THANK YOU KIANA FOR BEING BRAVE AND HELPING OTHERS WITH YOUR STORY! YOU ARE STRONG AND SO FUN TO BE AROUND
KIANA IS A GOOD FRIEND OF OURS AND IS ONE OF THE BEST HAIRSTYLISTS WE KNOW. SHE LOVES TRAVELING AND BEING A HARD WORKER (ALSO A FAN OF THE STEELERS AND DETROIT RED WINGS)!
- PLEASE SHOW KIANA SOME LOVE AND ENJOY READING HER BRAVE GHOST STORY!.
SHE WILL BE AROUND AS AN AMBASSADOR AND LOVED AS A FRIEND ALWAYS, SO REACH OUT TO US IF YOU'D LIKE TO HEAR MORE FROM BEAUTIFUL KIANA!
THANKS KIANA FORE TELLING YOUR STORY! WE LOVE YOU SO MUCH.
What are my mental ghosts?
It’s such a complicated question.
It’s tasking someone with digging so deep into their subconscious that they can start recognizing their own demons. Before it’s mentally freeing, it’s petrifying.
I have trust issues. I have insecurities. I have abandonment fears. I have demons that scream for reassurance. I’m quick to anger. I’m sometimes the last person to apologize. I have high standards and sometimes that makes me harsh and critical. I’m all around damaged fundamentally.
When looking back at all I’ve worked through to even get to a point where I can recognize these things in myself, I’m proud. However, I know that you’re never really done- like everything, I’m a perpetual work in progress.
I was in and out of two mental institutions before I even finished high school. My work started there. In hind sight, my upbringing really helped rather than hindered. I really do feel like my trials and tribulations contributed to who I’m growing into, and I like that person.
I excelled in social aspects. As young as first grade my parent/teacher conferences would go something like “she’s not really into the lessons, but she’d make a great actress. I hate to blow your tits back, but I never made it as an actress, much less tried. By second grade teachers were asking my mom to test me, just to make sure I wasn’t a slow learner.
Contrary to popular come-up stories, I didn’t suddenly excel as a scholar. My reading was above average, my writing had me submitted for a local short story competition; a story I was forced to write while suffering through summer school. I had things that I enjoyed and things that I didn’t- I loved English, hated Math.
Constantly having my intelligence questioned made me feel like I was always coming up short. Instead of celebrating my small wins, I was focused on my short comings. All these things that are small on their own, start morphing into a bigger monster. They start building a strong base for insecurities that I didn’t understand at that point in my life. There’s a quote that I try to always keep in the back of my mind “Everybody is a genius. But if you just a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will go its whole life believing that it is stupid.”
I met my “real” father my senior year of high school— I begged my mom for any information about him even though I knew it broke the man who raised me heart. With that came a sister, brother, aunts, grandparents, and entire entity that I never considered would have so much impact on me. It blew my mind that people that I’d never met were so similar to me. It really made me start to question the nature Vs. nurture.
Cue the classic daddy issues. My “father” overdosed a few years ago. I got to meet him a handful of times. While at his funeral I was overcome with some of the toughest grief I’ve ever lived through. Listening to complete strangers talk about what a selfless and incredible human my father was was sickening. Sitting there realizing that for compete strangers, he had gone above and beyond, yet for myself, my sister, my brother- he was a stranger. How?
When someone who is genetically programmed to love you doesn’t, it’s hard to reconcile. We are all quicker to start looking inward at what’s wrong with us than to just accept the far simpler solution- that things are out of our control and it was HIS mental ghosts that stopped him from stepping up, not mine.
For the sake of not diving deep into someone else’s baggage, I’ll just gloss over my mothers mental struggles, her trials and triumphs with suicidal attempts, medication, hibernation, and sadness. Back then it wasn’t an issue- it’s just how it was. My mothers mother stuck her head in the oven when my grandma was a small kid. It brings you back to nature vs. nurture- was I already predisposed to having to work harder for happiness?
The deeper I traveled into my mental ghosts, the older I got, and the more I realized that we all have so much work to do. It was no longer an absent sperm donor, unbalanced mother, abandonment from a family I though I needed- Everything that I could do for myself with inside me. It was WANTING the answers. Its forgiving parents who were trying to do the best they could. It was taking my own reasonability for my life. I can only control me. That statement, as true and obvious it is, has been the hardest lesson for me to learn and accept.
I have those ghosts- they linger. They’ve floated around in my past relationships. They’ve dipped in and out of my current love. I’ve see them in the mirror, behind me- I see ghosts in my future.
I’m currently looking for someone to work through some more of my baggage with. I’d like to find productive ways to work through the anxiousness I feel at night, so if anyone has any tips, feel free to reach out.
For those of you that aren’t quite ready to stop running from your demons, always go out the front door- never up the stairs.
Kiana- with love, a work in progress.
GREAT STORY!!!
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THANKS AGAIN KIANA & TALK TO YOU SOON!