade away as I realized something—I loved life, and if I wasn’t careful, I could lose it very easily.

Right after I turned thirteen, something else happened. My mom found this swordfighting group called the Youth Rangers of Gondor, and took me there.

Me, my brother, and a few friends at a Youth Rangers of Gondor meeting.

I think it helped curb my obsession with dressing up in costume and imitating movie characters quite a bit. Once a week (or once every few weeks usually, depending on how often my mom was able to drive me there), I would get to dress up in costume, pick up a sword (made of rather tough foam though, so it wouldn't actually hurt anyone; same with all the other swords), and head off to a wooded area of the park near a lake and swordfight other people.

For several years, the meetings of the Youth Rangers of Gondor was one of the main things I looked forward to. I met several friends there, all of whom have mostly moved on, except for one.

The Youth Rangers of Gondor taught me a few things. The one thing that stood out the most was that, at those meetings... I wasn't afraid to be myself, or to be as silly and dramatic as I wanted to be. That's what the meetings were for. For children and teenagers to roleplay as knights or ninja. I didn't need to be afraid of being judged, because everyone else there was just as crazy as me. In fact, I made a lot of people laugh many times because I wasn't afraid to do crazy stuff.

Well, at this point I still had the trouble of trying to pretend I was someone I wasn't. It was mostly mannerisms now; there was one television show character who used to cross his arms and raise both eyebrows in a sort of careless way. I subconsciously imitated that, until my mom put a stop to it.

Anyway. This is where all of that stuff about me wishing I was someone I'm not ends. I mean, it was still there, but there's not much to say about it.

I became obsessed with pirates at around this time. So I changed from being Murtagh at the Youth Rangers meetings to being Captain Jack (a spin-off of both Jack Sparrow, and my own novel character Jack Renegade).

Me dressed up as Jack Renegade from my novella-thing, "Sangre: The Phantom's Lair"

As a result of this, I wrote a... I don't know if it was a novella or a novel, but it was something or other... about pirates. It was the first thing I had actually finished since 2009's Indiana Jones fanfiction. I was very happy with it, and took advantage of NaNoWriMo's CreateSpace offer to self-publish it.

I was very happy about that then. Now I look back and wonder how I could have inflicted a writing so horrible onto Amazon. And I mean that jokingly; kind of. It definitely could use a lot of work, I realize now, though.

Anyway, that, on the plus side, made me write more often. I participated in several NaNoWriMo competitions after that. The Camp NaNo in 2011 (in which I wrote the first book of a fantasy trilogy that ended up having to be completely redone), the NaNoWriMo in 2011, and the NaNoWriMo in 2012. I finished books for the first two; I didn't quite manage to finish anything in 2012.

After I turned fourteen, I became painfully aware that the world is a much darker place than I had originally thought.

I met some people on the YWP side of the NaNoWriMo site. I made some friends; good friends, I thought at the time. I was wrong, but we'll go into that later.

There was... in a very short summary... lots of drama last year. That's the short version. What really changed my view on things was the fact that one of my friends struggled with self-harm and thoughts of suicide.

Now, at the time, I thought two of my friends did. As it turns out, the other friend was lying to me.

Anyway, this was my first real knowledge of the concept of suicide. I had heard the word before, and I knew what it meant - I had never really thought seriously about it though. I thought it was a rare occurrence, like wars or natural disasters (which I know realize aren't exactly that rare anyway). I think my mom wanted it to stay that way, in an attempt to protect me.

I cried a lot last year. My anxiety became much worse, as a terrifying realization came to me - these friends of mine lived very far away, and if they were going to hurt themselves, or something happened to them... I wouldn't be able to help, and I might never even find out what had happened.

So that anxiety was always eating away at the back of my mind, like some sort of insect. I spent many nights lying awake worrying.

Something good happened last year though. It came about by typical teenage dramatic circumstances, but that didn't mean it wasn't good.

I finally stopped trying to pretend I was a boy. I finally allowed my mom to make me dress up in more feminine clothes and I started to let my hair grow out long. If my comment about teenage drama in the previous paragraph didn't clue you in, this sudden change was because of a crush. Which I'm not going into, because it's not important and it'd bore people to tears anyway.

