Briahna's Journey

Shoutouts to Mackenzie for reposting a blog about someone's letter to their ex, which happened to inspire me to blog about this. I cant reiterate enough that the problems I have been discussing about my ex affairs are not current, they are just important for me to talk about because I want to be as open as possible when sharing my growth experience. So, its no secret that I have been cheated on... Well before my ex actually, and I just wanted to reference those women that knew of me, but still chose to take part in harming me anyway. For starters, you did NOT break me through your ignorance. As women, I feel like we should have enough self-respect and common sense to not involve ourselves with men that are not for us to take. Its one thing that the man wanted to do what he did, but the women need to take responsibility as well because most of them do know. From the start, I was never mad at the other woman, or other women because they are involving themselves with someone that wa...

You know how we like to tell ourselves after getting hurt that karma will handle the situation for us, or "Karma is a bitch".. I said that six plus months ago and the karma that I had been waiting on back then hit today. I haddddd to blog tonight despite saying I'd wait until April 1st because I was faced with an issue. I was presented with information about my ex today, basically karma recently hit him, and I spent literally over an hour like "Yes, Yes! Finally!!!!!" ... you know? Just joyous because things have been turned happy for me a long time ago and he is finally getting to his low point that he probably never thought would come. And after I "celebrated" in a sense, I sat back feeling bad because I had been so happy to learn of this man's misery. And the moment I caught myself, I had to CHECK myself and go back to who Briahna really was because, I always wish the best for people whether they are in my life or not and I...

STOP ALLOWING PEOPLE TO SCREW YOU OVER. I tell myself this all the time, and still struggle with it. Why? Because I make excuses for people and believe in giving a few chances and I'm telling you and myself that those patterns have to stop, especially when the people and situations are toxic. What I have to recognize is that I am a prize... I am something to be earned, and I downplay that when I allow people to come into my life and bullshit around in it. I downplay my own worth when I mess with a guy that plays with my time, that says he wants to be with me, but without a label attached. I am not respecting my wishes when I allow friendships in my life that drain me of my own personal happiness. I am not respecting my wishes when I allow my own personal fears to prevent me from getting far ahead.... and I am definitely not understanding my worth and appreciating myself when I allow a man failing to be a man in my life to make me question myself. I learned that Leos are...

 Whoever told you that first times go smoothly, lied. I felt lied to and played the very first time that I had sex because... even though my mom said that it would hurt, that woman did not prepare me through any of our conversations for the pain that I experienced that day. Lol, today... I chose to pick this topic because my blog audience varies and I want to have something to talk about for everybody... whether it is for men, women, college students, high schoolers, virgins... everybody needs something. Perhaps, maybe when my daughter grows to become a teenager and I struggle to bring up this topic, this just might be what I reference her to. A few years ago, there I was spending the whole morning preparing for this event that I thought was going to be the most beautiful thing I ever experienced. You know what I mean... romantic, Love and Basketball type of thing, Maxwell playing in the background.... STEREOTYPE-type of thing. Naïve is what we were. For starters, maybe...

What are we? What are we doing, where are we going? What is the damn plan? ... because, I'm tired of waiting on you. I'm tired of being "the chaser" when it comes to love and I'm tired of basically beating a man down (not literally, of course) to figure out what his intentions are with me. Yes, you like me... yes you think I'm attractive and smart, ANDDDD? What does all that stuff mean is what I want to know? Do you like me, but you have intentions of pursuing other people before settling down? Do you like me, but you're scared? Are you lying about liking me at all?  I just need clarification and closure when it comes to you and I because, although I am twenty.... I have no room to waste my time. Falling in-love and staying in-love has always been something that I have strived for, I am literally in-love with the idea of love and if you're wasting my time.... you're preventing me from getting out there and finding exactly what it is that I desi...

As you all know, I am a current Population Health Management (Human Health) major, but did you know that I originally came into college as a Nursing major? Before I got to college, I was so set in my ways that I would pick one major and stick to it, but it just might not happen that way. One of my biggest fears was switching majors and having to stay in college longer than expected just because I wasn't absolutely sure to begin with about what it is that I wanted to do. But, reality check, there is no amount of preparing that you can do to determine whether or not you keep the same major that you chose as an inexperienced high schooler. The crazy thing is, I spent my whole life saying that I would be a doctor, thinking in a clinical aspect... but once I got into actually practicing clinical work, I did not like it. Now, a lot of people are unfamiliar with my current degree choice because it is rare, but basically, it is more so the business and computer aspect of healthcare and f...

