Inside Out

By Nyla V.

Inside Out joins author Nyla V. at the lowest point in her life. She begins writing a journal as the only way she knows how to attempt to deal with the pain she’s experiencing.

In her first layer of journal entries, Nyla details her descent into utter hopelessness while loving an addict she hopes will overcome his terrible ways. In her second layer of journal entries a year later, she demonstrates progress in new habits of self-love and care, showing the drastic difference in her overall well-being. Nyla waits three more years to add a third layer of journal entries, revealing healing through time—the process, the cycles, the setbacks, and the triumphs.

In this memoir, Nyla drops any cloaks of shame within her for the sake of truth as she poetically details experiences such as: loving a toxic person; struggling with depression, anxiety, and with stigma; being suicidal; catharsis; and the building of self-love in order to overcome it all. Through deeply personal and honest prose and poetry, Inside Out offers an exploration of self and meaning in life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press
• Release date: Oct 22, 2018
• ISBN: 9781982211929

Nyla V.

Nyla Verity is a Nationally Certified Counselor, a member of NAMI, and has struggled for most of her life personally with PTSD, Depression, and Anxiety. She writes memoirs as a mixture of deeply personal and honest prose and poetry. The result is always a spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings that connects and often causes healing waves of emotion to wash over her readers. She wants to connect. She wants readers to agree not to judge her and not to judge themselves. She wants readers to learn to love and understand themselves by witnessing her own commitment to self-love amongst so much inner and outer chaos and turmoil. She is undeterred by fear when it comes to revealing herself and her life to others, and she does it with great love, beauty, and integrity.

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Inside

Out

Nyla V.

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Copyright © 2018 Nyla V..

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and in some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.

Balboa Press

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

ISBN: 978-1-9822-1193-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-9822-1191-2 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-9822-1192-9 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018910687

Balboa Press rev. date:    09/07/2018

CONTENTS

Preface

Chapter 1   You’d Be Surprised What You Can Get Used To

Chapter 2   TMI

Chapter 3   Our Love Story

Chapter 4   You Never Know What You’re Beginning

Chapter 5   When So Much of Your World Is Dark, It Becomes Easy to See the Light

Chapter 6   We Need a New Word for Codependency

Chapter 7   The 180

Chapter 8   Just When I Thought He Could Not Hurt Me Anymore

Chapter 9   Every Day, I Remember Myself a Little More

Chapter 10   From Brainwashed to Truly Cleansed

Chapter 11   Looking Forward to Looking Back

Chapter 12   Only I Could End the Madness

Chapter 13   Overcoming My Own Addictions

Chapter 14   The Ultimate Truth, the Heart and Soul of the Matter

Chapter 15   Gliding on Grace, While It Rings Like a Bell

Chapter 16   Willingness, Acceptance, and Letting Go

Chapter 17   No Shame in My Shame

Chapter 18   Dear Mom and Dad, My Inability to Accept Your Humanity Was Really My Inability to Accept My Own

Chapter 19   Thanksgiving

Chapter 20   Happyology

Chapter 21   The Great Mystery

Chapter 22   Lost and Found: Happiness

Chapter 23   Counselors and TheRapists

Chapter 24   The Best Kind of Blues

Chapter 25   Thank You for Loving Me—And Letting Go

Chapter 26   Keep in Mind, the Previous Words I Wrote Were I Am Alive Again

Chapter 27   The Newest Year of All

Chapter 28   Integrity Is Freedom

Chapter 29   The Beautiful End Is Near

Chapter 30   Just When I Thought I Knew How the Story Ended—Solstice

Chapter 31   Letters Are the Most Beautiful Time Capsules

Chapter 32   Listen to the Song that I’m Singing—C’mon Get Angry

Chapter 33   In Closing

About the Author

PREFACE

Inside Out is a memoir in which I feel I have captured my own spiritual growth and triumph as it occurred. The majority of the book is written in the form of journal entries. The dated entries come first. In the second layer, I reflect on my journal entries from one year before, in order to display the great changes that occur after making self-love and personal happiness into my primary priorities. I wrote a third layer of entries and reflection three years after that.

The entries begin with me inside a toxic relationship with an addict. I had just hit rock bottom and had recently attempted suicide twice. I know it is off-putting to talk about suicide so bluntly, but I feel this is how I can do my part to extinguish the stigmas that prevent so many of us from showing our Truth and asking for the help that we really need. Depression is a disease that kills. That is a reality I know from experience. While depression can sometimes seem to be self-centered, in the end when a person is willing to take his or her own life, it is not about selfishness. It is about being overwhelmed and needing escape. We are not supposed to be given more than we can handle in life, but we are often given a lot more than we believe that we can handle. Suicide happens when hope is lost and the need for escape has become uncontrollable.

