Let it go Justin..You gotta let it go.

I want to start by thanking everyone who has taken the time to read my blog to this point. Writing out my thoughts has become a source of therapy for me in the past couple months. Many of you didn’t know this but my anxiety has been at its most severe lately. However, I am doing my best to change certain things about my environment and personal habits to help ease my anxiety. One crucial change I have made is to stop worrying about everything and everyone. I have a tendency to take on the problems of the people around me as my own. When they hurt, I hurt. When they need help, I work my brain tirelessly to find a solution. I will self-sacrifice in every way to ensure the people around me are taken care of with whatever they need. The biggest issue with this generosity is that I stopped caring about myself. My life quickly turned into sleepless nights, poor eating, buried emotions, disregard for health issues, and many other negative habits. No matter how much my friends and family tried to get me to stop investing so much into others, I couldn’t. Making people happy was my only concern. If that meant I didn’t sleep for weeks at a time because I was worried about the well being of someone else, then that’s just how it was for me. I simply pushed through. Many days I was teetering on the brink of consciousness from a lack of sleep and poor eating coupled with an increasing workout regimen. There would be times when for I would have was a glass or two of water in a three day span but I was doing 2-3 workouts a day. My body constantly felt as if it wanted to shut down but I made myself push through. In my mind, the people around me needed for me to be there for them. No matter what anyone said to me, I was never more important than my friends and family. I didn’t deserve to be cared for and worried about. I wouldn’t allow people to invest the same time, energy, and money in me as I did them. Most times I distanced myself from anyone who was persistent in their attempts to take care of me. I didn’t know how to accept generosity; I could only give it out. 

At this point I want to confess a bit about my past that I have never told anyone. This may have a big part to do with why I struggle so much with allowing other to care for me. Also, it may help explain why I give so much of myself to others.

 My senior season of college football was Fall 2008. My last two years of college ball were plagued with chronic back issues. Between 2007 and 2008, I had two back surgeries. During season, I would have weekly epidurals in order to play on Saturday’s. At times the pain was so unbearable I would intentionally take double the pain medication dosage to make my body and mind go numb. The hardest part of this all was having to miss our senior game versus Fresno St. This game was the ESPN Friday night game of the week. There were two reasons why this was so tough. The first reason is that this was the last game of my long and wonderful career as a SJSU Spartan. Secondly, I didn’t find out until two days before the game that I wouldn’t be able to play. All those of years of blood, sweat, tears, and invaluable memories came down to one last game against our rival on EPSN and I couldn’t play. The doctor told me my football career was over and I would have to have yet another surgery. And not just a discectomy like the last two, but a multi-level lower back fusion. So not only did my career end the way it did but now I had to have my third surgery within a two year span and it was going to affect the rest of my life. In case you can’t imagine, this was incredibly tough on me. Many of my family and friends tried to get me to open up about how I felt but of course I wouldn’t. My usual response was “oh its ok, everything happens for a reason.” And although I believed that to a degree, another part of me was emotionally broken. The terrible part about it all, which no one knew until know, was that many nights I would take 3-4 times the dosage of my pain meds and chase it with bottles of booze. Night after night, I did this in hope of not waking up. I did this because physically my back couldn’t have been hurting any worse than it was. The pain wasn’t just in my back but it shot down my legs. Many times I would lose feeling in my legs and feet. Along with the back pain, I was hurting emotionally. My career ended because of injury, I was lonely, and I was worried about my future. Granted I was semester away from finishing my Master’s degree and had an extensive professional network in comparison to most football student-athletes finishing up their college careers. But for whatever reason none of that seem to make me feel better. I was sad and lost. Despite all this going on, I wouldn’t allow anyone to help me cope with any of it. I didn’t want people to worry about me and waste time on my issues. After my surgery in January 2009 my mom had to come live with me for about 3 weeks. I needed help with everything. I mean EVERYTHING! Yes that includes wiping my butt after I pooped. To all my male readers, in case you were wondering, this is what feeling completely emasculated is like. It sounds funny, but it’s terrible. Once I was capable of fending for myself, my mom was able to leave. I was on my own again so I went back to my pain meds and booze routine. Doing this put me in such a dark place mentally. Thoughts of death were my normal entertainment most days. I would daydream about how it would happen and how people would react. I am generally overly optimistic and easy going. However, during this time period of my life, I couldn’t have been any further away from my normal self. 

Coincidentally, at this time my grandmother was battling serious illnesses that she had been dealing with for some time. She was normally a fighter but at the time she was allowing the illness to beat her. My grandmother and I were extremely close and talked on the phone multiple times throughout the week. Our Sunday conversations were the most cherished. Sometimes we would talk for 30-45 minutes. She looked forward to our phone conversations on Sunday afternoons. She knew how much pressure and stress I put on myself so she would always say our Sunday talks made her feel better about all I had going on. One time she told me that our talks rejuvenated the fight within her. Well one Sunday I was having a bad day with my back and emotions so decided to take some pills and drink some booze. I never did this on Sundays because I didn’t want to miss my call with my grandmother. Especially knowing it gave her strength to keep fighting her illness. However, on this particular Sunday I disregarded my inner voice saying my grandmother needed me to talk to her that day and I went ahead and slipped away into my usual numb state of mind. I feel asleep around 1pm and didn’t wake up until nearly 10am the next morning. I had missed my call with my grandmother and although I felt bad, I figured I would just make it up and call her within the next couple days. That Monday night, I got the call, my grandmother had passed away. I wish I could articulate the guilt and disgust I had with myself. I chose to take pain meds and drink to cope with my “problems,” rather than take 45mins out of my day for my Sunday talk with grandma. I chose to be selfish and put my irrelevant issues over the needs of the person whose primary reason for living was her grandchildren. I don’t know if we had talked that Sunday whether or not she would have lived longer. But I do know, I will never know. That has haunted me ever since the day she passed. I have never told any of this to anyone. I have always been too embarrassed and ashamed. From that day forward I vowed that I would never put myself before anyone else. I would never let anyone ever worry about me. I was committed to always doing what was necessary to make people happy and help them solve their problems

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Since this time, I have changed different things about my life to help me get better about releasing my emotions. I have also committed myself to not getting overly involved with solving people’s problems. It is not that I do not care; it’s just not my job to worry about everyone especially when it means sacrificing my own well being. As my faith has grown, I am doing better with letting the higher powers handle the issues around me. This has also allowed me to let go of many emotions I have buried away for a long time. I have forgiven people from my past and I am no longer toiling over matters that are irrelevant to my life. The stories about football, my pain meds and booze, and my grandmother have been the few things still weighing down my heart. But on this day, it is all out there. I am accepting everything that happened in the past and I am forgiving myself for not calling my grandmother that day. She knows I love her and I know she is watching down on our family. She is proud of me for all that I have done with my life to this point, and just like many others, she is anxiously awaiting all that great things still to come for me. 

Here’s to letting go and enjoying life!

Justin