Life began, not at birth but at rebirth.

For most of my life up until this point I was a self-proclaimed atheist with a resentment for God. I would often tell people “There is no God but if there is I hate him.” Growing up in churches I witnessed a lot of hypocrisy in Christians and well, the “God” they always preached about, how he loved everyone… I had never felt loved so why would I believe them? For me it was just a story I had to hear every Sunday in church.

Now I’m not normally a big dreamer, I go to sleep not much happens or if I do dream, I struggle to remember it and could barely tell you what it was about. However, this one night, in a dream, I woke up suddenly sat upright in my bed and looked out the window. It was the early hours of morning and up in the sky there was this light… a light so bright and the purest form of white, unlike anything I have ever seen. In the light was the figure of a man but I couldn’t see any details of him because it was like looking directly into the sun. Then he spoke, not out loud, but it was like he spoke straight into my mind and said “I am back, and you have missed out.” Then I woke up…

I laid in my bed, still dark outside, trying to make sense of what had just happened. It felt so real, like every detail of my room was there, the pounding in my chest was still there, even the words in my head were still echoing. Growing up in churches I knew of the scriptures talking about a moment like this.

Matthew 24:27- behold, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him…

Matthew 25:13 – for as the lightning comes from the east and shines as far as the west, so will be the coming of the son of man.

Matthew 24: 1-51-…and they will see the son of man coming in a cloud with power and great glory…

Revelation 22:12- therefore you also must be ready, for the son of man is coming at an hour you do not expect.

And that’s just a few. Even still, it was just a dream, right? so I brushed it off and tried to forget about it. A couple months went by and one day I needed fuel, being a single mum, I didn’t always have money to get through the fortnight. I knew I had a about enough in my bank to get a bit of fuel and something for dinner. At the register in the service station, I was lined up behind a lady whose card was declining, I peered over her shoulder to see how much it was and I had just enough to cover hers and mine. She seemed so stressed I felt bad for her. I stepped forward and offered to pay for it, the lady behind the counter gave me 10% off for my good deed and I felt pretty good about it but now I didn’t have much left for dinner.

I checked my bank thinking maybe I could just get something cheap for dinner, but when I did, my account still had money in it? the purchase of the fuel did go out but there was a deposit of almost the exact same amount straight after. The deposit was from Centrelink, but it wasn’t pay day and the description said “onetime bonus allowance” I’d never heard of that before?… Then I remembered the bible again…

Proverbs 19:17 – whoever is kind to the poor lends to the lord, and he will reward them for what they have done.

Philippians 4:8- give and it will be given to you…

I’m not the type of person who believes in coincidence, I believe everything happens for a reason, so now I was curious. I tagged along with my mum to a couple big churches, but I just got angry being there thought “All Christians are the same, what was I doing, I don’t believe this stuff and I don’t feel any better being there.”

Not long after I had a total break down, laying on my mums’ bed, bawling my eyes out about how disappointed I was with my life, that I was never going to amount to anything, that I would never have the thing I wanted most… a family of my own with a husband who loved me. She asked me to try one more church, a small one, with young pastors about my age. What else did I have to lose? so the next morning we did and what happened there would cement my belief that God is real forever…

The deepening abyss.

My ex and I were trying to make it work, after all we just had a beautiful little boy together, but newborns are a lot of work at the best of times and Eli… well he was more difficult than most. From relentless power chucking to blood curdling screaming, he never slept for more than 20 minutes at a time and demanded to be held, standing 24/7. How angry my ex would get at my little boy would infuriate me, and as Eli got older and began to get around, his carelessness endangered Eli on several occasions. While he was supposed to be watching him, I’d find Eli doing things like sucking on batteries or swinging a pair of scissors around. And then the time he got into my exs tobacco pouch and poured it all over his face and ingested some. made me feel like I had to be watching Eli constantly and couldn’t leave him alone with his own father, it was stressful and exhausting.

However, nothing compared to how he made me feel about myself. He spoke horribly about me to his co-workers, his friends, his family and to his ex before me. Made up lies about me to my friends and even made jokes about me being a racist to his entire indigenous family. He would gaslight me whenever I got upset and make me feel like it was my fault that he treated me that way. I let him break me down until I had no self-respect left for myself and succumbed to the fact that this would just be my life.

What it would take for me to actually say, enough is enough, was when his actions turned towards my parents. He screamed and cursed in my mothers’ face, threated to bash my dad and was stealing money from both of them. That was it! I let him walk all over me, but I could not handle him disrespecting my parents. Our relationship was over, but I was not free, I would have to continue to see him for Elis’ sake.