After two failed attempts, I decided that finding peace and joy had truly become a matter of life and death. I made an executive decision to follow any bit of bliss I could find within me, to immerse myself in knowledge of self-healing, and to begin a happiness-and-gratitude practice that would eventually lead me to awaken in ways I had never imagined for myself. Throughout these pages, you can see how I develop a new, trusting relationship with myself, God, life, and the universe, all while working to overcome a lifelong battle with resistant anxiety and depression.

I hope that those who are not spiritual are not put off by my frequent use of spiritual terms. Feel free to substitute anything you are more comfortable with for those terms. I would not want my spiritual views to keep any reader from gaining the healing or knowledge they could possibly find in this book.

The tone of this book is first-person-honest beyond reason. I hope to take readers on an emotional ride so personal, they will be jolted into their own catharsis and healing. I try to tell you my secrets in a way that will enable you to heal old wounds and understand yourself at a deeper level.

This book is a perfect and valiant companion for anyone in any kind of loving relationship with a toxic person. In fact, I was inspired to start this book after a thorough search through the bookstore for a work resembling these contents. I needed an unconditionally loving and encouraging friend by my side, one who understood it all perfectly. This is the intention of Inside Out: to be a nurturing voice to someone experiencing the harsh reality of loving a toxic person more than they love themselves. It is for anyone who has struggled with seemingly inescapable and serious depression and anxiety. It is also extremely informative for anyone on the outside looking in, desperately wanting to help a loved one in an abusive relationship and/or lost in excessive sadness and fear.

I found it hard to take anything for granted once I realized I am living the life that I would have lost had my suicide attempts been successful. This book demonstrates over and over again the immeasurable power found in personal acceptance, integrity, gratitude, and faith—even just the slightest bit of faith.

CHAPTER 1

You’d Be Surprised What You Can Get Used To

September 23, 2012

Night

Loving an addict is far from weak. I’m shocked at my own strength sometimes. It’s like being wildly manic depressive. The lows have been excruciating. But the highs outweigh them all, including the passion and perfection. That’s the very real height of this love.

You’d be surprised what you can get used to, he has the nerve to say to me.

My words to him are dramatic and pain-ridden, but somehow separate from me right now. I ask, How could you? while wishing I didn’t already understand. I add, I hate you, while knowing damn well I’m already dying to kiss and make up.

Every minute passes by. He’s gone now. I get angrier and angrier, more and more hurt. But most of all, it’s a state of terrible yearning for him to walk through the door. I’ll see him soon and be wrapped up in his arms in a matter of seconds. I’ll put the hurt behind me and cling to what feels like my last bit of hope that he will be the exception to the rule of the addict: a walking miracle.

One year later

I am extremely surprised at what I’ve become used to—living in this exhausting and depleting pain for so long. My last bit of hope remains, still picking me up off the floor and taking me through the motions, slowly going and going until I have just barely enough strength to be knocked down again without simply dying. Seriously, woe is me. Woe is all me.

As a psychotherapist, I see myself clearly. I am a classic, codependent enabler living in denial of the fact that the best prediction of future behavior is past behavior. I’ve never had such contempt for my profession’s diagnostic terms. I believe in holding myself accountable for playing a major role in my present situation, but the self-disgust that comes from defining myself by these terms is not helping at all. I’m trying to build self-acceptance.

What I’ve learned above all else in the last year is that I am human. And I needed that. It seems that all gifts we possess as humans always come with their curses too. I have a great ability to forgive and to understand and to show kindness to those whom others find undeserving. The downside of these abilities is that I am often taken advantage of, alienated by my open mind, and chastised for my idealistic need to be good and see the good in others.

We live in a world where people brag about how mean they can be, how aggressive and powerful. I refuse this world—often to my own detriment, but always to the credit of my conscience.

I have loved Noah as if it were a spiritual obligation, as if my soul were sworn to love him beyond my human control. I can’t fully understand at this point what I am still doing in a relationship that is easily termed abusive. I have wondered if I am drawn to the drama, if I am playing out childhood trauma, and if my relationship is an obstacle to be overcome. Or perhaps the love and friendship that I perceive between us is just so true that it will weather the storm. For some, there are exceptions to the rule. I have yet to be one, but hope is still an incredibly beautiful thing—no matter where it leads.

