Letter To My Younger Self

Dear Younger Rebeca. This is you. Rebeca. But at almost 21 years old. I'm still 20.

You have done quite a few of these. Letters to yourself. All of them have been school assignments, and be honest. You never took any of them seriously.

But this is me...writing a letter to you...aka me... No grade in the balance. Just a one on one talk for you and me.

Here we go...

Dear younger self...

Your life right now is going...GREAT. Funny because I'm sure at your age, I didn't think I would even make it to eighteen.

After everything you will be going through/ and have already gone through... your life will get better.

But it will suck a little bit at first. Don't worry though, this is where I come in and say, you will get through it. Hell, I'm living proof of that.

Here's how it's going to go...

You will grow up seeing your parents fight...all the time. It will ruin your perception on love. YOU will fight with your sisters ALL the time, you all have the scars to prove it. It will ruin your relationship with them until you're an adult, but don't worry, your relationship will get way better.

Both of those things will pass, eventually, but it will affect you for the rest of your life, sadly.

Your anxiety starts around four years old, it's minor. Mom and Dad don't think much of it, no one does. But surprise, your anxiety right now is here to stay.

You feel as if you don't belong, even at such a young age, even in your family. But don't worry, one day there will be a time where people accept you BECAUSE you don't fit in.

Your anxiety is tied to the fights in the house, and you start to stay away from people. Including your family. That's when the depression starts.

School is the only time you feel...happy. But even then, with the anxiety, it's hard for you to open up to people, especially strangers. Making friends is hard, so you make acquaintances. Making someone your friend was hard, and it will devastate you when your friendship ends.

You make your first real friend in third grade, the nicest person in class, and you're still friends to this day, even if you don't speak that much anymore.

I'm going to give you some advice that I wish I had back then.

Don't be jealous of your friends. They are all going through their own battles, you don't need to put them up on a pedestal. That is how you end up hurt.

Don't be afraid to feel. Don't be afraid to cry. Don't be afraid to express your feelings and how you're feeling at certain moments.

Who is it doing good if you're keeping everything inside?

You'll have multiple break downs before you're even a teenager... But these breakdowns are secret to everyone else but your family.

It'll all make sense one day...

Middle school was the hard years. Looks meant everything. You put too much powder on your face in sixth grade...You put too much eyeliner in seventh grade. I know you'll think it looks good then, but take this from me, it'll only make your skin worse. Oh. And in eighth grade...DONT GET BANGS.

Thirteen was an extremely hard year.

You will meet who you think will be your best friend forever. But truth is, she will teach you the worst habit of your life. She'll encourage you to hurt yourself, sometimes during class just to get the adrenaline. She'll make it a competition, and you'll soon learn that it's not okay.

You'll know what it is...and I know it will feel good, and almost painless, and you will feel the relief. Just know that it's temporary, and your body doesn't deserve to be covered in scars like that.

This bad habit will go on until the summer after graduating. You graduated three years ago, so you've been three years clean.

Now we're in high school.

A new school puts a strain on friendships, and you grow apart from people you thought you'd know forever. It will break you, for a moment. Then you will meet knew friends, become even closer with people who you didn't let yourself become close with in middle school.

You will go through high school in pain, not just emotionally, but internally. Don't worry, the doctors will EVENTUALLY figure out what it is. You'll end up with a scar on your stomach, and although it looks horrible at first, it will grow on you.

And as for the emotional pain, you'll try and get some help. But after forty minutes of talking, you'll decide that you're just not ready to come to terms with what could be wrong with you. But you'll also learn that it's not your fault.

You will lose friends, people in your class, and it's a specific persons death that forces you to go into out patient treatment for your emotional problems. You will meet people in treatment, including a specific person that you will never see again and miss everyday, she will be your best friend in there, and these people will change your life for the better.

You will miss a month of school, three weeks, and a week of spring break, but you will learn what you have.

And it will all make sense.

When you come back to school, it's like the sun is shining directly at you. And girl, you're getting a tan. The cloud over your head is no longer there.

Though sometimes you feel hurt, and sometimes you will feel depressed, you no longer think of the Last Resort. Because, everything you've been repressing, it's coming out. Including happiness. And all of a sudden, you'll feel happiness like you've never felt it before.

But now you're also feeling sadness, and anger, and so many feelings you didn't know you COULD have. And for once, it's a good thing. Because now you know how to deal with it.

Now you're more outspoken in school and especially at home. Your relationship with your parents will improve significantly, and your younger siblings as well.

