~love~

Im sure i am SO ready to get done with my senior year! for me, my life will be moving fairly fast, for an 18 year old, im getting married in the summer! woo hoo! he has not proposed yet.. little slow on that, haha but it should be soon because summer is comming! august is the month we are currently planning on. I am so in love with this man, have known him for almost two years, and my love has never got short with him. we have had a bumps in the road, but we always seem to work them out perfectly! getting closer and closer to the day of marriage, and listening to others tell me different stuff, i realize there is A LOT of responsibilty the comes along with marriage, but luckily i am marrying a man who loves me, loves my family, loves to help others,  puts everyone before him to make their day lighter, and a man who i know will be a good father. yes, he is a little older, well, a lot older, but i have gotten to know him in the last two year, and my family recently, and we all do love him so much, and of course, i have not told you the age yet, he is 27. People always gasp when i say that, then i feel guilty, but i have to remember that if i love him, and my family loves him, and he loves me and my family, then their gasp should mean nothing to me. thanks again everyone who has read my blogs, i hope to make an impact on anyones life, even if it is just one, and i hope to help myself, i am not too active in the church right now, and i am happy, but the difference is the happy i am right now, is different then the happiness Heavenly Father has provided, we all have our struggles in life, and yes, i have had a hard past, but it does not excuse my actions today, i am the captain of my ship, and i steer it where ever i choose to, so i must take the storms the come my way, but i savor the many moments of joy in my life. " God takes away things from the palm of your hand, no matter how small the amount, only to simply prepare you for more to come" -unkown

The Background of my Trials

My name is Tiffany Camille Driggs.This is my firist post, so i will just give a little background of my life. Well, my life has had so many ups and downs, and all has taught me something. People in the past have asked me questions way off track of what really has happened in my life, and there are people who question my life and my decisions, so to get everything straight about me and my life, this i think will help, i also feel blogging will help me understand my self, when i write things or talk about things that i have been thinking about usually change just because i am getting it on paper or verbally. so im excited to blog. Things have happened in my life that people dont know about, and i might share things on here i have only shared with close people, i hesitate to share it for several reasons, because the past is the past, and i am happy with the way things are today so i dont really know if there is a need to share it, and if im know i am happy, no ones opinions really matters, but i want to tell more about my past just because i want people to know the dangers of life out in this crazy world. So i will share these experiences from the past, but know things today are so much better, and i love the way my life is now. i want people to not judge off hand. i hope i can touch at least one persons life and make a change.