Three years later

I choose to love myself as if it were a spiritual obligation, as if my soul were sworn to love even my human imperfection. I am no longer in an abusive relationship with anyone. I am not drawn to drama; I am healing childhood trauma, and my relationship with myself is no longer one to overcome but one to embrace and nurture. I am the exception.

Four years later

I am one of those people who moves around a lot. I like starting over. I like trying new experiences and gaining new perspectives. I’ve always been ruled by my emotions, by my heart. I’ve always had to follow it, no matter the trouble it brought me. I’ve never held a job for long. I’ve left them all in one of two ways. Either the job becomes overwhelmingly stressful, and I bear the anxiety for as long as I can—until one day I hear myself telling the boss some lie about how much I do not want to quit but unfortunately have to. Or I mysteriously vanish one day as the result of some crisis, loss, mental breakdown, or spiritual awakening that no one at the job has any clue about. They would be shocked to see me in such a state. I’ve led them all to believe I’m one of the happiest, most easygoing people they have ever met.

I can’t help it. It was always my nature to nurture, and this nature did not combine well with my engrained, false belief that I am responsible for the feelings of everyone around me. I thought everyone’s feelings mattered more than mine. I thought feelings like anger, fear, and sadness were wrong. I thought expressing them to or around others was a burden. The entirety of my self-worth was based on what others thought of me or felt about me rather than any true inner sense of worthiness.

Living like that caused me an incredible amount of confusion. I lost my sense of self. I thought I knew myself. I’d think, How can I not know myself if I am myself? As I continued daily for years to resist or hide and stuff down the emotions that I believed to be negative and of no good use, this cloud of confusion within me grew thick and dark. I felt more and more broken and out of place in the world. I lost all sense of direction. My inner guidance system seemed all out of whack. I was always trying so hard to think and feel what I believed was right, what I believed I should be thinking and feeling. Eventually, I lost all sense of what I truly felt. I suffered with major anxiety and depression while having no real clue (consciously) where the suffering was coming from or why it was happening.

I am so thankful right now as I think back over the years and realize that while I viewed myself as always starting over and never really getting anywhere in life, there were actually a few things I was deeply committed to. And they have carried me to where I am today.

Where is that? I am in a place where my peace grows exponentially with every season, first within and then without. I never stopped asking why. I never stopped trying to understand myself. And I never gave up hope that I would eventually learn how to heal my suffering.

There were times when I lost all hope and faith. These were the times that life showed me grace, the times when I gave up and admitted to myself how lost I was and how hurt. There were times when I just kept going, kept living, even though I was dying inside. I can look back at each one of those times and see how, in admitting my helplessness, I allowed life to take the next step for me. I would find myself back on my hopeful path of healing again.

The path was never straight and never seemed to go as predicted. It was a spiral, a cycle of experiencing, learning, and repeating similar experiences with newfound perspectives and new opportunities to use what I had learned.

I see the spiral as heading directionally inward and outward at the same time. The outward experiences always led me back within, where I searched for answers until I reached the core. That is where a new Truth became unveiled, most likely something I strongly resisted. This let me see out of fear that the Truth would be painful somehow or that it would reveal me to be of low worth or cause me to feel shame. But time and time again, I found that the ultimate Truths underlying my questions were always healing. I learned to trust that it was okay to explore my shadows. I learned how to look within, honestly, gently, and with full compassion. And to this day, my growing willingness to see the Truth within myself has always led me to greater peace and experiences of joy—again, first within and then without.

You’ll see what I mean.

CHAPTER 2

TMI

September 24, 2012

Night

Night is reflection and new affirmation. I say, "I am a prolific poet, author, painter, singer, writer, and artist." It’s what I’ve always been—this soul on fire. I plan to check in with the people who are worried about me. I’ve piqued their curiosity too much. But my problems aren’t the kind you go around telling everyone about.

I tried to kill myself twice. I took 150 sleeping pills, and as unbelievable as it sounds, I just slept and was out of it for a few days. A week or so later, in the same depths of emotional pain, I took thirty of my ADHD capsules and twenty or so antidepressants and ended up hallucinating. I lost control of my body. I had no strength, I was hearing things, my heart was racing, and my blood pressure was near stroke level. I had to go to the hospital for treatment for an overdose.

I couldn’t work. My parents threatened to disown me. Some of the people closest to me betrayed me deeply and judged me harshly when I was so far down. The love of my life stole from me while I was in the hospital. This was mind-blowing, because he was there through most of it until they wanted me to sleep. He was there, seeming so truly and genuinely concerned and guilt-ridden, loving me and supporting me, saving the life he knew he’d contributed to nearly ending.