In fourteen months, I will be walking across a stage in front dozens of dozens of people to receive my Bachelor's of Science in Population Health Management (Human Health emphasis) and I am sitting up at a stand-still thinking OH SHIT! What the hell am I going to do? My life is about to re-start again for the fifth time, I am ready, yet terrified. When I said my life is about to re-start again, I feel like I should elaborate. Every time that I changed schools, I saw it as an opportunity to re-start who I was, where I wanted to go, and what I wanted. There was the transition from preschool to elementary, elementary to middle, middle to high school, and then high school to college.... now I am at the transition of college to college part two plus major adult life. See, I am not in a rush any longer to speed up being an adult because I didn't enjoy my years of being a child long enough. Understand that I was the smart ass fifteen year old a few years ago that always told my p...

September happens to be National Suicide Prevention Awareness Month, but I have had this idea on my mind for a blog for the longest time, and September is too far away to wait to talk about it. One of the things that I guess became a "trend" over the beginning of this year and last semester was "couples suicide" and suicide happening based on relationship complications, which is extremeeeeelyyyyy important for me to touch base on because we avoid talking about it. I attached a link (http://gossiponthis.com/2017/04/23/mari-mercedes-shaday-smith-markeice-brown-teen-couple-suicide-ohio-facebook-videos-photos/) for you guys to view if you lack knowledge of the Markeice and Mercedes suicide cases that happened. I highly recommend that you read up on it because situations like this are happening everyday, and when I first heard about it... all I could think of was... "Why did they not have anybody to talk to?" "How come no one knew what was going on or wh...

Sometimes, it still troubles me when I look at where I am in life, today, compared to where I thought I would be. Sometimes, it still bothers me that I lost myself for a whole semester and a bestfriend and relationship that was meant to last a lifetime along with it. I've gathered my closure a long time ago about what reality would be, but it simply just still gets to me sometimes. Sometimes I just wonder whether or not all the pain that was caused to me is even thought about, or whether or not he just moved right along not having that conversation with God about the wrongs that he did and whether or not he is apologetic for it. Those thoughts just haunt me... Now, those thoughts didn't necessarily start crossing my mind again until I found myself in a situation that happened to be "promising". I found myself a good man that I can see the kids, the ring, the house... everything I ever wanted with and I guess, I'm scared. I'm scared because, even if he has ...

Men are NOT always wrong and women are NOT always right... Let's just put that on the table before I start. The only reason why it is easier to say the term "women are always right" is because it is nearly IMPOSSIBLE to argue with a woman because while men speak on things on the spot, us women will spend hours on hours, if not days talking to ourselves about how we are going to confront you about something. It would just be easier for men to avoid trying to prove their points or argue with a woman because we have multiple degrees in being COMPLICATED, yes, I'll admit it. One of the things that is unfortunate for men is that, you take the shitty end of the stick all the time simply because of that one confession I just mentioned. If men were just as attentive or emotionally in-tune like women were, they would seriously have just as much as us to complain about, if not more because us women are flawed just as much as you. Now, if a man cheats, for example... he attemp...

One of the best parts about being single, and single for an extended amount of time, is having the time to actually get to know other people. Not just getting to know other people in a sense of.. "So and so goes to Missouri Western...", but getting to know them in a sense where I can learn their habits, the things that may love and/or hate, and possibly what they may be looking for in a mate. I think that what we fail to realize when it comes to being single is that we are SINGLE and all SINGLE entails, lol. Let me explain, we present ourselves to this new person as a single individual interested in getting to know them and possibly having hopes of going somewhere with them. Then, we start hanging around them more and communicating with them at a deeper and more personal level to the point where we steer away from that single title and view them in a way that is "I am yours and you are mine." Keep in mind, we are BOTH still single... and we mess up where we ruin a...

