I will never Nanny again and here’s why

So like many in college I have worked off an on as a nanny for the last four years, nothing too crazy just babysitting regularly for a few different families. A few months ago I started working for a coworker of mine (I am a lifeguard as well). Everything was perfectly normal; super cute kids, husky puppy and paid well. The father and I were the ones who knew each other from the pool however we have only shared a few shifts and rarely spoke. The father was about 40, with the kids around 3 and 14, and a wife I have only met a few times.

Yesterday he asked me to watch the kids for a few hours while he was going to a guys night. Seemingly a normal request I agree to go over around 9 and plan to stay until about midnight or so. I arrive and find out that the wife is out of town on a business trip for the week but I don’t think anything of it. The night starts off uneventful. I put the little one to sleep, and the older son watches tv before bed.  Eventually the kids are asleep while the puppy and I lay on the couch in my sweatpants reading.

12 o’clock rolls around and the dad arrives back at the house obviously still intoxicated. I ask about his night while I gather my things and grab my jacket. He respond by saying he wants to make out with me. Continuing he goes on to say that he is attracted to me and if he didn’t have two kids he would try make out with me right then and complimenting my body. In a rush I gather my things and proceed to run out the door. I HAVE LOST MY FAITH IN HUMANITY!

No he was not aggressive, and no i didn’t feel threatened. But it was the matter of the fact that he hit on me. My coworker, and the father to the kids I watch blatantly hit on me with no regard to his wife or consideration of my emotions. You hear about the nanny and the dad getting together stories in my movies but I never thought I could be in the same situation. I refuse to return to the house and am absolutely pissed off that this is what the world has come to vowing never to babysit again.

To everyone reading this never ever hit on the nanny, it’s mortifying and unwelcome, also yes I will be telling his wife.

To My Future Husband

Dear future Husband/Wife…

I am not sure if I have met you yet but I already love you. I will be there with you and stand by your side through your darkest of days. We will celebrate our joys and avenge each others losses together. I can’t wait for the countless comfortable nights sleeping beside you, and the sleepy morning face of innocence that is heartmelting to wake up to. I want the type of relationship where there is no filter, no conversation that is off limits and no thought too random to be said aloud between us. I vow to be there for you through any mental disorder or medical emergency and fight for your health every step of the way. We may not always be close in distance but know that you are loved. I vow that one day I will love you unconditionally. You will never have to feel alone.

Until this all gets to be our reality you have to keep fighting. Fighting every day to continue living knowing that one day we will fight together. You are doing great at life and I am excited to show off all of your amazing accomplishments. You are a beautiful and kind human being. Keep going and live the life that makes you happy. When fate thinks we are ready we will find each other and then the next chapter will begin.

I love you already my dear future someone.

-confidenceiskey

An open letter about my depression

Dear people of social media,

As I scroll through my feed I smile looking at all of the graduation announcements, wedding photos, and baby birthday parties. But today it made me sit and look back at my last four years.

Year 1: I graduated high school and walked as one of the valedictorians with many scholarships to attend University , I then found myself walking down the aisle of my fathers funeral that winter.

Year 2: I was the head coach of a kids swim team, I got a tattoo, classes flew by, I kept myself as busy as possible.

Year 3: Depression and anxiety hit, my grades tanked, I stopped actively participating in life, I was miserable.

Year 4: I found help, tried 10 different medications along with counseling over the course of a semester, spent countless nights sick,and yet I am still more hopeful than ever before. No, I will not be graduting in the Spring but I will eventually. No, I am not a teacher yet but I will be eventually. No, I am not happy yet but I will eventually be.

These past few months have been hard but they were nothing compared to trying to handle this alone. Too many people hide from their mental illnesses due to the stigma that surrounds the topic. I am no longer one of those people. Thank you to everyone who has been there to help me particularly my mom, sister and *cheers* new brother in law. To everyone else out there that is struggling with depression, I want to tell you it is so much harder trying to go through this alone than it is to get help. I love you all!

-confidenceiskey

Ocean

All I can think about is going to the ocean right now. I don’t have to be back until Monday morning….I just want to sit by the ocean, bundled up in blankets, watching the water. Its seems calming and perfect right now. I just feel drawn to this enormous body of water. I wish I had a person that I could show up to their house, say we were going on an adventure and end up at the beach. This is what I want right now.

F*** this

Well it’s only 10:00am on Friday morning and I am so done with today. F*** everyone and everything. I am failing out of college, my depression is making me go crazy, the guy I am in love with wont talk to me and my car is back in the shop, F*** today. My country voted for an acceptable president and the system gave us a sexiest a**hat. I am a female in science who has been told “the education seminar is across the hall” when walking in to a classical mechanics of physics class. The car mechanic is a dipshit who ruined my car while at the same time speaking to me like I am a five year old. The front desk guy hits on me whenever I walk in.

Sometimes life likes to test us. Today I woke up, looked at my life and said “F*** all of you haters. F*** it all. I don’t give a F*** anymore about what people think” So I am going to lay in my bed, eat a god damn cinnamon roll and cuddle with my cat.