He went on a binge all day when we got back home, leaving to get Benadryl for me. I thought there was no way he’d abandon me that day, but addiction is stronger than everyone and everything sometimes. I was so lost … rock bottom. I felt that God would understand. I even accepted it as a must-be fate. But God didn’t let me die, when by physical law and reality it seems I should have.

A very big part of me did die then. During the week following my attempts, the most frequent sentence running through my head was Nyla Verity has left the building. And where am I now? Waiting. I’m waiting to know clearly what I want or need in order to live my greatest life. Because it’s all a matter of life and death now—and I can never get that sick again.

One year later

I am not proud to say that I have attempted suicide. It’s actually extremely scary for me to share that with anyone. But it feels important, because it is a reality of the deep, dark depths of depression. It was never something I had seen as a possibility in my life; it was something I had talked others out of a number of times.

Shortly before my attempt, I suddenly stopped taking my antidepressants, for reasons I will get into later. This is extremely dangerous. I remember my doctor saying, You didn’t have a chance. He also asked me if, when I arrived at the hospital, the fear of being so close to death had made me suddenly want to live. It had not. I told him my fear was that I was going to go on living in an even more difficult situation (such as paralysis from a stroke or any other serious damage I’d caused). Unfortunately, my desire to live was still something I needed to work hard on.

I’ve developed a fear of medication for my mind. Looking back, I can see times when I thought medication was helping me, but all in all, I think it has delayed my spiritual growth and denied me of the true message in my depression: that my life is very out of balance. I am determined at this point to work through it all, to balance things out and experience true and lasting healing. Years of medicating has gotten me out of touch with who I really am and what I really want and need to live a life of contentment.

I have purchased the book Unstuck by Dr. James Gordon. I was looking for some kind of guide and support that would help me find ways to work my way out of the muck. The more severe the depression, the more difficult it is to take the steps necessary to get out of it. I realized when I began reading this book that my self-confidence was so low, I found it very hard to believe that I could make any lasting changes for myself.

The book suggests that you start with your own prescription for self-care. I sat and thought for a long time about anything I knew of that I could do that would bring me peace or joy. It was surprisingly difficult at first, but I did a simple, deep-breathing meditation for a few minutes, and the answers began to flow out of me.

I believe in baby steps, in doing any little thing that increases hope. My initial prescription for myself included taking three bubble baths per week, praying daily, cleaning one room daily, writing anything daily, and reading something inspiring daily. The most difficult task I gave myself was to consistently affirm to myself true acceptance and unconditional love. If I have this gift to give others, it is extremely important to give it to myself.

It is not easy, but deep breaths help. I try to pay attention to my thoughts and turn them around when they are self-defeating, or at the least try to turn them off through positive distraction. I believe in these subtle changes—that they will cause subtle shifts, which will lead to greater change and greater, more positive shifts in consciousness.

I have seen now that I can become things, terrible things that I never thought I could be. I could easily be one of those people who is just too beaten down and cannot get up, someone you see and wonder what happened to make them so miserable. I understand these people now and have no judgment toward their life situations, only sympathy and compassion. Very lucky for me, though, there is some kind of warrior deep inside me who slowly woke up and said, I will make something beautiful from all of this. Believe in me, and I will overcome.

Three years later

What I know now is stigma is not just about what others think of me. It can be about something that matters so much more—what I think of myself. Stigma kept me from accepting that I needed help and support. That denial kept me in depression, in the belief that I alone should be able to think my way out of it or pray my way out of it. I have tried as hard as anyone could to overcome my mental health issues without the help of professionals, but in the end found such help necessary. I’ve admitted to myself that I need help, that depression is an actual disease which, untreated, can cause death.

None of the self-work I did while in denial was in vain. Self-love will always lead you to the outcome for your highest good. Self-love is the most important thing, more important than medication. In my case, it is part of what led me to eventually allow myself medication, but self-love could lead someone else to completely different conclusions that are uniquely self-fitting.

In Truth, loving yourself is what is best for you and everyone around you. But first you have to know yourself. Only then can you provide yourself with the true love and acceptance that will lead you to peace of mind.

Four years later

In reality, we are all addicts and codependents in one form or another. We are always looking to external sources for our peace and happiness. That is codependence. When we behave this way, we learn time and again that it is to our own detriment. No outside desire brings us to the true fulfillment of the love unconditional that is our true thirst. True fulfillment, true peace and joy, can only come from within.

I learn this lesson over and over again. When we continue a behavior after realizing