Goud Drinks Blog
Finally I'm back! Where have I been? How do I drop a blog and online store and just dip? Selfish, right? Unprofessional? Many words come to mind. Some I was told and some I told myself. Truth is, it was super easy, having a million things going on. When I first started this journey I was ready! It was something I've wanted for years and it was finally happening. Then boom. I found myself not even wanting to or having the energy to write. So let me rewind to about 2 weeks before I dropped my first blog post. My now husband, proposed to me! Super exciting right?! If you are close to me or read my last blog post then you know I have been through some stuff. So along with the excitement of my new blog, I also had a new fiance'! In addition to me being mom to my 3 kiddos, I now had to begin wedding plans. All of that while maintaining a part time bartending job..selling party drinks...bartending private events...personal training clients and now managing my online tshirt store (attached to this blog), as well as a few things Im working on with my husband.To say the least it was ALOT going on! With each hat I had to wear or task that needed to be done, there were things that came with it. Kids and their extracurricular activities, work and businesses with new business start up kinks and now a wedding to plan. Sheesh. So let's talk about this wedding stuff for a sec. We decided that a long engagement wasn't for us because we wanted to get our life together started ASAP. We were ready to travel, move together..start having babies and everything else newlyweds do. So February 22,2019 would be the day that we say " I do" .That left us with about 2 months and 1 week to plan!!Eeek..no pressure right? It's actually alot of pressure. I couldn't be engaged 24 hours before I had people asking questions. "When is the wedding? Where are ya'll getting married? What's your colors? When are you going dress shopping?" When..?Where..?How..???My head was already hurting and I hadn't even released my blog that I'd been working on for the past few months! I didnt have a chance yet to wrap my head around being engaged...my ring...marrying AGAIN..my kids. All of that , before I could start to even think about the details of that day. Being a true cancer I started going into my shell. I had to protect myself from letting people drive me nuts. During this time I learned that people will nag, bother, worry and harrass the hell out of you...about your day. At the end of the day, we just wanted to be married. Our desire to be married was far higher than wanting a wedding at all. I didnt really care about a huge wedding, tons of guests, an extravagant venue and a million flowers. None of that. I just wanted to be married. We just wanted to be married. There are people who hadn't been around in forever that popped up wanting invites. There were also people who wanted to celebrate you but only if they were apart of everything. Then we had those who just were happy for us and wanted to fit in where we allowed (my favorite kind of people by the way). Also the vendors are another level of " the people". As soon as we announced the engagement on Social Media the vendor floodgates opened! From caterers, djs,mua's, hair stylists, event coordinators, photgraphers, and the list goes on, all filled both of our inboxes. Even after we expressed we wanted something super small, nothing big, still people were persistent. Some had super expensive services, pricing over what we wanted to spend TOTAL. Im a business owner myself so I definitely get promoting yourself. My issue was the multiple Dms. That became a bit much. I, honestly, up until the day of the wedding was ok if my hubby would have said "Lets go elope". I was over it ALL! The wedding and everything with it played a big part in my stress and being overwhelmed. But the day was absolutely perfect. More than I could have ever imagined. We did it our way. I felt like a princess. I got to marry my best friend. Best day Ever. Had I fallen into what everyone else wanted, I probably would have regretted it. *Kool 6ix Tip* Do not let people dictate your life (decisions.wedding.day.week.NOTHING!) People will throw out all of the suggestions about your life and what you NEED to do, leaving you with the consequences , responsibility or whatever. We did things our way, within the budget we wanted to spend and we couldnt have been happier with the outcome. Although people can be overwhelming, they mostly dont mean any harm. They also don't know that you are receiving so much from every angle. Then there are those who dont care and will try to make things about them. One of the biggest things i took away from 2018 and utilized in this situation was saying no. Saying no to people, places and things that stress you out and saying yes to your to do list, your ideas, things that you need to do for you to be good. Self care. It's so important. Being in tuned with yourself and what your needs are is so crucial. Its so easy to get lost in your own negative thoughts, hectic schedules, people's expectations and demands. All kinds of things can cause you to neglect yourself. Say " no" to what you have to. Enforce those boundaries so you can have a personal space to figure it all out. Be SELFISH about yourself. Its super important that you take time for you. Whatever that means for you. Which is what I did! I needed to recharge for sure. Without going into too much detail, it's been alot. But I'm back!! And I have so much to talk about and share. I've included a few pics of me and my hubby from our big day. Enjoy!
