catching_the_train

I highly recommend reading Dale Carnegie’s book How to Win Friends and Influence People. He wrote it back in the 1930s or so, but it is still highly applicable to today. A lot of his suggestions seem so obvious on first glance, but after seeing these common sense suggestions in black and white print, I now feel like I understand people a whole lot better. He also teaches you how to listen better and remember other people’s names, among other things. This book literally changed my life. as exaggerating as it sounds, I truly mean it.

how do you forgive yourself for trusting someone who ended up stealing your virginity, calling you names (like stupid and prude), and dumping beer on you? How do you forget the shame you felt and how you tried to convince yourself you wanted it? How do you end the cycle of self-abuse that originated from that one incident? I just want to be free from this. I want to forget about the one-night stands and heavy drinking I did in college after I was raped. I want to forget that I tried to be someone else because being anybody else was better than being me. I hate how my friends only “heard what they wanted to hear” about how I was raped. How some believed I was overreacting. How emtionally my mom reacted when I told her so I could get professional help with this. It’s horrible feeling so vulnerable. It’s horrible knowing I’ll never get to prosecute him for what he did, what he stole from me. You’re either pitied or ignored and neither is pleasant. Post traumatic stress syndrome nearly ruined my college career and my relationships, but I made it through. I’m angry that I didn’t have much help through it. I still have so much anger after 4 years and I’m not sure I’ll ever have a healthy romantic relationship because I never have before. On a positive note, I’ve come a long way and who knows where I’ll end up if I keep trying to forgive myself and everyone else as well.

Egon Spengler was my hero growing up. haha
How does one get involved with this? It’s always been a dream of mine.