I felt so trapped, now a single mum, with so much hatred for my ex. The ever deafening lies from the voices in my head that my life had no potential, I would never amount to more than this and no one would ever love me with my ruined body from a 10-pound baby. The abyss of my depression was at its deepest, but I was a mother now… I could no longer numb my pain with sex, drugs and alcohol. I suffered in silence, fighting thoughts of ending it all. But Eli… his little face and the way he called me Mumma, his little hugs and watching him grow were the only things that kept me fighting so hard. Until, those thoughts turned to “what if I took him with me?” at least I wouldn’t be alone right?

Then one night I had a dream…

Some dreams shouldn’t come true.

My Ex and I had known each other most of our lives, our dads have been friends since they were young. He was my first crush, I used to make up excuses to tag along with dad so I could see him. Before he finished grade 12, he joined the army, so we didn’t see each other often but we stayed in touch and he was always the one I’d call when I was having problems. We would talk for hours on the phone and he would make me laugh, always knew how to cheer me up. After A. we would go drinking together when ever he was back in town and we would dance, it was our thing. People would come up to us all the time and say things like “aww you two are so cute together” or “I wish I had a connection with someone like that” yet we would always respond with “we’re just friends.” After I called off my engagement to M. He told me “I have loved you for years and thought I’d missed my chance.”

What a fairy-tale, my childhood crush professing his love for me, something I had only dreamed about happening, but I was resistant to take that step. My ex was a very dear friend, the one I turned to when times were hard, I didn’t want to lose that… besides, he had left the army by now, had no job, no license, no car and living with his mother, wasn’t exactly a “smart choice.” I put off my answer for weeks until I was given an ultimatum, either I go out with him or I’d never see him again… should have been my first warning sign, you shouldn’t be with someone who has to manipulate you into being with them in the first place. But foolish me thought well, if I’m going to lose him anyway, may as well give it a shot.

Once we took the dive into being together it was actually going really well. All loved up, it wasn’t long before my ex started saying things like “I’m going to make you my wife” and “I can’t wait to start a family with you.” Those comments turned into… “I know you’ll be my wife, we should just have a baby now.” Here I was, feeling like I am honestly in love, not just going through the motions, like I had in the past, and with my two greatest desires (to be a wife and a mother) dangling in front of me. Then 3 months later came 2 little pink lines… I had never felt joy like I did when I saw that I was pregnant, tears streamed down my face as I told him we were expecting. Unfortunately, that joy didn’t last long, everything, and I do mean everything changed and I do understand pregnancy is a hard time for both parties, but I was barely 3 months in when he decided to tell me “he had made a mistake” and “he wasn’t ready.”

After that, our relationship turned sour, arguments turned into screaming matches and he began using his size to stand over me and push me around. Then the verbal abuse started, name calling and putting me down. He once said “I would have to lose 10kgs before he could call me fat” and that was only the beginning, to go into detail of all the horrible things he said and did to me would take far too long to write all out to you. Every incident pushing me deeper into the quicksand of depression I had always been fighting to stay on top of. Once our son was born my ex had gotten a fly in, fly out job 2 weeks at a time and well… if he wasn’t around there wasn’t much to fight about. Things looked like they might be getting better, we got engaged and we were trying to make it work for our sons sake.

But this wouldn’t be my happy ending…

Better to have loved and lost, trust me!

So, there I was, grade 11… yet another new school. By this point I was well and truly over everything when I met this guy, lets call him A. He was new as well, he had just moved to Australia with his mum and oh boy, was he a tortured soul. 16 and already an alcoholic. We fell “in love” or so I thought, but this love was sick and twisted. The kind of love that is obsessive and dependent. Our relationship was toxic from the very beginning and just festered the longer it went on. He would hurt himself when I did to “punish me” but he would take it to extremes. In a weird way I have him to thank for the fact I stopped and never did it again because I hated seeing him do that to himself.

We would go to parties and drink or walk to his house on lunch breaks to drink… there was a lot of drinking going on, and every time we did, we would fight and I would get hurt. Halfway through grade 12 his mum decided to move back to where they lived before, taking A. with her and I thought I was going to die without him. I flew over to visit him, my first time on a plane, first overseas trip you would think I’d have more to say about it but honestly it’s all a bit of an incoherent blur. One night I do remember, we were at a party with all his friends, he got jealous over something I did, still not sure what it was but he demanded we go back to his house. Walking back, we got into an argument, and he hit me, pushed me down to the footpath and then just walked off and left me… I was in another country, no idea how to get back to his house just sat on the side of the road and cried. Not sure how much time had passed but he eventually came back to get me. I spent the rest of the night cleaning up his vomit. Charming right?

