Amanda Nicole
Bio
Hey I'm Amanda! I'm a writer, Podcaster and a pet sitter. I'm much more then that! Read my stories to find out :)
https://linktr.ee/amandanicole2393
Stories (75)
Filter by community
Late Night Thoughts....
Quick Backstory: This is actually an excerpt from a book I recently published called Late Night Thoughts: What keeps me up at night part 4. I was very inspired by Taylor Swifts New Album Midnights. Which is a collection of Late Night Thoughts. This got me thinking about my own late night thoughts. So with that I decided to write a book, four to be exact. And believe me when I say some of the thoughts were heavy. I was able to process things I didn't know I needed to, I was able to let things go that had harbored in my brain for years and was finally able to find peace in my heart with things that I never thought I would. See to me writing is therapeutic, it's been elemental in my healing process and has allowed me to share my story and connect with people out there who've been through similar things. That has been more than humbling and for that I'm forever grateful. So without further ado...here is an excerpt from my last book.
By Amanda Nicole3 years ago in Humans
Dear Twitch
Dear Twitch, I used to watch you on Ellen all the time. You seemed so happy and fun loving. But I totally understand that was the part you had to play. You had to act like everything was okay. You had to act like you were okay and you had to act like the voices in your head weren't there. It's exhausting. It's exhausting to play a part that everyone expects of you. Isn't it? It wears on you. But perhaps this is part of a bigger conversation we all need to be having. That conversation is about Mental Health. I mean sure you were funny and dancey on Ellen and made millions of people smile. But we need to understand that that was a job for you. That wasn't your whole life. I'm sure you and Ellen were great friends. But she wasn't your whole life. My point is we need to have a conversation about mental health and suicide. We need to check on those we care about and realize that what we are being presented with isn't always the truth. Maybe we're all acting? Maybe it's just a part we feel like we have to play. It's tiring isn't it?
By Amanda Nicole3 years ago in Humans
Dear Colorado
Dear Colorado, Honestly saying sorry sounds very lame right now, because that's all we ever say when a mass shooting happens. We never actually do anything to change the laws or fix the very obvious issues in our world. We just say thoughts and prayers and move on 2 weeks later or until the next shooting happens. It's quite sad and gross to be honest. My heart is so full of sadness right now because not only was this a shooting but it took place at a club for members of a community that I not only support but am a part of. Last year I came out as Bi-Sexual after closeting myself for years. I finally came to terms with the fact that I'm also attracted to women. But this isn't about me. This is about the world. This is about the very obvious issues that are not being fixed, in fact they are being overlooked and ignored. I cannot believe that is what is happening right now. I want to say I'm sorry, I'm sorry that someone thought it was okay to go into a place and shoot people who were simply having fun. I'm sorry that someone was so homophobic in the location they chose. I'm sorry that nobody is doing anything to stop this from happening again. I'm sorry that there is still racism and prejudice in this country. I'm sorry that when someone told you they were going to a club to have fun you had no idea that would be the last time you'd ever see them. I'm sorry that this is still happening and nobody seems to care enough to change it. I'm sorry that this country is so divisive that we can't even work together to form a solution. I'll never understand people, I'll never understand the need to attack other people simply because they're different.
By Amanda Nicole3 years ago in Humans
F%cking Solitude
We live in such an extroverted world. Always on demand and vibrant. But what would happen if we just sat and listened to the sound of our own breath? What if we took some time out of our day and had some solitude? What if we all just slowed down and took a minute to process our emotions? What if we took some time to unpack all the baggage we carry around on a daily basis? Maybe lighten the weights that weigh us down on the daily. Perhaps we need to slow the f*ck down. All week long we run around and do all these things. But when do we actually sit and process all that took place? What if we did that? Are we too scared of what might come up? Are we too afraid of letting go because letting go would mean being happy? What if we actually took some time for our mental health. How much better we'd be? I think we'd be great! Maybe our self esteem would be higher? Maybe relationships would be better with those around us. Maybe we wouldn't have to hide behind phones and tablets and computers. Maybe we could actually connect with others.
