Facing the Music And Living To Talk About It Read Free Page B

distrustful, wary, and unwilling to put yourself out there for fear of experiencing those horrible feelings again. The first step toward changing your life is to change your filter. That means deciding that no matter what happened to you in the past, you still deserve the best of what life has to offer.
    THE FIRST STEP TOWARD CHANGING YOUR LIFE IS TO CHANGE YOUR FILTER.
    I know from experience that working hard and achieving your dreams won’t bring true happiness and fulfillment unless you believe in your heart that you are worthy of it. So, before any changes can be made successfully, we have to examine who we are now and who we want to be going forward. Admittedly, it’s not an easy thing to do. Looking deep inside of yourself isn’t fun. It takes a mature person to conduct an honest appraisal of character, attitudes, prejudices, judgment, and other critical aspects of personality. To help yourself feel worthy of success, you need to understand the experiences and influences that have contributed to the particular life filter you have in place now.
    WALLED OFF
    To be blunt, Leslie’s and my filters were established when we were very young and they became more damaged as we grew. My siblings and I weren’t particularly well-nurtured as kids. I write more about that in the chapters to come, but for now just know that while I’m sure our parents loved us, they didn’t demonstrate their love in ways that typically make kids feel safe and secure. We all know that to be loved is one of the greatest human needs. If we don’t feel well cared for early in life, it definitely messes with our perceptions and influences all of our future relationships. We may feel we can’t trust others. We may drive people away intentionally or build walls around our feelings so we can’t be hurt. We may even choose to harm ourselves before anyone else can.
    Although the media said drugs for schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and anxiety were found near Leslie’s body, I don’t know that she was ever truly diagnosed with any of those problems. Sadly, I’m aware that Leslie had been self-medicating—probably against her own hurt and isolation—for a long time.
    She passed away because she allegedly took too many pills, though to this day, I’m not sure how many pills were involved. Her death may have been accidental for all I know. I’m also uncertain if a medical professional prescribed the drugs she was taking. What I can tell you, though, is that whenever I saw her in recent years, she was acting in ways that both concerned and scared me because I cared about her.
    During those last years of her life, Leslie was not the person I had known and loved for so long. The lifestyle she was living and the choices she was making when it came to her health had really changed her. She felt she wasn’t in control, and I worried about that same thing. One night during a Christmas holiday, she went out partying. When she came home, she told me she thought she should be admitted to a mental institution. She said she’d done things that night that she badly regretted.
    My family quickly mobilized and did some research, looking for a place that could help her, but when we told Leslie what we’d found, she’d changed her mind. She thought that she might be better off if she moved to Canada. She actually would’ve preferred to live with our grandparents in upstate New York, but they feared it would be too hard for them to care for her.
    Although we continued to worry about my sister, she refused all of our further efforts to help her. Instead, she asked for money. Unfortunately, I was afraid she’d just use it to buy more drugs. This is such a serious issue today, throughout the nation and around the world. There are so many people in need of professional help who are self-medicating. The misuse of drugs is epidemic. People feel a pill can fix everything. And too often, they think more and more pills will make them feel even better when, in fact,