May 26, 2025
I don’t think I can come back because I don’t want to cause her more problems. I’m more scared of her than she is of me. I was terrified grabbing my shit in the same room as her, I had to convince myself that if this is how things were now, I was going to have to learn to be able to function in school regardless. I clearly didn’t think of ‘i wonder if she is scared of me or think I may hurt her?’ which I any person with common fucking sense should’ve thought of.
It is 3 am and I can’t sleep. I am ruminating again and trying to use my mindfulness skills to stop it. I just keep coming back to the scream of being a fucked up terrible person and I don’t deserve to wake up anymore. It is loud and will not leave me. I know this is the haunting I will have to live with, but I didn’t want to live in the first place. It seems so grim and depressing, but I'm just tired of having to filter myself for others' comfort. I started having suicidal thoughts in 4th grade, I started cutting myself at the beginning of 5th grade. I was only 11 years old, I found a book in the school's library about a girl who went to rehab for an eating disorder and would cut herself with bobby pins. I don’t know why this book was allowed in the library, or why I picked it up, I must’ve liked the cover. But the seed of that was planted from it, and I became curious about the appeal. I would have a tough time in school, a meltdown, an episode, a fight, or something of the sort, I would end up locking myself in my room and taking my anger out on myself. My parents had to remove the lock function on my door. I don’t know why this happened so young. I made friends online, and they would make threats of suicide and harm themselves for various reasons. I spent nights awake, texting them to make sure they were okay. I had no idea who these people were, I just knew how they felt and that I didn’t want anyone else to have to feel the same way I did. I actually got a “letter” I wrote to myself yesterday. I wrote the email on the site called future me for a class project or something. It was cute, The whole thing was a first-person narrative about me finding out about Minecraft and playing it all the time. It was nice, and at the end, it said “All the memories you made from Minecraft. You treasure those forever, the good and the bad. You miss those times, you know you do. Back when you didn’t have to worry about doing well in school, what you wanted to be when you grew up, you didn’t have to care what people thought of you or what you looked like. You miss those times so much and would do anything to get them back, but you can’t get them back, they’re gone.” I wrote this when I was 13. I remember in 6th grade I would etch ‘help’ and decorate signs of needing support like fucked up messages into desks and use my nails to dig marks on papers I’d hand in out of desperation to be seen “help” or some fucked shit. It got worse when I was in 7th grade and was pressured into committing to a relationship that was incredibly abusive and messed up. She would compare her cuts to mine, it became a competition. She would try to touch me when I didn’t want to be touched, pressure me into kissing her and doing what she wanted, she would call me horrible things and say slurs she shouldn’t say, she would hit me when I didn’t do what she wanted. But it was the first time I felt wanted by someone else, so I didn’t realize how messed up it was. I was already fucking around with over the counter pills in 6th grade, trying to numb the horrible feelings of not understanding why i felt the ways i did and what was wrong with my body. It became worse when I was in that relationship. I would overdose on Benadryl to try and ‘trip’ and find a way to escape my head. There was a point where almost every weekend, I would gather a good handful of miscellaneous over-the-counter pills from my parents' medicine drawer, take them all at once, and then proceed to go to bed with the hopes I wouldn’t wake up. I always woke up. I would wake up feeling like shit, feeling like even more of a fucking failure for waking up every time. My poor parents had no idea, they did their best for me always, it doesn’t have nothing to do with them. They didn’t cause any of the bullshit I put myself through. During the period when I did this for quite a few weekends in a row, there was one final time I really had had enough and took maybe two handfuls of random shit. I know it is ridiculous, but I was like 13. I woke up on the floor, my heart was beating fast as shit, and I wasn’t able to get up. I knew it was the point, but I panicked at the feeling of my body giving in. I called a friend, she was the only one online at the time, and texted her what the fuck was going on, and asked her to call my mom because I couldn’t communicate properly everything that was going on. I was taken to the ER the same night, pumped full of whatever to flush my system, poked and prodded, and interrogated by many professionals. My parents cried beside me. That was when I experienced the worst feeling I think a child can feel, which is breaking your parental figure down to the point where they cry in front of you. My parents never cried because of me. I couldn’t bear to see them so upset. They put me into the ward after they kept me for a bit to make sure I was physically fine. I was 13, and once you were 14, you were put into the teen youth group instead of the younger group, so I was with a bunch of kids younger than me. It was like boot camp and prison in one. I was allotted one phone call a day, had to write my food orders by checking the boxes off on a chart they would give me, a camera in my room, and a speaker by my headboard. I was not allowed to do much. I was both very lonely and alone. I think that has been most of my life, though. Which sounds pitiful and aww so sad, but I am so serious when I say I have really always had a hard time making and keeping relationships with people my entire life. It really messes me up that it is such a struggle for me, too. That’s why I hyper-focus on trying to control everything I can to help push myself in the right direction.
They put me on more medications and got me into more therapy following the hospitalization. I did an outpatient program that was every day after school for maybe 6 months, I think? It’s hard to remember the time periods of things. I was so over everything and would lie to my counselor at the program so they’d let me go. I still didn’t have many close friends, I don’t think I had any actually. I got really close with my friend from 4th grade, like 8th grade-10th grade, but then she drifted away from me, and I was alone again. I ruined many things trying to salvage a one-sided relationship. I am sure that’s what I am doing right now, too. I would like to be able to stick with my statement that those years were the worst years of my life, and I still they they were, but I also had this belief that it would never get close to that bad again. Though I still had a lingering fear that I'd lose grasp and slip back into that pit. That fear has controlled my life for many years. I know I am just trying to persevere myself, but I also know that is not the only thing that is happening. I know that I am also stopping a lot of potentially good things from happening, too, by always having my guard so far up.
I forget why I started down this rabbit hole to begin with, I think it was to dissect the roots of why my default reaction to things was so drastic and frightening. I didn’t have that type of response to anything in years, so when it came up this year, it was scary. On top of that, I had no one. I didn’t have my therapist, I wasn’t in a familiar place, I didn’t have friends I could talk to, I didn’t have my parents, I didn’t have any of the support system and coping mechanisms I had formed over the years back home. I hadn’t needed them until then, and by then, I was way out of practice in handling those feelings, and the circumstances I was in made it ten times harder. I had one person, and I latched onto her for support, which wasn’t fair to her. I feel terrible that I put her in that position, and I was not conscious of doing so until everything came crashing down. She never should have carried that weight. That was terrible of me. I know I didn’t intentionally put my shit on her, but I did, even if it wasn’t on purpose. I am really fucked up for that. I wish I had been more conscious of everything. I wish that all the time, I guess. But I also know I was doing my best at the time under the circumstances that I was in, and that wasn’t enough, and I can and will do better in the future.
It is 4 pm, and I once again haven’t showered or left the house. I did some pushups today. I wish I were nicer to myself. I need to be my own friend now, and I am having a tough time doing that.