By Amanda Nicole3 years ago in Humans
An Open Letter to My Current Self
Dear Self, I know you're having a hard time lately and hurting very deeply. I hope you know that you're not alone. You've been having flashbacks of your ex punching you in the face and then swearing he loves you. You've been hurting and wishing you had someone to hold you and keep you safe from people like him. But the truth is, nobody can protect you fully from things. You have to protect yourself sometimes. You can't rely on someone else to heal you. You have to heal yourself. I know it's difficult, believe me I know. You've cried alot. You've felt like absolute crap. But look at what you've done in the meantime. You've shared your story on social media and had so many people reach out and tell you that you're not alone. You've shown solidarity with your fellow survivors and that has been more rewarding then I can imagine. You will get through this. Healing isn't linear as I've said before. You have to just ride the waves, no matter how hard they may be. You have to understand that you will in fact be ok. You will get through this. Someone is going to love you and you will be happy. But for right now you need to learn how to love yourself. You need to unlearn all the lies your ex told you. You need to unlearn all the lies you told yourself. You need to learn some hard lessons. You've already learned alot and I want to give you credit for that. But you still have a lot more to learn. Your healing journey isn't over yet. You need to understand that love shouldn't hurt. You need to understand that you will in fact be okay. Everything is going to work itself out. You;ll find yourself. But you need to heal. And while that may seem impossible, it's not. You need to let go of all your anger and hatred of men, you need to realize that love shouldn't hurt and you need to forgive yourself and give yourself the apology your ex is not going to give you. He's to selfish for that. You need to soften your heart and let some light in. You can't live in darkness forever. You have to give yourself time to heal. This will take time and while you may in fact get impatient, it will be worth it when your done healing. You'll feel lighter and happier. You'll feel more at peace. You'll feel loved and will appreciate things that much more because of all you went through. You're probably saying to yourself that you've been through hell and it's been 3 years and you deserve peace and something good. That's all true! But you also need to heal. Think about it. If you got into a relationship now, You'd probably end up hurting the other person because your so hurt and still have a lot of healing to do. You need to take this time and get to know yourself again. Really figure out your boundaries and figure out what you want. You have to take this time and get to know you and actually be single. You've never been single for this long. And you've never had a healthy relationship so you need to learn what that is. Take your time. The right person will come at the right time and everything will fall into place. I know I sound like a fortune cookie but someday you'll read this and cry because you'll realize I was right. You'll realize why you had to deal with this.
By Amanda Nicole3 years ago in Humans
F%cking Good Men
I was having a conversation with a friend recently about the fact that when healing from abusive relationships you often confuse good people and bad people. You think that poeple who are nice to you have an ulterior motive and are simply trying to hurt you. Why? Because that's what you fell for, you fell for the nice person, the one who made you feel like you could trust them with everything and anything. The one who treated you so well you thought you were on cloud nine. However this person painted you a blue sky and then went back and it turned it grey. You lived in this persons chess game with the rules changing on the daily. So that's why now when you meet a nice person you automatically push them away by acting absolutley horrendous so that they don't like you. You push them away before giving them a chance to even care about you in the slightest. You act like a child around them so they do in fact think your immature and don't want to associate with you. Sound familiar? If it does keep reading! Do you now feel like a child? Do you now feel abosolutely stupid when talking to people? If so that's because you were probably made to feel or treated like a child by your ex. They made you so broken that you almost relied on them to raise you in a way. They made you feel like you had no voice or autonomy. The battle to get that back is exhausting. It's difficult and probably the most terrifying thing you'll ever do. I can say this because I'm currently in that stage myself. I'm currently in the stage where I'm trying to build myself up and feel confident again. It's exhausting. It's also terrifying because I still have voices in my head telling me I don't deserve to heal and I don't deserve to find actual healthy love. I don't deserve to feel safe with someone. But I f*cking do. I do deserve all of that. At least I think I do. Can anyone relate to this? I hope so! I hope my stories resonate with people. I share my story to educate and hopefully help others. I don't do it for attention or anything like that. I hope that one day I find a good person. A person who isn't going to hurt me and actually cares. I don't know if I will ever find such a person but I hope I do. I hope that anyone whose been through the same things as I have, will find their happy ending as well. I hope that you find someone who values you and loves you for you. No matter what. I can only hope. While it may be difficult to know who's a good person or not. I can only hope that the right person will make it easy for you to know. See in my mind you won't have to question it with the right person, you'll just know. You'll know that you can trust them and you can go to bed feeling safe. You can feel safe introducing them to your family and they won't have concerns either. And you won't have that feeling that it's to good t0 be true. The right person will love you correctly and respect all your boundaries and understand why you have them. They'll not only respect your triggers but make sure not to do them. And they'll do all these things because they not only want to, but because they love you.
