Anyways, so in High School I had my few close friends that were female, but I felt mostly comfortable with the guys, or the other girls like me. If and when I did have a boyfriend in high school, it seemed like there was always a female trying to ruin it. Even with my male friends, it seemed like any girlfriends they had tried to keep me away. This is what created my dislike for other females and untrusting attitude. As you guessed, this attitude followed me on throughout my life. Making friends with females was very hard for me, up until the past year or so. Even when I was talking with them, I always had that thought in the back of my head that I couldn’t trust them, that they were going to be just like the ones I went to school with.
After high school, I didn’t know what I was going to do with my life. I had my name on the waiting list at Cypress College for the mortuary science courses, but the list was a 3 year wait. I didn’t want to sit and take crap classes until then (I had to stay enrolled the entire time I was on the list or I would have been taken off the list). During that time, I wanted to leave. I wanted see other places and experience different things, so, I went and joined the United States Air Force. I bet you weren’t expecting that, huh? Well, I did…and I even convinced my two best friends at the time to join as well. I left in February of 1999. Got to Lackland Airforce Base and quickly realized that my recruiter, parents and grandparents were right, Wickers just aren’t cut out for the military. We don’t take direction very well from authority figures, bet you never saw that coming from someone with pink hair and claims Anarchy.
I was there for all of 3 weeks before getting sent to the medical flight and being sent home. No I didn’t serve years, but I am so thankful every day that I didn’t. I am much happier with the path my life took. I can tell you now that everything does happen for a reason, even when we don’t know the reason at the time. My life’s path was meant to go how it did, so that I could be where I am today. So, from that point, I continued friendships with many of my sisters and brothers from Basic Training. As of today, I only talk to one, but it’s nice to have someone that understands what it was like and understands how difficult it is to come back halfway through when you weren’t ever built back up mentally from the mental breakdown and mind fucks. It was hard, it was a fight to get myself to normalcy, which took me up until probably about last year when I finally met my Beachbody family. Those days were very difficult, hearing people tell me that I couldn’t “hack” it, that I must not have been strong enough, not knowing that all the while I was crying myself to sleep because they made me feel smaller and more worthless than I already did. Seeing my two best friends leave and move onto their service, hurt me that much more. It just proved to me that I was weak and couldn’t do it. The mental crap I went through, I dealt with alone, never told anyone about and how I felt.
Still to this day I’m very sensitive to any snarky comments about those days. People may see me as weak, but I know that I am the one that built myself back up mentally, I didn’t need the military to do that for me. I am much stronger than I knew back them, which then turned me towards drinking. As soon as I turned 21, I went overboard, EVERY NIGHT drinking until I would black out. Many times I would wake up in the morning next to my toilet, not knowing how I got there. These days got even harder when I met my then boyfriend that was in the Army. He unfortunately was stationed on the other side of the country, so we hardly ever saw one another. It was very difficult for me to deal with, and we didn’t last, but we continued with an on and off relationship for years. It was very difficult for me to let him go, since he was there for me through the loss of my grandmother, and he was very supportive and talked me through a lot.
This time in my life was a blur, filled with lots of drinking and bars. I worked, but as soon as I got home I got ready to go out and would stay out until the bars closed. The next day I would get up and attempt to function at work as if I were sober and not still drunk from the night before. Those days were crazy, but I’m glad I got them out of my life then. I remember not caring about my own life. It didn’t seem as though it mattered if I lived or died, I felt that no one would notice anyway. I had no boyfriend/husband or any children to worry about and I often felt as though I was just a burden to my family. Then I met a guy online. At that time, I had no idea what simply sending a message to this stranger would do. Little did I know that this meeting of this guy would change my life forever.
So we met, didn’t know each other for more than a few months and low and behold, I found out I was pregnant. This was a scary time for me, both of us actually. There was a lot going on in my head during this time and the last thing I needed was to have any negative talk from people. My mental place was not necessarily the best, no matter how I tried to play it off, I was not complete, I was not okay. In order to test out how my parents would react I went to parents of friends and close family friends first to see how they would react. I obviously got some pretty positive responses so I called my mom from work on my lunch break. I had my cousin by my side and bag in the trunk of my car in case I needed to go stay with her for a while. Turns out, her response was not what I was fearing. She accepted my decision to have the child, even if I had to do it alone (at that time I didn’t know how it would end). Well, we pulled through that pregnancy, moved into together, had the child and lived our life to the best that we could. We struggled a lot financially and emotionally in our relationship. We were trying to get to know one another while also raising a child together, not the easiest thing to do.