Anyway, that was probably the one good thing that came of all the insanity last year.

I was changed last year. I became more pessimistic, more anxious... and I learned a hard lesson, one that taught me not to trust people so easily and freely.

One of my friends had been lying to me for several months last year about anything and everything. She wasn't really a friend at all; not a good one. Our relationship was nothing but harmful to me. But I refused to believe the people who told me to cut off the friendship.

I always have and probably always will stand up for my friends when others speak bad about them; in this case, I was simply standing up for the wrong person, and believing that she was telling the truth.

Anyway, I didn't get any sense knocked into me until about August of that year. I don't think I would have stopped talking to her even then, because I'm not strong enough for that - but I didn't seem to have a choice, as she stopped talking to me herself. I still don't know why, and it bothered me then, but now I'm just glad.

So, that left me with the other two friends, whom I was certain were actual friends. As it turns out, only one of them was willing to stick by my side. She and I still talk.

Anyway, by September, I'd lost yet another friend. He left because I apparently made his depression worse. I understand that, but what hurt the most was that he couldn't tell me himself. He told my other friend, and she told me. And then he cut off contact with her as well.

So we both helped each other (and are technically still helping each other) get over losing one of our best friends in that way.

But after that... I was afraid to trust. I still am. Whereas I used to trust so freely, I know have a hard time trusting. Sure, I love all of my friends; but sometimes, I can't help but fret and worry about whether they're being honest, or whether they're going to just up and leave.

That's the interesting thing about this lesson on trust I learned. I still trust very easily; I become friends with someone mere hours after meeting them. It's after I have known them for a few days that the trust issue begins to kick in, and I start to wonder and fret: what if I've made a mistake in becoming friends with this person? What if they're not who they say they are? What if they end up leaving too?

Sad to say, that worrying never completely goes away. Every friend I have... I still worry about the trust I've placed in them. For people like my brother, this wouldn't be a problem. But for me, it is. I came up with a reason that I think is valid for that.

Each person I become friends with... I entrust a little piece of my heart to them, and there's a special place in my heart for each of my friends and family members where I mentally and emotionally keep them.

So, the fear of being betrayed, or of losing them... part of it is because I don't want to lose them, yes. But another part of it is that I know all too well that if I do lose them, whether because they leave or because they were taken from me, it would hurt more than I can fathom.

Anyway... not much else has happened worth noting since then.

How have those things made me who I am now?

I'm not sure. I'm still the insecure kid who somehow manages to long for adventure and excitement, and yet, at the same time, is terrified of change. I'm the same. I'm still the five-year-old who wanted to be a wolf; I'm still the ten-year-old who obsessed over Indiana Jones; I'm still the reckless twelve-year-old who didn't know when to stop; and I'm still the fourteen-year-old who realized how dark the world was and spent hours a night crying.

I've changed, and yet, somehow, I haven't.

All of those things are still lurking somewhere inside me. I still feel that way sometimes. Sometimes I still wish I was a wolf. Sometimes I still do reckless things. And sometimes, I still spend hours a night crying, even though things aren't as crazy as they were when I was fourteen.

Things are still happening, and I'll continue changing, but the younger versions of me will always still be here.

And yet, I've learned a lot about myself and the world around me.

I've learned I can make a difference, even if it doesn't seem like it. Sometimes all it takes is a kind word to keep a friend from going over the edge.

I've learned that even though I can feel devastatingly lonely sometimes, I'm never truly alone.

I've learned that, somewhere inside, the little girl who wishes she was someone else and pretends to be something she's not is still there. She still comes out sometimes, as much as I try to keep her locked away. I still pretend to be someone I'm not.

I've learned that I'm stronger than I give myself credit for.

I've learned that the world is a dark place, and it's not going to change right away. But, to quote Samwise Gamgee, "There is still some good in this world... and it's worth fighting for."

And I've learned and am still learning that I have to surrender all to Jesus. I can't get through any of this on my own; only with His help. He can get me through it. Sometimes it's hard to believe that He's there with you every step of the way. But He is, and He always will be.

God bless.

~Theodora