By Amanda Nicole3 years ago in Humans
My First F%cking Kiss
I had my first kiss at the tender age of 15. I was in midst of an Alcohol/Caffiene Addiction and wasn't sleeping or eating. Somehow someway a guy found me attractive enough to kiss. I don't know if he was doing me a favor or just being nice. I'll never know to this day. I regret being drunk when I had my first kiss and here's why: I wasn't sober and I couldn't enjoy it. I also probably did a horrible job at kissing. I had also been sexually assualted the year before and was in a horrible amount of pain. I share my story to help others and add to a very important conversation. Was the guy who gave me my first kiss nice? From what I remember yes. But at the time I probably didn't think I deserved it and I probably thought he deserved better then me. I still think that. Looking back all these years later, I see how much pain I was in and how that guy was pretty much my life raft. That wasn't necessarily fair to him. We were young I was 15 and I think he was 16 I'm not entirely sure. But I needed help that he wasn't even close to capable of giving me. I needed therapy and lots of healing. I eventually got it. But I shouldn't have been thinking of kissing boys after all the stuff that had happened to me. However despite all those true facts, I've come to this conculson: I was meant to have that experience of getting my first kiss at 15 so that I could see a tiny glimpse of how I was SUPPOSED to be treated by someone. I was supposed to be treated that way all along. However I wasn't able to reciprocate seeing as I was in a lot of pain. I've also learned that I wasn't meant to have that person in my life any longer then a year. They had to leave so that I could bring my myself back to life again. I had to lose them for good. And while the road was rocky since (another assault and an abusive relationship later) I've finally realized that I deserve someone whose patient and kind. Someone who understands where I've been and supports that. Someone who knows that when I tell my story it's only for the purpose of helping others. Someone who is understanding of my triggers and doesn't let them happen to me. I need someone whose going to constantly prove to me that I can trust them and who loves me beyond measure. I realize this is a lot to ask but anyone whose been in my shoes will understand. I do have walls up and I need someone whose going to care enough to not only knock them down but understand that being in my life is a privledge that should not be abused. I understand this may seem like a lot to ask, but I don't think it is. I think it's important to have boundaries for yourself. Like I could never date someone who drinks alcohol. That would really trigger me and make me nervous. I'm not going to compromise that for anyone. I'm working on standing firm in my boundaries which I admit is a struggle sometimes because I do wonder if they are in fact reasonable. But they are to me which is really all that matters. What does this have to do with my first kiss? Well in a way it has everything because it taught me what I deserve.
By Amanda Nicole3 years ago in Humans
My F%cking Boundaries
I've been wanting to discuss this for a while but to be honest it has taken me awhile to come to terms with all the boundaries and whether or not they are reasonable. But then I realized that I shouldn't have to worry about whether or not something is reasonable to other people, what matters is if something is reasonable to me. I don't owe anyone an explanation. I can just simply lay out my boundaries and if people don't like it they don't deserve a position in my life. And that's taken me years to come to that conclusion. What are my boundaries? Well let's divide them into categories: Dating, Work and General.
By Amanda Nicole3 years ago in Humans
F%cking Social Media
Social media is everywhere these days, it seems like the only way to get anything done is on Social Media. Now please understand Social Media can in fact be a blessing, I've connected with other abusive relationship survivors and had amazing conversations. It's been amazing to connect with others who've been through the same things and to know that I'm not alone in my healing process. That everything I've been through isn't wierd and that other people can relate. I've also found some amazing authors through social media whose books have had profound impacts on my life and the way I think. I've also had the priviledge of sharing my story in hopes of helping other survivors. But behind the amazing connections and conversations I've had theres a dark side to social media. People showing you only what they want you to see and making there life seem just perfect enough. People editing photos to make themselves how they think you'd like them to look. It's a scary world Social Media. How are we supposed to make real authentic connections if we're on Social Media 24/7? The answer is we're not. Now I need to preface this by saying what I said earlier about connecting with other survivors. That has been a blessing. But on the other side of that Social media is filled with people pretending to be someone they're not. It's filled with people that who don't really care about you or have hidden motives. While Social Media can be a great place it can destory people. I think the trick is to balance reality from the destorted image Social Media presents to us. I think the most important thing I've learned is the value of being present. While I may have a mission of sharing my story to those that need to hear it, I also know that Social Media can be a toxic place. It's bad for my mental health and my healing process in some ways. Because while I can find other people that do in fact relate to everything I've been through, there are also times were I don't trust people and feel like maybe they're pretending to be someone else. Maybe I've seen to many episodes of Catfish. But I also don't trust people. It's really hard for me to anyways. See all my relationships in the past have been negative or unhealthy in some way and I'm still trying to work through that. I'm not stuck in my story, I do need to clarify that. I'm simply trying to heal. Heal from the crap I've been through and to be honest Social Media doesn't help to much. In fact it doesn't help at all. It makes things a bit worse. It can make me feel extremely lonely sometimes and unworthy of love. It can also make me feel fat and like I shouldn't eat anything. I realize Social Media can be a tool and a way to connect with people. I'm forever grateful for that. But I need to be careful also as Social Media has destroyed me over the years. I've had some interesting moments to say the least. I certainly apprecaite the good parts of Social Media but I don't appreciate the bad parts and the harm it can cause on people. It's pretty bad. I enjoy laughing at a good Tik Tok here and there and tweeting about whatever Easter Egg Taylor Swift has dropped recently. But I do want to make one thing very clear. I'm really trying to heal so on behalf of all other healing people be kind.