You would hope after that I’d wake up to myself and break this off and I’d like to say I was that smart but no. After graduation I got a unit of my own and A. came back to live with me. For a year I worked while he sat at home drinking, the fighting and abuse was almost constant until, one night we went to a birthday party for a friend of my sister. Same thing as always happened A. got so drunk and we started to fight. We took the fight out the front and he grabbed me by the arms and was trying to throw me onto the road. My sisters’ boyfriend at the time heard the commotion and came out to stop it. A. was in a rage trying to bottle him with an empty 1-liter vodka bottle and then… well let’s just say A. was sent home in a cab with a broken nose and eye socket. The days that followed my dad intervened and A. was sent home to his mother. We drove him to the airport, I said my goodbyes then I cried the whole way home.

That was it, he was gone, never to be heard from again. I missed him but at the same time felt a sense of freedom but now I was alone and had no one else’s alcohol to pay for besides my own. At one point I was working 3 jobs and still had no money left at the end of the weekend. Trying to fill that hole, that emptiness in my heart with anything and anyone I could.

I had a couple relationships after A. I didn’t actually love them I was just trying to make “smart choices” thinking they would be safe bets. There was C., who took longer in front of the mirror to get ready than I did. He told me he was, “sick of seeing me naked” then cheated on me with a girl I used to know. There was M., a nice guy, everyone loved him. He played his computer so much I felt more alone with him then I did on my own and I resented him for making him feel that way. It was like everything he did annoyed me and still… he proposed and I said yes. I think I said yes just because I wanted to be a wife and a mother more than anything. To have a family that loved me, a place where I belonged and well… at least this guy didn’t beat me and would never cheat on me, but I was miserable, and it didn’t take long for me to snap and break it off.

Then there was my last ex…

Started from the bottom, now we’re here…

Well… Here goes, my first blog post.

To begin with, I would really like you to see just how far I’ve come. In order to do that I need to be real and raw with you and start from the start.

I didn’t have a rough childhood in fact it was pretty average, faced challenges most people do in family life but I struggled with depression from a very young age. Since the 4th grade I had to see school counsellors for my depression and suicidal thoughts. We moved around a lot and I had quite a few different schools. I got bullied for anything and everything and was forever the new kid. Kids can be cruel and making friends is hard, one time I found a note in my desk that had been written from my group of so-called friends, saying… “everyone hates you and you should just go kill yourself.” Then they all signed it like they all agreed. Fighting off the thought that maybe they were right would then become a lifelong struggle.

After that incident I would spend lunchtimes at school, helping at the day-care centre attached to our school. I discovered the little kids didn’t care what I looked like or how I talked or that I wasn’t popular. They thought I was fun… they would hang off me and look forward to me coming to see them every lunch break. I believe that is where my love for kids started, their sweet and innocent hearts that don’t judge, they don’t care when you fail them, they love so unconditionally.

Finally, primary school was over and it was off to high school, grade 8 was like being bottom of the food chain again and all my problems just got worse. I was a straight A student but I began to hurt myself and getting messed up in the wrong crowds, soon began drinking and smoking even though I was only 14 and truth was I’d do anything to get some. There was this guy who hung around our school who was 18 and even though I had no feelings for him, he became my first boyfriend, solely because He’d pick me up from school, hand me a pack of cigarettes and 4 pack of Smirnoff and drop me off at work. Being with him was the first time I used someone for my own benefit and wouldn’t be the last.

The following year we moved again new school but this time something was different and it’s actually kind of a funny story…

I met this guy on msn (oh gosh… showing my age), who I just thought was absolutely gorgeous. My dad would say I, “may as well kiss the bonnet of his car” because he had that much metal in his face. We had neighbours down the road, these younger kids that I would hang out with. Their family was right into boxing. One day I couldn’t meet up with this guy because I was hanging out with them and “we were going to boxing training”. Reality was I just stood there and watched and mucked around a bit but he took it as I was actually a boxer doing training. Ha!.

Before we moved he told a friend that I would be going to the same school as her, that I was a boxer and she should watch out for me… So my first day at my new school, there she was saying in a big group, “does anyone know Tegan? she’s a boxer and I need to stay on her good side” I sat there and listened, thinking “Oh my gosh, how embarrassing. what do I do?” I sat there quietly and pretended not to hear her but word soon spread that I was “not to be messed with.” Turns out that this wasn’t such a bad rumour after all, I got to experience a year of schooling without bullying, it was easier and I had great friends, however it still didn’t make me feel any less empty inside or lessen the pain of my depression. I still tried to fill that whole inside my heart with boys… even girls, and drugs and alcohol.

Then…when I finished grade 10 we moved again