Although it's still hard, you manage. At least now you are acknowledging it, it's there, and you're dealing with it.

Dealing with it means that you've pushed the toxic people out of your life. That includes one family member. One that held a lot of resentment over you.

You cut her out of your life. For a year. Then she grew up, she was becoming a mother, and you haven't had a fight since. It makes me want to cry just thinking of all the fighting you used to do, and now you go over to her house all the time, and watch her kids, who you love so much.

You will go to community college for a year...and it will not work out. You leave school to work, and write.

Now you have five books out. The most recent one is doing exceptionally well, and you're very happy about it. This could be the book that gets you noticed.

You are an assistant manager at a pizzeria, and you are thriving there. Although, what you want is to be a writer. And I am working really hard to make that happen.

Things will try to break you, people will try to hurt you, and you will want to wish you were never alive. But you will heal, get strong, and realize that life is precious.

I am twenty years old right now. Four months shy of being 21.

Everything is really great right now, and these are the words I live by:

Everything will be okay in the end, if it's not okay, it's not the end.

I know I could have used those words when I was you, younger Rebeca. Because there were so many times I wished that it was the end, and now I'm so glad that I didn't choose to make it the end.

I love you. Love yourself. I know it's hard, but I know you can do it.

Signed,


            REBECA XX

Loving yourself is the hardest thing you can do...

Having dealt with depression most of my life, I never realized what it was like to love myself until a few years ago.

I knew how to hate myself, that I had no problem with.

There was this year, between the hospital and then therapy, that something clicked in my mind. I was seventeen, and really sick of just being sad.

I knew there wasn't a way I could just turn off my depression, it would always be there, but maybe I could divert it.

Here are some things I learned in therapy, and some stuff I learned after therapy.

1. Learn what you like about yourself: One thing I could remember that I liked about myself back then was how much I liked writing. I wrote a few pieces every now and then, but I was proud of them because I had written them.

2. Learning to give myself a break: There's no harsher critic than yourself. In school, I felt as if I had to be the best at everything. When I wasn't, that's when all the dark thoughts and feelings came creeping in, so I had to learn to tell myself...It's okay.

3. Learn who the enemy is: Depression is the enemy. It is this black dog trying to keep you down, trying to make you feel as if you're the only who feels that way.

4. Love: It could be loving to write, or falling in love with a person, or fall in love with storms. Whatever you can find, love it, and hold on to it. I really love writing, and hate leaving stories unfinished. I fall in love with my characters and with the thought that only I could finish their stories. That keeps me going most days.

5. Learn your goals: If you have goals...you have a future. My goal is to be a published author, and I think about that everyday. I write to work towards that goal.

6. Love yourself: There are some things only you can do. Think about this world without you, think about all that people that love you, and can't live without you. I can't really tell you how to love yourself. One thing that worked for me, was looking at myself in the mirror in the bathroom and saying it out loud. Say out loud things you love about yourself, and eventually you'll start to believe them.

I'm writing this during a thunderstorm, so I'm going to spend my day indoors writing my new story, and drinking tea, oh and listening to the Grease Live and Legally Blonde The Musical soundtrack, it's amazing!

Hope you guys have a great February, filled with love and happiness!

Rebeca xx

Music is the reason I write.

I can remember ever since I was little that I have always loved music. I mean, who didn't?

I grew up in a Mexican household which meant music was always playing when we woke up, when we cleaned, and especially when we had social gatherings. Spanish music always has a story to tell, they were descriptive and allowed my imagination to flow.

I kind of moved away from spanish music, and I started getting into my own music. Kelly Clarkson, Britney Spears, NSYNC, and many more.

In my head, I could create stories, stories I would dream about at night. I liked to sing (even though I was terrible at it) and I liked pretending to be the lead of my stories inside my head. My imagination was wild.

The first time I wrote was after reading Twilight in middle school. I think I was in eighth grade. I wrote and wrote, at least I tried. I wrote in complete silence because that's how my neighbor wrote her amazing stories.

I wanted to write amazing stories, too. Like the ones in my head that I got while listening to music. I didn't write for a long time after that because I thought I wasn't good enough. Every story I tried to write just ended with me saving it and never looking at it again because I got blocked.

One day, while listening to Thriving Ivory, I was driving to my friends house to pick her up to go to class, I just had this story pop in my head. I remember grabbing my phone and opening the voice recording app, and I recorded myself just saying words.

I didn't really have a story. I had an idea. I still remember the words that I thought of that day. Car accident. Coma. Scarred body. College. Unhappiness. Save Me.

