When I was in my senior year of high school, I had gone through a rough patch where my world basically felt like it was crumbling down on me. I had just gotten out of an emotionally abusive relationship and I withdrew myself from a nursing class after thinking for years that that was what I was going to do for the rest of my life with no other backup plan. I was hurting-- and I was embarrassed that I gave up on a goal that I had talked about for so long. I withdrew from some of my friends because I was either too embarrassed to explain or too upset to want to talk about it. So I made a new friend group. And this group basically acted like they understood me and everything I was going through. Every day I would hang out with them and they were the people who made things feel okay every now and then when most of the time, I felt like I was at a dead-end in my life.

Until they weren't anymore.

I'm not really sure when it happened. Maybe it was when I was starting to find myself again and I started to drop the facade of being a reckless human being that didn't care about making mistakes. Maybe it was when I was focused on moving forward to make it to college that I stopped thinking about the consequences of my actions in the last few days of high school. I don't know what it was. All I know is then, my friends weren't my friends, and everything that I felt and did led to them claiming I was "victimizing" myself.

Obviously throughout life, everyone is going to run into conflict or problems. I clearly did in that year. Things were difficult and I couldn't figure out my emotions or myself in general. But being invalidated suddenly made my quest to push myself forward even more difficult. The thing with me was that I told those people about everything going on all the time because I trusted them. I never even told anyone else most of the things that I told them. I was just more open with them than most people and I guess they couldn't handle that. Suddenly I was "victimizing" myself? I was being told that I was blaming everything around me for my problems and that I wasn't taking responsibility for the things happening in my life. But these were genuinely situations that I could not control. I didn't know I was going to get emotionally abused in a relationship. I didn't know that I was going to be diagnosed with depression and it was all happening to me psychologically. I didn't know that I would drop nursing and that it wouldn't be a fit for me.

But that didn't matter anyway because the fact that I let them invalidate me and how I felt-- I should have never let that get to me. You have the right to feel what you feel. You have the right to have emotions. You have the right to express yourself in anyway you please. And if anyone tells you that you can't or that you are "victimizing" yourself even though you personally feel hurt? Forget them. The fact that you have the courage to talk about how you feel, the fact that you still have the emotions to even feel at all, the fact that you are acknowledging the problem in your life-- that is progress. And any true friend would help you figure out those emotions, find a solution to your problem, and make you feel more safe. A true friend doesn't tell you to shut up, suck it up, and stop whining. If they do, then they were never ever your friend.

My point after all of this? Don't you ever ever let anyone invalidate you or how you feel. You have the right to your emotions and to express the problems in your life because as I said before-- everyone has them. And if anyone ever tells you you're "victimizing" yourself or doesn't take you seriously when you talk them about it. Lose them. You're better off without them anyway. I clearly figured that out on my own.