Mind of Snaps - Positivity Podcast | Ep. 63 - "Let Go Of Hatred"

Welcome to "Let Go Of Hatred" - the 63rd Episode of the Mind of Snaps Positivity Podcast!

This is a special podcast series that is separate from the regular Mind of Snaps Podcast, with a new release (typically) posted every Monday for Patreon supporters!

It is my goal to create as much positive & encouraging content as I can during these intense, uncertain times we're faced with. 2020 was so much more than anyone expected it to be, and nobody should have to take it on alone. The only way I can continue to do so, is with your help.

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Hang in there, friends... we're all in this together.

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Jessy (Mind Of Snaps / SheSnaps)

www.MindofSnaps.com

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Transcript

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Good morning, my lovely friends. Hello, good day. It is February now 2021. That's wild. We are in a new month, and I am ready for it. At least as ready as I can be considering we're still in a pandemic. And I'm still going through all of this crazy pregnancy stuff. Speaking of that, I have been trying so hard to figure out what kind of schedule makes the most sense for me since becoming pregnant, and it has been very tough. So thank you for being so incredibly patient with me as I try to figure things out, I started to realize that sleeping in seemed to help a lot. But it was making it easier for me to work longer hours during the day, but it was also making it harder for me to keep up with the podcast and some other habits that I did not want to let fall apart. So I figured I would start publishing the podcast on Fridays, rather than Mondays figuring, like, Alright, I can do it a little bit later in the day, I don't have to rush around cool. And then that didn't happen. started cleaning, doing my usual Friday things. And I tried to get myself ready to write the podcasts in the day just disappeared on me. Then I worked all day Saturday. And when Sunday came around, I tried to only enjoy my day off and not work at all, which is why it is now Monday again, and I'm just now finally able to get this podcast out to you. The silly thing is, I have known what I wanted to talk about since last Monday. But I think maybe I was just avoiding it without realizing it. Because when I had first started thinking about it, I was in a pretty emotional state. And I mean, I guess since being pregnant, like that's kind of my life now. But I digress. Anyway, let's just get into it. Thanks again, though, I really do appreciate all the patients. So last week, I woke up in the middle of the night at some point, and I became almost immediately upset. I had two dreams back to back that involved my sister, not the sister that's currently staying with us. But my older sister Tanya, if you're unfamiliar with the story, she unfortunately passed away 13 years ago, I was 21 at the time, so I was an adult and we had grown up very close. We were living together at the time too. So that was really tough. Each of us had actually moved out when we were 18. But due to some unexpected circumstances, we each found ourselves back living at home with our parents again, within like a year or so. And after having a taste of the quote unquote free life, ie life without parental rules, we both realized that we could not stay living back at home for long. So we decided that we would move out of our parents house again and move into a rental house together. We found this super dope spot by a nearby beach that was just right for us and our needs at the time. We we had such a blast living together because the house we found the first one was total party house. We were having these huge parties nearly every weekend, we had bonfires all the time. And just people were always kind of hanging out at the house. Like almost every weekend, someone or like one or two of our friends would show up and just plan to stay for the weekend. It was it was a blast. During during all of these super fun weekends and parties, like a lot of people, we would take all kinds of pictures and videos on our fancy new camera phones and digital cameras. And then they'd get backed up and printed out from this old ass computer that I had that was in our shared living room at the time. So we had tons and tons of just absolutely wonderful and super ridiculous memories saved. We lived in that house for a little over a year. And then we moved to our next rental house together. It wasn't as equipped to be a party house as our last space. But as as two women in their early 20s found out. You know, it didn't really stop us It could still be a party house. So we we enjoyed that house as well. Not too long before the move though. into the second house, I met and started dating one of my exes. Things moved rather quickly. And by I think December of 2007 he had moved in with my sister and I our relationship was really smooth at first. He was incredibly complimentary, showered women with affection and with gifts like he was buying the little things, flowers, things like that. I really thought that we had something so special. And as a result, my brain did a fantastic job of just looking past every red flag that was just being thrown right at me. We had not been living together very long when he began to get very jealous over all kinds of interaction. My usual nights out with my girlfriends were starting