I could even imagine the place where the car accident happened, I had a place in my town that inspired it.

This all happened before I wrote my first book. I pushed the idea aside, and I'm glad I did because it really let me think about it for about a year. Scarlett and Ryder talked to me in dreams, they developed and finally I just had to write about them.

I wrote about them with a few songs in mind, including the song Unhappy by Thriving Ivory, one of my favorite bands.

Now I don't write without a music playlist. Music helps my imagination, it helps me write, and I absolutely love it. Sometimes I'll write a scene with one song on repeat just so I don't lose idea in my mind.

Now, talking about Scarlett and Ryder...I released Broken Pleasure last month, and I am very proud of it, though the idea of anybody reading it makes me feel ill. I did get my first review on it a few weeks ago, and you can get it here.

I hope you guys like it(:

xxRebeca

Inside the mind of a hypochondriac...

When I was fourteen, I started experiencing sharp pains in my stomach. Little did I know, that pain would change my life as I would not be diagnosed for another two years.

For a year, I'd get the pains, and the time between them would be closer and closer. All my doctor said was to record when they would happen.
I still remember the routine in which they came. I would eat dinner, around 4 in the afternoon, and I would have a night time snack so I could go to bed around ten or so. That's the routine I had growing up, eat when you get home, eat before you go to sleep. The snacks at night would usually be milk, coffee (it made me tired instead of energetic), and cookies or bread to dip in our drinks.
Dinner was whatever my mom made, which was Mexican food, since we were Mexican.
So I'd go to bed, and I would wake up in a night sweat, and in severe pain, right where my sternum ends. Every night like clockwork. It was get pain, stay awake for a few hours holding myself, trying not to cry, and then forcing myself to go to the bathroom and puke. Then I'd cry myself to sleep, the pain would cease then.

The doctor looked at my notes, and just wrote it off as heartburn. They gave me some heartburn medicine that did nothing. I went back after a month, like she said, and she accused me of not giving the medicine a chance.

Take in mind that I was fourteen, this pain was a stabbing pain, when I had it, I could not move if I tried. I may not have been a doctor, but I'm sure heartburn doesn't make you want to die. It sounds drastic, but that's how I felt. I begged God, or whoever was listening, to take my life because it hurt so bad and it was so constant. I get sad thinking about it now, but it's true.

The doctor would give me medicine, tell me to lose weight, tell me to suck it up, recommended I avoid certain foods. I took the medicine, I avoided all foods, water gave me pain as well, I was losing weight quickly because I wasn't eating.

If I did eat, I would sit in a chair, straight up, for hours. I wouldn't move. I wouldn't sleep until it had been at least four hours since my last meal. That helped. Sort of.

Finally, my doctor referred me to a gastroenterologist, a doctor who specializes in the gut or whatever. She scheduled me for a endoscopy soon after I finished my freshman year of high school, and by then I was taking antacids by the handful, ibuprofen, Maalox, and Tums were my best friends at night.

After the endoscopy, they told me they saw a little inflammation, but nothing to be worried about. The surgery triggered something inside of me, and I felt okay. I felt amazing. I was still afraid to eat or even nibble on food, but the pain stopped.

But as I went back into my old routine, the pain came back in a few months. It felt almost worst. I would crawl in a fetal position, I would be falling asleep in classes or at home on a chair. I started losing more weight, I couldn't wear tight clothes, it triggered it. Everything irritated my stomach, exercise, food, and even the medicine I was taking.

By this time, the ER had seen me so many times in a month. I could tell they were sick of me. They kept telling me I had GERD, also known as heartburn. Nothing was working, I would cry at the hospital, I felt like no one believed me, at one point they thought I was pregnant, another time, I had a full blown panic attack, I couldn't sit still, I couldn't breathe, and they did an EKG cause they thought I could be having a heart attack.

The doctors weren't helping, so I looked on the internet. That's when I guess I started to become a hypochondriac, I couldn't take it not knowing what I had. I started thinking I had cancer or appendicitis or liver failure, I definitely thought I had pancreatic cancer, I even started making plans for when I died.

It was scary, and one day after school, the second week of school during my junior year, I had some Mexican food because my stomach was starving, I had had pain all week at night, but I was just really hungry.

It was about an hour later when I started to feel the familiar pain. I had this chair that I could curl up and sleep on, and on my table I had ibuprofen, I was up to eight a night, Maalox and the tums, oh and a big bottle of water.

