Howdy! My name is Ari Gromatka, and there’s a lot to know about me, so let’s get to it! Firstly, I’m a 21 year old female who suffered from constant trauma as a child. This in turn has made my adult life extraordinarily difficult. For example, I found myself with many lingering mental health symptoms that impacted my day to day life and sense of identity.
Because of this, I found myself in a rather awkward situation. I felt I had no sense of self, I lacked care for myself and saw absolutely no worth in living. I saw others around me were able to enjoy life to the fullest, all while I sat in my room and wondered why I was even alive.
This was a very difficult time in my life, so difficult I had turned to alcohol just to feel something, anything. It didn’t matter to me that I could ruin my body, it didn’t matter that I felt horrible the next day, it didn’t matter to me that I started neglecting myself. All I wanted was to feel happy.
As you’ve probably guessed, this didn’t really work out so well for me. I ended up constantly making a fool of myself, and quite frankly, I ended up feeling way worse in the end.
I had stopped caring for myself, unfortunately in ways that seriously gross me out now. I didn’t shower, clean up after myself, sleep, or even eat. I ended up feeling worse than ever.
One day it all changed for me, I’m unsure of whether it was due to lack of sleep or pure psychosis but, I ended up having a bit of a crisis. I had thought the world hated me and it was out to get me personally. Because of this, I shut everyone out. My family was left in the dark and they just thought I needed space. After all, they did know my full history.
This only fed into my delusion. I would start to have full conversations with myself, and not for the good:
“See that, they don’t care at all. They’re out there having a blast all while you’re sitting in here suffering!”
I felt this was the end and I didn’t want to be in this world anymore, not while it treated me so poorly. I felt there was only one way out. And so I did the unthinkable, and failed.
After that, I knew I needed help. If I was ever going to be happy, I would need to do it alive. And so, I looked into an IRTS facility. They would help me develop skills to better myself and to help manage these seemingly unmanageable symptoms.
At first, it didn’t feel like anything was changing. I felt so stuck, as if I’d never get better. This crushed me to my very being, and me being the harsh critic I am, told me “It’s because you don’t deserve to be happy.”
This of course isn’t true. It’s not true for anyone who thinks this.
As I went on through treatment however, I started finding myself being a bit more cheerful, a little more outgoing, a tad confident, and best of all, I found I was starting to enjoy life.
It was such an exhilarating feeling, nothing like i’d ever felt before. What was happening? Is this some kind of witchcraft?
It was not, it turns out those skills I wrote off as being “completely useless” ended up not being so useless. I started tracking when I did any of these skills, whether they be grounding skills or coping skills. I would keep a journal to determine how much I was using my newly found techniques, and to my surprise, it turned out I was using most of them without even realizing it!
I was shocked, those skills actually worked?!? This is so wild! I would’ve never believed in these skills if I hadn’t just witnessed their use. And this left me thinking, I know a ton of other people who had the same mindset of those skills, what can I do to help them? How can I help others the way I wanted to be helped?
Then it came to me…. Literally, a worker from the IRTS whom I shared my daily journal with said I should start a blog. I wasn’t so sure at first, would I be able to keep up? Do I have what it takes? Will people even get anything out of this?
The answer is actually very simple when you think about it. I don’t need to overthink it, just do, in the end you did what you thought you couldn’t, and that being said, I may have helped at least one person with my writing, and that’s good enough for me.
So dear reader, welcome to my blog, let’s have a journey like no other!