You know how you sit and cry to God when you're alone about which direction to take, which decision to make, how to act on whatever things come your way???? And then you get the sign that you begged for and still find a way to go against what was thrown in your face? Yeah, that's been me. There have been plenty of situations where I have asked God to tell me what to do in this situation, and then when the time comes where I get that okay to do whatever it is that I should do, I talk myself out of listening to God and what he is telling me because I may believe that this situation needs more life or this person needs another chance. It used to be a major problem of mine, that in return, caused more problems for me because it is HARD to listen when you think that you know what is best for yourself, which we don't always know. Sometimes we are bias and allow people and situations to last in our lives a lot longer than they should, and we fight God in a sense because he gives...

Not meaning to set out EVERYBODY that comes in my messages, but some of yall need to be talked about. A little over a year ago, I decided to make a Facebook account, and of course with that, came the Messenger app. One of the biggest issues that I have with Messenger and Facebook in general is how easy and "okay" it is for people to post and say literally whatever it is that comes to mind. Let me explain: The "I Have A Girlfriend, But I'm Still Gonna Slide In Your DM's" Type:   Okay, so this is the guy that we all pretty much see up and down our timelines all day broadcasting their women and their "perfect" relationships, meanwhile begging to be entertained in your dm's. My main problem with this type is the fact that, I know you're not available, YOU know you're not available, damn near all of Facebook knows that you aren't available and you're bold enough to come into my messages every day trying to convince me of other...

Girlfriends was by far one of the best television shows that I grew up watching, and still watch to this day... and when I think about the type of women/social circle that I would like to be around, Joan, Toni, Mya, and Lynn is exactly what it would look like. I remember starting off the sixth grade and traveling up until high school with a huge social circle filled with all these different types of girls and young women with varied personalities, values, and beliefs. Throughout that time, my social circle remained large, but there were some tweaks here and there and some people were not meant to last. What I mean is, we outgrow some relationships, we drain out some relationships, and we sometimes stop putting forth the effort to keep up effective relationships. Over the course of those years, I developed a lot of meaningful relationships and developed a slight sense of what type of people I wanted to be surrounded by. One of the major adjustments that I had throughout graduat...

To My Love, I chose to write this letter to you to educate you on what type of mother that you have. What type of woman that I am, what I stand for, and talk to you about some of the things that I want for you. Son, have you heard the phrase "Men grow up to date women similar to their mothers." If that be the case, I want you to have something positive to be influenced by when you go out looking for women to be apart of your life as your wife and/or the mother of your child. When you grow old enough to date, I want you to understand and be aware of all the power that us women can have... because although we have beautiful aspects to our character, there are some of us out there that will have the power to get within your mind, your wallet, and your career and tear you down. Hopefully as a teenager reading this, I hope to have helped to raise you as a young man that respects women and that does not carry himself as a "hoe". Before you choose to go out and dog t...

To My Love, As of today, I am a year and a few months away from getting my first of many degrees and I thought of you throughout the whole process. I chose the major I chose to make sure that I would be able to get a decent enough job in order to be able to give you a better life than I have. Whether you wanted a car on your sixteenth birthday or an expensive ass custom-made American Girl doll, I would be able to go out and get it that day if I desired. I am pursing two more degrees after this one in hopes to increase those chances and if you wanted to go to college, I wouldn't be that parent to tell you "No, you cannot go to college because I cannot afford it." From my very first relationship at fifteen, I even had the mindset then that "everything I do now will be for my kids later" and its one of the sayings that I continue to live by. Your mother has been through a lot of trials and tribulations and she is at a point in her life now where she feels lik...

Am I the only one that hopelessly and obsessively thinks ahead about the future like every second of every day? Madly trying to control everything and guessing what path God is going to take me on... Or having those long nights of studying for classes ending with an exaggerated breakdown of tears and shouts of "I'm sick of this shit! I'm dropping out of school!" That's me, the academic junkie. Since I was little, I was always told that I'd be successful because of how smart I was, and I carried that with me all through elementary, middle, high school, and definitely college. While everyone wanted to fool around and give the teachers hell in high school, I actually studied, lol. And, I actually did my work and enrolled in challenging classes to make my college application look good. I thought about college well before high school. In college, I actually take my work seriously, whether Humanities or Population Health Management... because I am working towards ...