During this time, I didn’t have a very big support system. People turned their backs on me because they had no clue what was really going on in my life. They had no clue the things I was dealing with or what was happening to me. Some people even turned their backs on me because I was no longer the party girl that bought everyone’s drinks or drove everyone around. That was really hard, but I did learn a lot during that time. I dealt with massive stress from my personal life and my work life. We struggled more than anyone will know on all levels. I was working a full-time job while still trying to take hair clients at night with my child tagging along. Jeff was going to school full-time, and even tried to work full-time while continuing with school. We busted it just too barely get by. That stress eventually caused me to suffer from severe anxiety and panic disorder. Now, I didn’t like to admit it, and I’m still weird about it, but I was depressed as well. I hardly smiled or laughed during those days. I remember nights when Jeff was gone at school. I would lay in our bed with our baby hugging her and just crying my eyes out. I felt like I completely failed this child, like I made the wrong choice, like she would have been better off without me.
We got married when our child was 2, and we continued the struggle. We had another child 2 years after we got married and our 3rd the following year. You would think that things got better, but they stayed difficult. My mental state was not what it should be, my family deserved so much more from me, but I didn’t have it in me to give. I was miserable, and not because of my family or what was really going on in my life, but because I was still holding onto everything from my past. Everything I had chose to do, everything that others had chose to do or say to me, pretty much everything bad or negative that had happened. This created more depression to set it and for me to feel as though I had lost my identity. I had no clue who I was or what I wanted in life anymore. I shut myself out, my real self, the Alina that was spiritual, that was fun, that laughed, and that enjoyed life and people. I hardly left my house, and when I had to, I would have massive panic attacks while pretending things were okay. I constantly was unhappy and mean, I purposely pulled myself away from people and wouldn’t allow new people to get close to me. I hated me! I hated what I had become. I hated all the choices I had made, I regretted so many things that I could not change.
This caused me to take a leap and sign up to start school in 2011. This was the start to helping get back to me, but it then added more stress. The positives of being in school were that it helped me to feel as though I had something that I was doing for myself. Something to help me feel like me again, not so much like an invisible waste of space. I slowly started to work on myself, getting back to my spiritual work, but having trouble finding time to focus on me. Then in 2013 I met my coach. I fought her tooth and nail on becoming a coach on her team, but I finally gave in in February 2014. This time was a crucial time for me. I was not as negative and bitter as I once had been, but I was still very bitter at life and didn’t view people as being good. The world was evil to me, all people were stupid and just used others to get what they wanted. This made it difficult for me trust anyone fully, but I gave in, trusted her and went with it.
So far, I feel that I have made the biggest changes since being with Beachbody. I feel that I have a large support system now. I have people that care about me no matter where I came from or the paths I took in my life. This company encourages us to work on ourselves in all aspects, not just physically. This ran side by side with my schooling, helping to understand so much. I had to fix me on all levels to really truly me healthy. My mental and emotional will follow along with my physical as long as I work for it and really want it. I slowly became more positive and started hearing close friends of mine telling about how they see a huge change in my attitude. They have no idea how much I have really change.
I can’t say that it was only Beachbody, but this company and my team helped to open my eyes to what I needed to do to get where I wanted to be, but it would not have EVER been done without the support of my husband that used to be that stranger from online. That person that I met on a whim, with no expectations. The man that I didn’t realize would change my life forever! My true saving grace was my unexpected pregnancy that came when I needed it most. She was named Phoenix for many reasons, but mostly because she was our bird that helped up rise from the ashes of who we were when we first met. I have so much support at home, my family cheers me on daily with my schooling and Beachbody. I know they truly believe in me, they keep me pushing to continue to be the person I am today and to continue to work on being better than I was yesterday.
If you feel like you are trapped in a place that you cannot escape, please reach out to someone. If you feel you have no one that cares, you are wrong. There are definitely more people out there that care about and you and only want to see you happy than not. If you are afraid to reach out to those you know, you are always welcome to reach out to me. My goal in life is to save as many people as possible from themselves and their internal hell that others don’t notice. To help people to reach the light at the end of the tunnel that they don’t feel is for them, only for other people. People that don’t want to continue, but don’t have it in them to quite give up either. If you feel that you are ready to seriously make changes, let me help you. I want to help you be the person you are meant to be. Together we can do it!