to get shut down, I stopped going out as much to avoid fights. Then it became clear that he had some serious anger issues, especially when drinking. And at the time I was newly 21, and not quite ready to fully quit the partying lifestyle. So we drank together often, he would punch holes in the wall and even broke a glass window one night because I didn't listen to him during during an argument. So one day, I was at work, and he read my entire journal, and then destroyed it. Because he didn't like what he had read about my whole life from before I even met him. There were details of sexual encounters and other random thoughts in there that he wound up finding himself disgusted by so he shredded it and tossed it. I came home that day, to an angry boyfriend demanding that I sit down and write a list of every person I had been with before him. Then he used that list to call me a disgusting whore among plenty of other colorful words. If you're wondering why I didn't leave, then, at the time, I was still very insecure, really hated myself. And on paper, this guy seemed like he was too good for me. So I didn't want to lose them. I, I want along with everything he said, he made me apologize for being a slot before I met him, made me promise that I wouldn't talk to any of the people I had been with ever again, and essentially told me that if I wanted him to stay, and for us to work things out, I'd have to work hard to earn back his trust. I will honestly never forget the look of just absolute disgust on his face as I was begging him to not leave me. Not too long after this, after all of this stuff started to get to not get so great. My sister got sick. She got bronchitis, which turned into pneumonia, which turned into a very dangerous and severe form of pneumonia. She wound up being hospitalized for a couple of months. Now in my family, because a lot of us have had health issues. Like we kind of have a common practice, right? If someone goes into the hospital, we all kind of get together and do what we can to ensure that that person never has to spend a night alone. I have spent countless nights sleeping in hospitals when my sister was hospitalized to treat her liver disease. Or my dad being in the hospital, my mom being in the hospital like any any time it happened, we came together. So my sister and roommate, you know, at the time was in the hospital. And it was clear that she was going to be there for a while because her normal health issues made it even more of a challenge to treat her when she was sick. So it was a super scary situation for a while and there were a few nights in there where the entire family was at the hospital. Just the entire night on the edges of our seats, worried we might lose her. I wanted to be at the hospital a lot. I would tell my then boyfriend my plans to go and spend time with her after work most nights. And he would talk me out of it. His work schedule was slightly different. So he could only go with me on weekends usually. And the rest of the nights I would go alone or with one of my brothers or with a friend. It started becoming more and more difficult for me to see her as often as I wanted. Because he constantly disagreed with me on how much it was needed. And like if anyone's ever been in a relationship like this, this agreeing basically means like it's over. It's done for because if I would try to like fight for whatever it is I wanted to do, it would turn into a huge blowup fight. So it was just not worth it most of the time. But I remember wanting to go one night and him saying why you're gonna see her this weekend. Why do you need to go now. And you know, I was still scared to lose him. So we just waited and went along with a suggestion that he had to wait until that weekend. There was there was one night where I wanted to go see her but he decided to make us Valentine's dinner plans that night so I wouldn't be able to stay very long. I'll never forget the look on her face that night like never. We went and we brought her some chocolates and a little Valentine's gift and I think some coloring books and found out that my mom wasn't actually there at the time because normally there was always someone with her like I said so she was alone. She looked so happy to see us. So happy so relieved. Like she was gonna have some bugs for the night. And then after only staying a few minutes or so he told her we had to go because we had a reservation for dinner. She looked so disappointed and sad but didn't say anything. My sister Rhonda passing away less than a month later. And it was unexpected. Like we really thought that she had rounded a corner and was going to be okay. She had even been discharged from the hospital again and was supposed to be coming home to live with me again soon. I won't get into the details of her passing for the sake of time. But if you want to know more, you can always watch my mental health stream that's on my YouTube channel, the mine of snaps YouTube, where I talk all about it, you can get more of the details. So Tonya and I were close, you know, we're best friends. We could fight like hell at times, of course, like we grew up together, but we were always there for each other, and I could not help but feel awful. Like I had let her down in the final months of her time on Earth. I had already been suffering from severe depression, among other things for years before that. And after she died, I had to return home to a house full of her things. But without her, I fell deeper into it. I