Ok, as yall know I was the poster formerly known as DaSk8D00D. No introduction needed I did my thing on the message boards for a while. Keyboard gladiator at its finest n all that. During the time of my infamous SLAP breakdown where I had fallen from being a fan-favorite to most hated (that sounds more dramatic than it really is, but yall know how I do) I was going thru some things in life. Typical teenager finding himself amidst life's daily stresses & whatnot. I had began trolling EXTRA hard just for the simple fact I felt it was better to let any type of negative energy out thru SLAP & its daily fuckery as opposed to whatever else I could've been doing. At that point I had just recently lost a best friend due to drunk driving, my first dog, my grandfather that I was very close to, and a good family friend who died unexpectedly. THEN, on a Sunday afternoon on September 23rd, my whole life changed. My mom went to a friends wedding with her boyfriend the night before, and afterwards they went back to dude's house with all their friends and she went to bed a little early cuz she was tired. That next morning they were all about to go to breakfast together but when her boyfriend went to wake her up, she didn't respond. She had died of a heart attack in her sleep. A couple hours later I get the visit from the coroner telling me the bad news. My mind just went blank. My mom raised me as a single mother and I'd seen her go thru HELL for a majority of my younger life. More than a decade of low income living, abusive relationships, and several life or death situations. Shit was real as fuck, and we both have crazy stories for days. It was us against the world. Anyways she made it through all of that because she wanted to give me a better life. She spoiled me really, despite the fact that every day was a struggle. I didn't really understand HOW much she'd sacrificed until I got older. Anyways, by the time I was in high school she was a very well respected businesswoman who had a lot of friends and touched the lives of many. A far cry from the extremely rebellious teen my grandparents knew her as.
As yall can assume this pretty much devastated me like nothing else before. Out of ALLL the people I could've lost, (and I'd already lost a few that year) I had just lost the most important. The foundation and driving force of my entire life really. Let alone the emotional stress, I now had to deal with aftermath of all this. I lived in her house, she was on my car bill, she managed my finances, etc. A very large cog in the machine called "my life" had just been permanently removed, and I had to make the repairs. This was the reason for my 3 month SLAP hiatus, amongst many other things I'd put to the side in order to deal with all this. Before last night, I hadn't been on a skateboard since, which is insane. I spent weeks going to lawyer meetings, talking to financial advisors, dealing with bill collectors, and moving out of my old house. BY FAR the most difficult period in my life. In situations like this you either succumb to the severe anxiety and become depressed, or you fight thru it and become stronger. I chose the latter. I decided to frame the whole thing as my mom's last stage in raising me to become a man, so with everything that had to be dealt with since, I viewed it as a test of my patience, emotional fortitude, and self-discipline. Yall wouldn't believe how many tests of patience I've gone thru. I just gave yall a summary of everything that happened but best believe it'd take pages for me to put it all in one post. Shit makes you grow up real quick.
Now, three months later here I am, in the best position I've ever been in my life. I'm much more confident, self-disciplined, and emotionally stable than before, and thanks to my mom's intuition, a last-second life insurance policys she'd gotten a couple weeks before has me able to live comfortably and on my own terms. I ain't gon go into detail about my all personal plans but let's just say I've put myself in the position to do everything I've wanted to and more, and building the foundation for that is what I've been up to lately.
9 times out of 10 people go into the real confessions thread melancholy as fuck, all sad n whatnot, hoping someone can either pity them or give them some sort advice help get them to where they want to be. I just wanted to tell my story to give those people hope. If you can put things into the right perspective, work hard and be patient enough to deal with it, you can come out on the other side better than before. The things we go thru are what make us. As emotional human beings we like to categorize various experiences as either good or bad, when really everything is neutral. YOU are the one who determines what can come out of that experience. If it's something as serious and life-changing as what I went thru, it's going to be difficult, no doubt about it. But after 3 long months I'm a better person because of that and my potential to do great things has only multiplied. So no matter what you're going thru, wether it be a person thing that clouds your mind with anxiety, or a tough setback, that same amount of negative energy can be flipped into positive energy in due time if you put forth the effort.