Happy F*cking Friday everyone!

My 21st Birthday

Well yesterday was my 21st birthday. It wasn’t what I was expecting at all. Going into this day I planned on going out at midnight with my best friend “J”, then having a lazy day and going out again on the night of my birthday with J for girls night, ending the night really drunk. Now here is how my birthday actually went….

My best friend canceled on the midnight plans at at 10pm saying she had a midterm the in the morning. Fine. I understand having a midterm but why make plans when you know this test is planned for the next morning? I then spend the night alone at home.

So fastforward to the night of my birthday….I am pregaming with my roommate, having a lovely time. J calls me and we plan on going out at 9 and that she would come to my house to get ready. At this point I am feeling really good and am ready for this night/celebration to start! I am not a drinker generally so about 2 shots will get me drunk. I try to text her and get silence from 7-9pm. At this point I am starting to worry, I don’t have a lot of friends and of the ones I do have none of the others are already 21. I shoot a text to her boyfriend really quick asking if she stopped over there on her way here. After about 15 more minutes of silence I get a text from him saying that they are dressed and on their way. She still has yet to respond to any of my calls or texts. I then get ready at my apartment alone and quickly so that we can go out when they arrive. It takes them an hour to get here. At first I don’t understand at all why the boyfriend is here other than to maybe be our dd for the night. Nope. She brought him as her date to my birthday and they are planning on getting hammered.

Skip ahead again to the first bar…its crowded, smelly and sticky. I don’t know many bars around here since I can only now go out, this was the joint choice of destination by J and her boyfriend. Now at this point I am starting to come down already from the pregame. My old roommate, who I do not like and is not 21, saunters into the bar. I tell J and her boyfriend that I want  to go somewhere else so of course they order us all 2 shots of tequila and beers first. I pound them right after another because I want to leave. They take their time sipping. I am drunk again now and starting to get annoyed. J and her boyfriend have spent the entire night so far playing kissy faces and the table is in silence ignoring the fact that I want to leave. I finish her beer, get up and leave. They follow in a rush asking why I left, again.

They have no other bars planned for the night and are walking like a mushy couple with me trailing behind them. I stop into a quieter bar with few people, a karaoke theme, and a cute bartender. It takes J and the boyfriend a good 5mintues to realize I am no longer following them. I am still pretty drunk from chugging that beer but I am also mad now. This was supposed to be my birthday, my girls night to get really drunk with my best friend and have a good night out. The bartender sees I am down and asks for my Id before realizing its my birthday and giving me a really good shot for free. Now these 2 stumble in behind me and are already trying to get the bartender to hook up with me. They each take 3 more shots, they are drunk and sloppy. I come back from the bathroom to them telling the bartender to give me his number and to take me out. He looks a bit embarrassed and I am mortified. I have serious anxiety so have people push a guy to be with me or push us in the same direction really can get to me. I have started to sober up at this point and want to go home. now. I tell J this and ask her what the plan is for getting home. She drove us in her car to the first bar. She just laughs me off. I have depression and it can make it hard for me to go out with people, to stay out for long amounts of time. J knows this. I am ready to go and they ignore that. So I sit in silence yet again as she and the boyfriend are sucking face next to me. Now, during this, the bartender has actually seemed to be a really nice guy and has gotten me water. He is standing at the corner of the bar near me trying to talk, seeing that the people I came with are ignoring the night. Pretty soon I am sober enough to drive, the bar tender politely gives me his number and I am ready to go. I pull the J and the boy apart for long enough to say I am going home now. They laugh and kiss. I walk out of the bar. A few minutes later they find me outside walking back. they come up to me stubbling drunk and say they want to stay out longer. At this point I don’t care, I take the keys to the car, the three of us pile in and drive back to my apartment. On my 21st birthday I am sober at the end of the night to dive home with two other drunk people making out in the back seat. Not how I saw this night going. I leave them in the car in the parking lot of my apartment complex and go inside with out another word.

So there you have it everyone, my 21st birthday.

New Moon and New Hope

As I sat on my couch and watched out the window this morning with my tea in hand I felt an odd sense of displacement. I have done this same morning routine for a while now. Routines where I just flow through my day with out really experiencing it. Some days even a routine is too hard for me to handle and I lay in bed with my thoughts racing through my head. As I sit on my couch again tonight and watch as the other college students are celebrating this Wednesday for some reason or another, all I can think about is the movie New Moon, the one from the twilight series. I never really understood or connected with the movie as much as I do sitting here right now. The day to day tasks might get done and some basic contact with the outside world occurs but ultimately its just you alone with your thoughts watching the seasons go by. Your peers in the beginning are trying their best to hold tight to your connection with reality but after a while their strength, their persistence fades and you start to drift. Your family doesn’t know how to help but they hate to see you in pain and hate even more to see you emotionless. The days get dark and sleepy but then there is a light in the distance. You meet a person, or reach out to a friend, or talk with a doctor. You finally get a glimmer, a whisper of hope. Hope that came when it was most needed in time. Thats the intriguing thing about time, this is all temporary. The emotions you feel, the thoughts you are having, they are temporary. So when as I am sitting on the couch in a dark moment I try to remember that this is temporary and that soon the hope will come back, doing that makes the day a little easier to handle.