There are so many benefits to cutting people off that do not deserve to have a place in your life. I speak as someone that has experienced the actual physical and mental benefits to that term.... realizing that someone does not deserve you, whether family, friend, lover is CRUCIAL to achieving your overall happiness and getting to where you need to be. Let me bring you all back, last semester I started off my first semester of nursing school a complete basket case and emotional wreck. Here I am trying to maintain good grades, keep myself together physically, balance a social life, maintain a job, along with dealing with someone that DID NOT DESERVE TO BE IN MY LIFE. I hung onto someone that sculpted my mind into believing that I was not good enough, I was not beautiful enough, that I was being cheated on... and that destroyed me emotionally. I dealt with that the first three months of that semester and I cried nearly everyday those three months and lost value in my life because of it...

What do you call the man that slept with your mother to create you, but was not necessarily active in your life? I do not refer to that man as my father, what I have always referred to him over the years is as "Sperm Donor". I do not refer to who some people view as my "step dad" as my stepdad because that is not what he is. This is the man that fed me for years, saw me off to prom, watched me graduate, and stood by me in the hospital. When I was young, staying in the apartments right across from the dome in Saint Louis, MO, I walked up to that same man and asked him to be my father. As soon as I heard that yes, I declared him my father, and later on in life, I realized that he had been a father well before that moment, since the age of two. That other man, I was never around him consistently to even remember his middle name, birthday, or something as simple as his favorite color. I grew up hearing bad things about him that I wish I never heard because they set th...

Here's what I think about one-night stands within my generation..... they are not possible. So, you meet this guy walking to your car, and yip yap pitty pat, he gets your number. You watch a few movies over the course of a few nights on campus and he feels like, at some point over the course of those nights, he can ask you for sex. He feels like because he's hung out with you for a week, it licenses him to say and do things out of turn. Like, asking to go down on you thinking that you're that type of woman and that-that question was even okay to ask.. or texting you in the a.m. as if neither of you had the whole day to hang out.... I don't do one-night stands. Once you crack that door open a bit to even let a man think that it is okay to treat you or talk to you like a one-night stand... you're in a whole different ball game. Number one rule for myself: DON'T ENTERTAIN MESSAGES LATE AT NIGHT ASKING TO COME OVER BECAUSE WE DO HAVE DAYLIGHT, TOO. College guys lo...

For my younger cousins, younger sister, and anyone else in my family that has ever watched the steps that I've taken in my life.... I make it a habit of telling them the right things to do regardless of if I did it or not. I have experienced dating in school, I tell them not to.. go get your education, first. I experienced drunken nights and nights of being high.... I recommend that they don't try it. For them, it is beneficial that I am the oldest because they can watch what I do from afar and learn either what to do, or what not to do. They can have someone give them advice on the things that they may not have experienced yet, in hopes that they make better decisions. I am the big cousin, the big sister, the friend, the girlfriend.. that tells you the things that you prefer to not hear, but NEED to hear. I am the person that you'll be mad at for a week because I gave you some much needed truth and tough love. For my younger cousins and sister, I try to go about each d...

So, with being single, I have developed this new type of confidence and obsession with myself. (lol, in a healthy way) I have become intrigued with every aspect of who I am and I feel more beautiful than I ever have. I am not talking about feeling beautiful and sexy because a man tells me that I am, nor because a guy says it just to get into my pants... but because I have grown into a woman that I admire and am proud of. Acknowledging your sexy means... feeling confident about yourself and loving yourself for everything that makes you...YOU. It is loving every curl in your head, or that gap in between your teeth, or the hair on your arms that people may view as a flaw in you. We have a problem as the younger generation with looking towards our peers to judge us on what makes us sexy and beautiful. Honestly, the words sexy and beautiful have different definitions for every person because what is considered attractive and appealing to one person may not be the same for the next. It ...

The purpose of "Briahna's Journey" is to share my journey with you all in all aspects. All aspects including the happiest parts, the saddest, the most painful, and everything else in between. Part of my creating this blog was because I had stories to tell that were not meant to be just for myself, I have intentions of writing a book at some point, and I recognized at the start of this that I have a bigger purpose and God wants me to use my voice to touch and relate to others. And... through every blog that I have created this far, I have been real with you all about the things that I have done and been through and the realness does not stop when I get to discussing some of the most difficult parts of my journey. Today, my focus for this blog, and the next will be on pain... The most important part about experiencing pain is, not only figuring out the source of where it came from, but in my eyes... figuring out my role in it as well and taking responsibility for it. ...