"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." Yes, thank you Mr. Einstein, I realize I’m insane.

When I was in high school my parents insisted I see a therapist. While the reasoning behind their decisions was questionable, their demand was a blessing in some ways. Every teenage girl wants to hear that all of her problems are a direct result of inadequate parenting. I suspected as much, but this gave me the proof I needed to truly see them as people incapable of loving their own children.

And so I went every Thursday, just as happy as could be. My mother was invited in for a couple of sessions, but quickly pulled me out when the therapist suggested some of my hostile behavior was a reaction to her drinking problem. But before that day when the therapist tried a little too hard with my mom, she asked me a simple question. “If you know that every time you go down that road you are going to fall into a pothole, why don’t you take the other road or a bridge or something else?”

I responded that it’s a familiar road and that I know the potholes well. Sometimes I like hiding in them away from the rest of the world. At the time I liked self-destruction and I kept it up for several years. It was safe and it made sense. If my parent’s weren’t going to beat me down, I would learn to do it myself. Living in chaos was all I knew. It was my street.

I gave all that up several years ago. I don’t invite drama and lunacy into my life. I don’t get in fights and I try to be kind to people. I like my life, I love my friends, and I’m good to myself. I don’t tell myself how ugly I am or how unlovable I am. I’ve lost the reasoning behind why I use to convince myself that I would fail at everything.

Last night I did something really stupid. I went down that road knowing what the outcome would be. I did it because I wanted to be nice and I was hopeful that something had changed. I did it because wanted to see if love would change something that I couldn’t. It didn’t. I couldn’t. I knew that before I stepped foot in that direction. I ended up putting myself in a bad situation and getting hurt again. Except this time, I did walk away. This time I didn’t feel bad leaving those voices that tell me how horrible I am. I didn’t allow the chaos to pull me under and leave me lost.

I know what love is and it’s not someone telling you how horrible you are or accusing you of being someone you’re not. It’s not someone looking over and glaring at you. As much as it hurt to get up and walk away, I had to for me. I had walk down that new street alone. I refuse to go back to insanity where cruelness is called love.