I did it

Today I went to my college health center I was formally diagnosed with depression. I was not surprised but there is something so terrifying about having a doctor come in and confirm it. To be honest I broke down crying in the doctors office but they were all so sweet about my situation, my past and the fact that I was blubbering in the hallway. The stigma surrounding mental health is ridiculous. I walked in there today afraid of being called crazy or worse having them tell me that this was all just in my head. They were so helpful and kind. All of them from the front desk to the doctor himself seemed to genuinely care if I was okay. They spoke to me calmly and not as if I was a lunatic on the street, they realized that my emotions were real and I was heard. For those of you reading this I want you to know that its an overwhelming feeling knowing that I just took a huge step in getting better today. I have been fighting with depression and anxiety for over a year. So much so that I almost failed out of college after maintaining a 3.2gpa as a double science major. I am not proud of how long I struggled with this before I admitted to needing help. But I am glad that that day was today. Today I made a huge step. I am moving in the right direction of my goals and to finding even more happiness. Going and talking about my mental health was the best thing I could have done today.

I set up new goals for the remainder of the month and I am going to let all of you in on the secret of what they are. I will take my meds as directed. I will not use marijuana or alcohol until October first so I can see how my body is reacting. I will make it 75% of my classes and work. I will eat well and work out every day. It has been said that it takes 21 days to create a habit. I hope these are habits that I keep and goals that I achieve.

For those of you who read this posting and feel like you could benefit from talking with a medical professional, do it. All it takes is just one appointment. Your happiness is well worth it.

-Confidenceiskey2016

August 19

Alright people of the Internet today is the day!

Its only noon and I feel like I am on top of the world. I love good days. Most of you know how precious good days can be when life seems to be dark for a while. Today is the day! I enrolled in my fall semester classes, looked up my book list and paid tuition today. For me this is a huge step. If you had asked me even yesterday, what my fall plans were I would deflect the question. I was on the verge of dropping out and being kicked out of my university.But today is the day! I have kicked todays butt and its only noon. I am continuing with my college degree. I am starting my fourth year of college with hopefully only 2 more years to go. I realized though that no matter how long I take I will reach my goal of being a teacher. It might take me a little longer than most people and I might have a lot of struggles along the way but I will get there. I am crushing today.

So update on the rest of my life, Im sorry that i have been so flaky on here. Its hard to find the motivation to post on here when I don’t even feel like getting out of bed. I think I am going to find another job. I have only ever had lifeguarding jobs and I think its time to expand my horizons. I turn 21 here in a few months and would love to become a server or a bar back with hopes of eventually becoming a bartender. I think it would really help with my socialization that I struggle with due to anxiety. Plus you get to make tips from drunk people all night, who doesn’t love that? I am taking 5 classes this fall and will only be working as a lifeguard on the weekends so I think I can find the time to pick up another job. I find its best to keep busy int eh winter months or I will start to slip in to a deep depression again.

Time for the update on boys! I went on a date with Z again, the one from the wedding and picnic dates! It started off really well….we went and explored an old ghost town, got lunch, went for a walk by the river, got tea and finished it off with dinner at sunset out by a small lake where we were the only people. We went bak to his house after wards and I started to not feel well, so upon standing up to get dressed I proceeded to throw up red smoothie all over his white carpet. It looked like a crime scene. He handled it like a champ, cleaned it up super fast, and then took me home. He even called me, not texted called, me the next morning to make sure I was feeling better. He offered to bring me a the new Harry Potter book and a coffee. He seems like a keeper so far!

My best friend has been out of town for the week and out of cell phone service too so I have been a bit lonely but I think she will appreciate the daily phone calls of me just talking about random topics. She gets back on Sunday though so I think I will see her then and gossip for hours.

Well thats about it for the updates of whats going on in my life right now. Remember today is the day!

-confidenceiskey2016

August 10

Alright yall so today is Wednesday and I am conflicted with my emotions today. I work up at Z’s house (the one that I have gone on multiple dates with) but he seemed off this morning. I think he is starting to pick up on the vibe that I dont want to actually have an exclusive relationship at this point in my life. I dont think that I can be open and have a life with another person before I start to live mine. Ideally out of this situation with Z I just want someone to hangout with and have a good time with, no drama, no possibility of getting hurt.

I go home to my Mom’s house tomorrow and am staying there for a few days. I have such bad anxiety about going back. I dont want to have to see everyone that I grew up with . I dont want to have to lie about doing great in college when I am struggling every day. I grew up in a small town where everyone knew every detail of your life. I am expected to go to church on Sunday with the whole family, this is always my least favorite part of having to go home. I hate the looks of pity and judgement from the other people there. I have been told that I should be struck by lightning before after not attending for a year.

Well I am going to off and take a nap I think. Maybe I will wake up in a different mood….

-ConfidenceIsKey2016