I kept passing out from weakness, two hours after I ate, I threw up everything. Even though that usually helped, it didn't that time.

It was six in the morning, after a restless night of passing out from the pain and weakness and hunger, I stopped my dad before he could go to work. I had to go to the hospital. I had never had the pain last over three hours, and now I was going on thirteen hours.

The ER was empty, took them five minutes before they called my name. My blood pressure was low, I was pale, and cold.

As soon as I had an ultrasound to see if I had appendicitis or gallstones, they gave me the great stuff. Morphine. The pain was numb, and I slept for an hour before they told me I had gallstones and I needed my gallbladder taken out some time in the near future. That it could wait until I had a break in school.

Then they kicked me out and sent me home, with another prescription for heartburn. TO HELP they said.

I made it home, and an hour later, I couldn't take it. The pain had come back, but my dad had gone to work and my mom didn't drive, so I had to wait for him to get back around four o'clock. The pain was so bad, I almost called 911, but I forced myself to wait.

And when we got to the emergency room, it was packed. It was four hours before they took me in. I was shaking severely, and crying for those four hours, begging for them to take me in, but all they did was give me a blanket.

Finally around eight, I was taken into a room, where they told me I would be having surgery later that week. I got my gallbladder taken out two days after that, and according to the doctor and the pictures, they were the size of golfballs. My laparoscopic surgery ended up with me having to be opened, and I cried after, and not because of the pain.

I felt that my doctors had failed me, and wrote me off. They could have caught it earlier, and now I can't trust them.

I avoid doctors at all costs. It's been a while since I've been to one, and to be honest, I'd rather google a symptom than go to their office.

After my surgery, I started to Google every symptom whenever I had any. Whether it was a simple cold or I sneezed weird.

My two year illness took such a severe toll on me. I tear up whenever i think about it. It's sad.

My parents always write me off whenever I feel sick. They think it's all in my head, and it is. I know that it is.

When I get a headache, or a migraine, I start thinking I have a brain tumor. If I find a new freckle on my body, I think I have skin cancer. If my stomach is upset, I obsess over what I ate. Sometimes I think I'm having a heart attack when I have a panic attack over my breathing.

I know that I over think of what I can have. Right now, I think I have cancer, but I'm too afraid to go to the doctor for fear that they won't believe me. I have to talk myself down because living in fear is not fun.

I lay awake at night feeling my chest for bumps in case of breast cancer, and I cry. I'm afraid of accidentally looking over a symptom. I google every health related way I could die at the age of 19.

It's hard. People make fun of me when I get frazzled talking about my health, they think it's funny that I think I'm going to die because of a spot or a headache. It's terrifying to think that I'm going to die.

I wasn't like this before my health scare. Through therapy I've noted that I have OCD tendencies, and that made me susceptible to hypochondria. There are articles about this, maybe I have it, maybe I don't. Hypochondria is hard to have because it's hard to believe yourself.

I don't know...

I just felt like I had to write this post. Maybe it will help some of you. Maybe it won't. Let me know in the comments, or shoot me a message. I'll gladly respond.

To Save You is Live!

It's January 12th, and To Save You, my second book is now live! You can get it here!

I started writing this story about a month and a half ago, and I guess I wanted to incorporate a little bit of what I went through as a sixteen year old.

SPOILERS. I won't write about specifically goes on in the book, but I will write about the experiences I went through and wrote about in the book.

Depression affects millions of people everyday. I've read many stories where the guy tries to save the girl from herself, and in my story, what makes it different, is that he can't save her. Mathew admits that he can't do it alone.

I remember being sixteen, and I had spent the last few years just tangling people into my web of lies. A lot of my friends knew I hurt myself, but nobody said one thing because I had manipulated them into thinking it was nothing. I just liked cutting myself, and it relieved stress. I made them think, well, as long as she's not trying to kill herself, she's fine.

I surrounded myself with the wrong people. I was so unhappy, and there was nothing I could do to bring myself out of it sometimes.

Presley had tried to kill herself one time, but she instantly regretted doing what she did. I took that from a real life experience.

I was probably twelve or thirteen, I remember that I was in middle school. I had gotten into a fight with my mother, it was summer, and I didn't want to go back to school. I just thought everything would be better if I was gone.

I took Excedrin, these migraine pills, and I took about a third of the bottle. I laid down on my bed, ready to die. Then something clicked in my head. Dying wasn't the answer.

I started to throw it all up. It took a few days, but eventually I started to feel better. I never told anyone about my almost overdose, they just thought I was really sick. It was the scariest time of my life, and I was twelve!

