A Year of Endless Possibilities

It's New Year's Eve again, and as we say goodbye to 2014 and hello to 2015, it is tradition to look back and see what we would like to do differently in the year to come.

There are many wishes for the new year that are traditional for all people: things they would like to happen, material things they would like to have, and weight they would like to lose. These three things are part of most people's New Year's Resolutions.

Personally, I would like to finish school this summer as planned, with Honors; I would like to be able to have a decent job when I graduate; and I'd like to lose about 100 pounds.

That's all well and good, and they are good goals, but aren't there other things that are just as well-deserving of our time, if not more so?

Why don't we make our New Year's Resolution this year to help ourselves succeed. This doesn't mean that the resolutions listed above don't matter, but rather that this year we will encourage ourselves in a way that no one else can.

WE are the ones that make the resolutions happen, and if deep down we don't feel we deserve that good job or that vacation, it's not going to happen. If you are a human being, you deserve the best things in life.

Things happen. Sometimes they're bad. Sometimes they're good. Sometimes people are in the right place and the right time. Or the right place at the wrong time, Or the wrong place at the right time. Or the wrong place at the wrong time. People make mistakes. People do bad things. People fall off the path to what they deserve. But the path can be found again.

This isn't the spot where I tell you to praise the Lord because He can heal all hurts. This is the spot where I tell you that your circumstances are not who you are. You can change your circumstances to make sure that you can be who you want to be.

This is also not the spot where I tell you that if you try hard enough you can make anything happen, because that simply is not true. But if you search hard enough, you can find resources and people that can help you make whatever that anything may be become a realistic and achievable goal. Some of it is the right place at the right time, but a lot of it is knowing who to ask.

When I was very, very sick with my mental illness, I was in and out of the hospital many times. The doctors started telling my mom that I may need to be placed in a nursing home where I could get constant care. They also thought that I could benefit from a specific therapy offered at a local mental health center, Dialectical Behavioral Therapy. They signed me up, and I went to the classes. Not much of it stuck, but as part of taking the classes, I got a therapist with the center. When things got desperate and I had to check myself in to the state hospital for what would become a 41-day stay, my therapist told my mom and I to tell the hospital staff that I wanted to get in to the transitional living program at the mental health center when I was discharged. Those two months of DBT and that therapist telling me to ask for the TLP program changed my life forever.

The people in the TLP program taught me how to do something I didn't know how to do anymore: be a human being. They taught me how to care for myself again, how to feed myself proper meals, how to interact with people, how to care for my own home, how to help myself when I was sick, how to help myself through a manic episode or depressive episode or anxiety or panic attack. I did enough therapy every week to fill a part-time job. I did talk therapy individually and in group therapy, art therapy, meditation skills, several passes through DBT, learning to fix things around the house, goal setting, budgeting skills, positive thinking, and groups that were purely social where we would watch a movie, have dinner, and play games.

I connected with a lot of people that I will remember for the rest of my life, and had experiences that changed me forever. The people at that mental health center made me human again, able to live life as a normal person.

If I had not gotten into that program, I would have been placed in a nursing home with inadequate care, shuffling around while heavily sedated and not caring about anything with no hope of it getting better. I would likely be long dead by now, with many people left grieving for me and the life I could have had.

The life I'm living now. The life I got because I knew what to ask for to get what I wanted.

You can want anything in the world for yourself, and the only person holding you back is you.

Make 2015 the year when that anything becomes possible.

I raise my glass to all of you, and all your possibilities.

Cheers!

"Group of Party People -  Men and Women" by stockimages