By Amanda Nicole3 years ago in Humans
F*ck Dating
It's been around 3 years since I became Single and one would assume that it would be time to start dating again. One would assume that after some time it would be a good idea to get back out there. While that is normally the case, I am not ready and here's why. As most of you know my last relationship was an abusive one, so with that I'm not ready to date. Dating requires a level of closeness that I'm not ready to explore. Dating requires you to be vulnerable with someone and get really close. It requires you to be open with someone in ways that you wouldn't be with anyone else. And that is something I'm not ready for. I'm not ready to open up to people like that. I'm not ready for any of the things that dating requires. Society puts so much pressure on us to open up and get back out there very quickly. And I need to be honest here and let you know that I've tried. I've tried so hard to get back out there and frankly it's scary. It's not something I feel safe doing. I've tried to flirt with people, message people and all that. I've tried. It doesn't feel good. It feels like I'm doing something wrong. It feels like I'm being a bad person. I have to work on that. It feels like I'm cheating on someone. I have to remember that I'm not cheating on anyone. I have to remember that it's healthy to get back out there and meet new people. It's healthy to make new friends. It's not a bad thing, But I'm not ready for that energy. I don't feel safe doing it either. I don't trust people either. I think that's part of the territory of recovery from abuse. I want everyone to know that if you've been through abuse, not being ready to date is perfectly okay. There is absolutley no rush. Society tries to rush us to get back out there and date. I realize that after some time one would want to get back out there, and don't get me wrong I'd love to get back out there. But right now I don't feel safe. This is a big deal. I'm working on feeling safe with someone. And to be honest, I've never been in love. I've never loved someone. I've been tramua bonded but not in love. Looking back it was extremley clear that I wasn't in love. I was trapped. I have no idea what love feels like. I need to learn. Now the question becomes, how is one supposed to know what love feels like if they don't try? And while that's a fair question to ask, I will only answer with it takes time. The only being I'm capable of loving is my dog. My dog saved my life and I will be forever indebted to her. Dating is not something I'm into. Now do I have moments where I desprately want to be loved and cherished? Absolutley. But I need to sit this one out for awhile and maybe forever. Maybe I'll never feel safe with a person in a romantic setting. Maybe I'll just be single forever. Who knows. But what I do know is that no matter what happens, I'll be okay. I'll be doing exactly what I need to be doing and I'll be exactly where I need to be. And most of all at the end of the day I'll be perfectly and utterly healed from all the crap in life.
By Amanda Nicole3 years ago in Humans
An Open Letter to My Ex.
Dear Ex, F%ck you! You love bombed me to the point where I couldn't see straight. You made me feel so good at first. But over time your true colors came through. You abused me, You left me with years of trauma to unpack. You left me so broken that I wasn't sure I wanted to live anymore. You destroyed me and left me unable to trust anyone. You never took accountability for your actions and put them on me. You gaslighted me to the point were I actually questioned my own sanity and felt my IQ drop daily. You made me believe I was an idiot. You made me believe I would never get anywhere in life. You treated me like sh*t during s*x. It was all about you. You're clearly the most selfish person I've ever met in my life.
By Amanda Nicole3 years ago in Confessions