Another thing I wrote about that happened in my life, it was religious parents. My parents are religious, especially my mom.

I was raised a Catholic, went to church, but around eight years old, I started to question faith. Whether you believe in God or believe in nothing, that's your choice, I won't judge you.

I felt religion was being shoved down my throat. That's when I stopped going to church, I would throw temper tantrums, and my parents would leave me at home. I know it crushed them that I was no longer going, but I had made my choice.

I know a lot of friends that have gone through this. Whether it be going through it as an eight year old, or a eighteen year old.

Now I am a healthy 19 and a half year old! (today is my half birthday)! I wrote this book as a tribute to all those broken people out there, even the healed people.

You have to fix yourself and love yourself before you can start loving anybody else. No one can save you but yourself.

I hope you guys enjoy the book, I worked really hard on it.

xxRebeca

World Suicide Prevention Day

"Scars remind us of where we've been, they don't have to dictate where we're going." -Agent Rossi, Criminal Minds.


Ever since I was little, I knew I was different. I saw the world differently than others. My world was often dark and I often felt alone.

It wasn't until I was sixteen that I was diagnosed. Bipolar 1. I thought, they had to be mistaken, there's no way I have Bipolar disorder. But all of a sudden, all the dots started to connect...

All those school nights that I ended up pulling all nighters and I didn't know why, it just felt like a good idea and that I was invincible, no sleep would make me think better and be better in class(ideas that didn't make sense). The days were my mind would race, and I couldn't stay still, or when I would talk and suddenly jump into a whole other conversation without taking a breath or realizing I was changing the conversation. Not being able to stay friends with people because all of a sudden, they became the most annoying person to me and I didn't need them, even though they did nothing to me. Anger coming and going quicker than I could blink.

And the crash...
The depression. The moment when things stopped making sense. When I felt this cloud of pure darkness come over me. I didn't want to leave my room. I didn't want to talk to people. I constantly felt like crying and I didn't know why. These were the moments when I felt like hurting myself, whether that be self-harm or suicidal ideations.

People always tell me, "Rebeca, you don't seem like the person who would be depressed. That's not who you are."
I think most of high school, I was able to cover it up real good. I think a lot of people are good at hiding their disease, that's why it comes such a shock to us when someone commits suicide.

The thing you have to know about Bipolar disorder is that we don't always get these "episodes." As I've gotten older and gotten help, these episodes became less and less, and I'm happier. I'm glad I got help three years ago.

Today is Suicide Awareness Day. The reason I wanted to tell my story is because mental illness and suicide go hand in hand.

• A significant number of those with mental illnesses who die by suicide do not contact health or social services near the time of their death. In many instances, there are insufficient services available to assist those in need at times of crisis. (IASP)
• Unless stigma is confronted and challenged, it will continue to be a major barrier to the treatment of mental illnesses and to the prevention of suicide.
• Suicide is one of the leading causes of death in the world, especially among young people.
• Suicide accounts for one death every 40 seconds.

Suicides happen every day. They affect us all. We lose the people we love and cherish, and it kills us inside because we constantly think about what we could have done to help.

Here are some signs from Save.org that someone you know and love may be thinking about suicide:

Warning Signs of Suicide

These signs may mean someone is at risk for suicide. Risk is greater if a behavior is new or has increased and if it seems related to a painful event, loss or change.

• Talking about wanting to die or to kill oneself.
• Looking for a way to kill oneself, such as searching online or buying a gun.
• Talking about feeling hopeless or having no reason to live.
• Talking about feeling trapped or in unbearable pain.
• Talking about being a burden to others.
• Increasing the use of alcohol or drugs.
• Acting anxious or agitated; behaving recklessly.
• Sleeping too little or too much.
• Withdrawn or feeling isolated.
• Showing rage or talking about seeking revenge.
• Displaying extreme mood swings.

Additional Warning Signs of Suicide

• Preoccupation with death.
• Suddenly happier, calmer.
• Loss of interest in things one cares about.
• Visiting or calling people to say goodbye.
• Making arrangements; setting one's affairs in order.
• Giving things away, such as prized possessions.

This is the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (US)-  1-800-273-TALK (8255)

To Write Love On Her Arms has a wonderful campaign going on right now, and I highly support them. It's called No One Else Can Play Your Part. 

You can watch the video they did here.

The reason I wrote this blogpost is because I want people to know they're not alone, and it's never too late to get help and recover. You are in this world for a reason.

Live and love you guys.

-Rebeca