quit my job because they had also made it hard for me to see my sister. And I could not look at the boss that I have the same anymore. And I basically just stayed in bed for months after. If I did leave it was to go out and drink or to see family. I just I felt like a shell of a person, you know, just not there. I rewatch old videos from the parties that my sister and I through look through old photos and I called her cell phone multiple times a day just so I could hear her voice on voicemail. After the way she had struggled with health issues her whole life but always managed to persevere. None of us ever expected to actually lose her. We felt like she was invincible. Like seriously, she had made it through three liver transplants, shits crazy. Her death completely shattered that notion, and it felt like it had shattered me along with it. My boyfriend at the time varied between being extremely understanding in absolutely horrible. At one point, he began to get upset that I wasn't very interested in sex chakra right. And he used stuff he remembered from my journal to tear me down further. Back when he had gone through it, he found a journal entry where I had talked about feeling bad for turning down a previous boyfriend one night when I wasn't feeling well. So he brought that up. And he accused me of not caring as much because it had been far longer than one night and it didn't seem to bother me at all that I kept turning him down. I started working really hard to mask my feelings and to get through my days and I did so with the use of alcohol and drugs. Back then I was a little more open to being reckless. And I would buy Vicodin from friends I would I had a previous supply from like a surgery and then I started buying some after that. So I would have nights and honestly days during the week where I would be high on a mixture of weed Vicodin and alcohol just to numb myself enough to function. And functioning at that time mostly meant like partying or having people over to drink or trying to you know, work my way through these, like temp jobs and stuff just to make a little bit of money. So one night, we had people over at our house, everyone's drunk havin a good time. And some girlfriends and I started going through old photos on that old computer that I had mentioned, my ex was in the other room talking to some friends and we weren't going through looking for anything in particular, we just did what we had done a bunch of times in the past under random folder, turned it on to slideshow and then just sat back to watch the photos flip through past all of these ridiculous embarrassing photos of previous parties and just random shenanigans. So you know, it's a party, we got the music bumping, we're laughing we're having fun and out of nowhere. A photo shows up of me kissing this guy that I had not even really dated, but like really just had that one night where we kissed before I met my boyfriend way before I even met him. And we all laughed and made jokes about how awkward it was. We didn't make a huge deal out of it. It was just funny. Like, oh, that's awkward. Where'd that come from? So I stopped the shot slideshow, deleted the photo and then we just moved on. Apparently my ex had noticed all of this out of the corner of his eye. And although he didn't say anything at the time, he was pissed. The night ended without further issue. So A while later, I came home from working one of those temp jobs to find out that my computer was missing. We were really poor at the time and we were facing possible eviction. We were in the process of taking on odd jobs selling off things so that we can make money and survive. So when I saw the computer was missing, of course, I immediately became upset because that computer had all of the photos and videos from my sister and I plus a ton of her own personal photo albums. So I asked my boyfriend where it was and he very nonchalantly responds that he sold it to a friend. We need the money. I begged him to get it back or to contact his friend and at least ask him to back off of all the files that i could get them back and he told me what so much time passed with me asking him constantly to get back in touch with his friend and each time there was a new excuse he had a different phone number or he was working different hours he said he'd do the backup but he just needed time just on and on finally after i don't even know how long of me asking about it my ex told me that the hard drive had been wiped accidentally in the photos and videos were gone i was so heartbroken i tried so hard to get him to ask his friend if we could just take the hard drive into someone professional because i had heard that files can be retrieved from crazy circumstances even after like fires so i just i could not believe that they were gone i knew like i had to at least try to get them back but he refused saying there was nothing that could be done i spent probably years believing that this was what happened and feeling so shocked that he would just sell my computer without asking and without doing any kind of a backup but i didn't know what could be done about it so i just kept trying to survive it took a long day long time before one day during an argument he blew up at me and started doing his usual routine of telling me what a slot i was and how lucky i was to have met him because otherwise i'd still be out getting used by guys who don't care about me and how lucky i am that he was able to get over his disgust towards me and so