"New Year, New Me.” I said the words out loud for what felt like the hundredth time, but the truth was it was ten days into the New Year and I’d brought the same foolishness into 2014 with me. I’d brought the same foolishness into the last three New Years with me if I was being honest with myself. Three years and three months into my marriage, I was 6 months pregnant and we were expecting our second child together. (My third, my first being from a previous relationship.) From the outside looking in you would think we had it all together. We were married, had beautiful children, financially stable, a nice home and even traveled. On the surface things seemed perfect but there was a problem... Instead of picking out baby names and painting the nursery I was sitting on the edge of the toilet contemplating suicide. Behind the perfect façade of a marriage was a husband that couldn’t keep his vows. For years I turned a blind eye to his cheating and when it was so obvious I had to address it, he would apologize and I would forgive him. This time was different. Maybe it was the hormones, maybe it was the weight of constantly being the bigger woman...I don’t know...but I was tired and broken. Exhausted. Desperate Overwhelmed. I’ve always had friends and been someone people could talk to but who do you talk to when you have to pretend? Everyone thought I was okay, everyone thought I was tough, but deep down inside it was breaking me and wearing the mask wasn’t something I was sure I could do anymore. How much I would have given just to have someone stop by and look into my eyes and know everything wasn’t okay, that could have saved my sanity. I never understood “check on your strong friends” until you’re the strong friend and no one is checking on you. Tired of the pain and the lies and even with all he put me through, even with all I sacrificed and forgave...he was the one that decided he needed space. A grown man responsible for two children and a pregnant wife moved back in with his mother because “He needed space.” As if that wasn’t enough to break me, I had to find out that not only was he cheating but he was cheating with someone I considered a friend. She was our co-worker, we all worked together, and it wouldn’t have been okay if it was a woman I didn’t know but the fact that it was a woman I knew took me beyond suicidal thoughts and depression. It took me to homicidal thoughts. I thought about killing her. I dreamed about it. For a week straight the dreams were so vivid I worried what would happen if I saw her. Not eating and not sleeping were making me delirious, I was the walking dead but I wasn’t going to be the only person that lost their life. The only reason I would spare him and not kill them both is because I wanted my children to at least have one parent. Those thoughts faded but they were there and that is what scared me. We watch shows like Love and Hip Hop and you see these women sleeping with the same men and going back and forth and it doesn’t feel real because it’s only an hour and there’s background music. When it goes off, our lives go on but what happens when there’s no commercial breaks or ending credits? You’re left to think about all the times she smiled in your face or listened to you talk about the same man she was screwing and the family that was being destroyed. On a quest to getting better I read my bible and prayed A LOT. Prayed until my knees were sore and my tears could no longer fall. I meditated and wrote down my feelings, trying to do all I could to escape what was going on. Only to still be left with my thoughts. Most of this took place in my closet because even though I knew my children were young, I didn’t want them feeling the energy I was putting out. If I’m being honest, nothing was working. Nothing! The depression I was in was taking me deeper into the hole than I’d ever been before. The part of depression when it comes to women, especially black women that we never talk about is that we don’t get to get better. I couldn’t afford to lie in my bed under my covers and forget the world existed. I had young children that depended on me to survive. I also had bills that needed to be paid. Putting my two year old to sleep I walked in the bathroom, knowing I needed to eat but not being able to, looking in the mirror I wondered what I’d done to deserve all of this? My phone was full of text from co-workers and friends telling me about the affair. Texts where they both lied to me like I was a fool. Where they tried to make me seem crazy even though they weren’t even trying to hide it. My entire life I thought suicide was a selfish act, you may feel like you’re doing the world a favor but in the end you’re just leaving behind a mess for someone else to clean up. My children, my unborn child, leaving all them behind because I’m feeling like there’s no way out. Suicide is selfish. But when you’re in a dark place, all you hear and feel is the pain and when nothing else works, you just want the pain to stop. That’s suicide. I opened the medicine cabinet and took out the pain pills from my last child birth, I held the bottle in my hand shaking and crying knowing I couldn’t take it anymore. That’s when I felt it. That’s when I felt him kick and move for the first time and immediately my heart fluttered I slammed the pill bottle in the bathroom sink before falling to the floor crying. “I’m sorry baby! I’m so sorry!” I said to my unborn son as I rubbed my stomach and lay on the bathroom floor. “I was a good wife! A good mother! Why God why is this happening to me? Why are you putting me through these tests?” I cried out to him wanting an answer because for the life of me I couldn’t understand. It was at that moment my two year old reached her hands under the door, it was too tall for her to reach so whenever I was in the bathroom it was her way of trying to get in. And like he was speaking to me to let his sister in and get it together I felt my son kick again and I knew I had to be strong for them, I had to overcome for them. I pushed the thoughts of suicide out my head and held my babies on the bathroom floor. That time in my life opened my eyes. It showed me that I was stronger than I would have ever imagined .I am bigger than depression...Life can really suck at times but you cant let circumstances allow you to lose yourself. I also learned that you cant let how people treat you affect you in such a way that you want to harm yourself or others. I was in a dark space that I will never visit again. My life is important. Life is important. How I'm treated doesn’t define me! If it wasn’t for those dark days, I’m not sure I would be here today. Maybe I wouldn’t be dead but I know I wouldn’t be this version of myself.