        Well lets start with the thing in my past that started a lot of the confusion, stress, hurt, and anger in my life. Keep in my mind this information i hope will help some one out there. In the summer of my 8th grade year i was raped. I met a guy who looked nice and he wanted to hang out with me, he did not look the age he actually or probably was. He looked a lot younger. So, i thought this guy was really cute, as a 8th grader i was pretty excited to see him. so he told me to sneak out of my house, which i had never done before, but, i didnt think it would hurt, so i did. and hence.. my rape. Of course he threatened to kill me if i told anyone, me as a 8th grader i believed him. so i didnt tell anyone. i started having nightmares shortly after. i started making decisions that hurt my life so much because i didnt know how else to feel the "happiness" i felt before the rape. so i found things of instant gratifiction with other guys, just to feel wanted again after that incident. My mom started to see the poor choices i was making, she didnt know why, because i didnt tell her anything about my horrible night. I basically was a teenagers gone wrong in others peoples eyes, not a teenager trying to seek out for acceptance. My mom did everything she could to keep me safe, but i got to the point where i was just doing it and i loved it. One night, sleeping on the couch, my mom heard me sleep talking, and i was having a nightmare of my rape.she heard me talking, so later that morning she asked me what that was all about, and i finally told her, we got a therpaist to help me pass this, but i still had the mindset of lying to get my way, the choices i was making then was not related to my rape anymore, but because of the instant gratification, thirll, and acceptance i got out  sneaking out with guys, guys i didnt even know sometimes. the thing about being raped is a lot more then what it seems, first, when u are raped, to common things happen, either, you pull away from men at all costs, or, you go towards men, which is what i did, because it was a MAN that hurt me, it was almost like it had to be a MAN to fill that hole the another MAN took from me. so, i was not really working on my therapy my mother provided me with. only one thing seemed to work a little. My nightmares i had about the night was just like i was re living that night over again. i would see his face, i would wake up scared, sweating, and never going back to sleep scared to fall asleep in that memory again. so my Therapist, we will call him bill, bill told me to repeat the dream twenty times, but with a different ending, a good ending, so i eneded with, i got out of his car, went up stairs, told my mom, called the police, and he went to jail. i repeated it twenty times, so the nightmare when away, for now, it was amazing it worked! but like i said, my choices were no longer based off of that, so i kept sneaking out, but i just no longer had the nightmares. At this time, i was causing so much contention in my home. Siblings understood what was going on, lying, sneaking out, and all that. Life went on two years like that, my family knew they no longer could help me, they tried there best to show there love and care, which they did, but it was me who didnt take it.so, they sent me to a boarding school, program, a place where drug, and sex addicts stay, or people with major family problems, it was residential. so the place was basically my home. it was hard. girls for california, new jersey, basically anywhere, was sent here. so i learned a lot from a lot of different girls, you would be suprised what goes on in this world, its so sad. so, i bascially told myself when i got there, fake it till you make it cami. and i did just that the first part of my program. Later, i had a down fall in and my parents caught on my faking the program. so my therapist at the program, we will call him josh, didnt understand my behavior, then, i started getting nightmares of my rape again. i would wake up crying and set the alarms off just for a staff to come comfort me. of course, none of my roomates like being waken up by that alarm, but i was just so scared. seeing his face in my nigtmares, thinking he was really in the room when i woke up again. it was the worst. after a while, i mentioned to josh, my therapist, that i had been raped, i did not tell him before, cause i thought i had taken care of that issue. but i guess i never did. the thing about this is i loathed this man who raped me. he caused so much contention in my heart and my home and family. i NEVER thought i could forgive this man if i ever saw him again. but, he gave me a fake name, and so we could never report him. everythime Josh started to talk to me aobut my rape, i would shut him down. it was so hard for me to confront this memory, issue. confronting made me face it, reflect on it, and i had no desire to face it. finally, josh said "cami, write this guy a letter, as if you were going to give it to him and he was going to read it" so i did. i remember saying things like " i hate you so much, i wish you were dead, i will never forgive you for your actions, you are the worst man ever." just things like that. then, one day, i was talking to my school teacher, and he told me to read a book, it was called " the miracle of forgivness" so, just because i respected this teacher, i did. i read it, and i had the biggest change of heart. i told Josh about my new perception, so josh said, "cami, write another letter to the man who raped you" so i did just that. but my letter changed. it was a long letter, but i basically said " what you did was horribly wrong, you hurt me and my family so much. i hope on judgement day with God, you will have suffer the things you made me suffer, i hope you have to see from a 8th graders eyes of a man who takes advantage of you, i hope you have to suffer  the sleepless nights of waking up crying, and sweating and just wanting some sort of comfort," things like that but at the end i put something different," i am disapointed at your choices, but we all make mistakes, and God loves you just as much as he loves me, so, i do not have the right to hold this against you, so i do forgive you for all the contention, i will leave the judgement up to God". writing that letter, even thought he never saw it, made me so much more humble, i repented of my sins, which was the hardest thing, i never repented in the past, beacause i just thought i was to much in the hole i would never be able to get out. but i did, i remember praying one night with my other roomates in there bed sleeping, i knelt down and asked for forviveness from my Heavenly Father, i felt pain, i knew Heavenly Father wanted me to realize the pain it caused me, then after, i felt a burden being lifted. It was so nice. so time passes, and  i come home from the program and get to be with my family. i think i have writtin a lot today. so i will end soon, cause there is a lot more, but i will share about that later, life has been hard even after me and my stay at the program. but i hope i can let people know of the struggles out there and how people can help. Be carefull of what you say, for example, i was in class in August this year, my senior year, and in class, someone made a joke, some guy had punched another kid in class, just playin around. and the other guy said " oh no, dont rape me!" and the other guy started laughing,and said " no one gets raped in Utah loser, and if they did, they must be really stupid!" when i heard that i wanted to cry so bad, first, because, i was raped, and it does happen, second, stupid? i dont think im stupid,it was a poor choice, yes, but i was not stupid. i didnt say that out loud, but they said that in front of the whole class. they didnt know i had been raped, but they sure hurt me by saying that. and it doesnt even have to be just that, i hear race jokes all the time from people, my brother is Mexican, my boyfriend is Arfican American, and it hurts me just because of that, what about the people in that class, who else are you hurting? some peopled are trying to stop their drug abuse, but people make jokes all the time in class about drugs, but how do you know if the person next to you is just trying to get over drugs, how do you think they feel afer a joke about drugs, there is so much more i want to say as well about that. but  no matter how cool you think you are, or how funny you think you are, be careful, or if yo hear a joke thats make like these, let them know it might be hurting someone, and know, bad things happen to good people. i dont think many people who are reading this knows about my rape. or never would of guessed, but it does happen, so many teens these days have hard things to face, i had , and have a good life. i was a sweet 8th grader, but things still happen. be aware of that. and people do try to hide it. just what i exactly did. for people who are trying to hide issues, rape, drugs, abuse, anything, i hope you know hiding it and keeping it to yourself will only make things more complicated. at least tell your parent, best friend, teacher you are close with, anyone. you dont have to blog it like me, just let someone into your life. let them know of your trials, choose to tell someone you trust and will help you. My memories of beign raped are still in my head, but the difference is that, it doesnt hurt me anymore. well, there is so much more to say, but i think this is enough for one post. check up later- " Togehter, you and God can build moutains, but dont be suprised if he hands you a shovel" -unknown.