on blah blah blah and then he threw in something new this is why i smashed your old pc to pieces you were so happy saving all these pictures from dudes you fucked and looking through them with friends behind my back and now they're gone worst thing is that there weren't even photos of axes on there when we started dating out of respect i deleted nearly every one of those photos i could find he had literally only missed one photo of a guy i had kissed but never even got remotely serious with he held on to anger from that night at our party for so long that he couldn't take it anymore and he took my computer out into our backyard one day when i was out of the house and he took a fucking baseball bat to it i'm not even kidding a fucking baseball bat he took something so precious away from me all out of jealousy and then he lied to me about it for years sadly this wasn't the breaking point it should have been and i continued to date him for a total of nearly nine years it was brutal during that time i was demeaned constantly had every shred of privacy removed from my life lost friendships and lost myself it wasn't all bad of course but really the only reason things were ever good was because i was playing a part i had been pushed into and was afraid to break out of so this last this this was all very long story that came out of me mentioning these dreams i had about my sister this this last week i had back to back dreams about her and in one of the dreams i knew that she had passed away and i was calling her cell phone over and over and over again so i could hear her voice on voicemail like i used to do sadly her number has long been deactivated so i don't have the option of doing that anymore i woke up and i started trying to hold on to the dream and that's when it hit me like a ton of bricks that i can barely remember her voice anymore it's been 13 years since she died and when i tried to imagine her voice or her laugh it's faded to a very faint memory of what i think she sounded like i sat in bed crying for a while over how much i miss her and how i would kill to just hear her voice one more time and then i started to remember that the reason i don't have easy access to recordings of her now is because my ex i started to think about that and i could feel myself growing so angry and so resentful so quickly the fact of the matter is he stole something from me that can absolutely never be replaced he took memories and special moments that my sister and i had together and he smashed them to bits out of petty jealousy he prevented me from seeing her in the hospital over and over because he didn't want to be inconvenienced before i knew it my brain was just saying over and over i hate him i hate him i fucking hate him It was then that I caught myself going down a useless path. How does that hatred help anything? How does allowing anger and this intense fucking tension that comes with it? How does allowing that to build in my body change anything? Well, hating him or staying angry at him bring my sister back. Will it help me get those photos and videos again? No, it won't. Instead, I'll go back to where I once was where everything that shows up in my life. That reminds me of him, would also immediately remind me of how angry I was and how much I hated him. I was with him for nearly nine years. That's a lot of potential for memory triggers. Do I really want to be feeling like this every time a memory related to him surfaces? No. And don't? Am I justified in my anger? Of course. Does it make perfect sense for me to hate someone who treated me so poorly and stole from me something so meaningful? Something entirely irreplaceable? Sure, but does it serve me? Not in the fucking slightest. Living with hate and anger is us drinking the poison and expecting the other person to suffer. It doesn't change anything other than our state of mind and our ability to live our lives with peace. I am committed to maintaining my peace. No matter what someone does or has done in the past, I will not hold on to hatred towards them, I will not justify continuing to be angry at them. It is an absolute total waste of my time. And it clouds my judgment in my thinking and my perception, it changes the way I interact with my world. Remember, though, like choosing not to hold on to hate or anger does not mean I would ever let that fucking guy back in my life. No way in hell. I want nothing to do with them. But it does save me from having to carry around the heavy burden of hatred and anger for the rest of my life. So this week, think about some of the Times recently that you may have found yourself using the word hate to describe your feelings toward another person. Think about the people who aren't in your life now but you still carry anger or resentment towards notice your mind attempt to justify holding on to those things and then try making a conscious choice to release them. They do not serve you. It does not mean you have to drop boundaries or allow these people to be held in high esteem internally. It just means you choose to release yourself from an unnecessary burden. anger and hatred will not change the past, but they will taint the future every fucking chance they get. We deserve to exist with clearer minds and with the freedom that comes from not holding grudges. I've been choosing to release mine each time they show up. And I hope you'll join me. Release the hatred. Release the anger. Take a few slow deep breaths and then get out there and manifest dope shit.