Self Hatred and the Morning Person

I got up this morning at the usual time and rushed through my weekday morning routine. I’ve been doing the same thing every day for the last 3 years: shower, hair, makeup, clothes, and shoes, fly out the door just in time to make it to the office by 8. 

Getting ready in the morning has always been like a nightmare for me, ever since I was a kid. I’ve always hated my body, and squeezing into clothes makes me self conscious. Staring myself in the face without makeup makes me uncomfortable. Putting on my hand-me-down jewelry that isn’t quite fashionable embarrasses me. Leaving the house with all these insecurities makes me anxious and nervous. Maybe it’s the anticipation that makes me wake up nauseas and sore every morning, feeling like I’ve caught the flue overnight. Depression hits me the hardest in the morning.

Up until recently, if you asked me if I’m a “morning person” I would always say NO. Mornings are awful. Mornings mean facing overwhelming self-hatred. Mornings mean another long day of adversity. Waking up means the disappointment of knowing that I’m still alive. I’d rather just stay buried under the blankets where no one will know I exist.

There are a number of factors that led to my self-hatred. The Patriarchal society I grew up in demonized a woman’s body and sexuality while simultaneously glorifying the concept of the sweet, childlike virgin bride that I knew I would never emulate. I was never encouraged to express my emotions, so all my confusing feelings stayed trapped inside me. Being bisexual (and being taught that such things were abominable) also caused me to vilify a woman’s body in general. It was easier to hate it than admit to forbidden attraction. When paired with depression and lack of education, my natural bodily development became a waking nightmare. The hatred I had for myself and my body was not just a passing teenage phase; it was a devastating condition that colored my entire world in a muddy shade of black.

 For most of my life I sincerely believed that I was stupid, worthless, ugly, lazy, gluttonous, and sloppy. Self hatred is painful, debilitating, and dangerous. Lucky for me, I have people in my life who understand that. I am here today, I am healthy today, because my Hunnie, my sister, and a few close friends chose to take my struggles seriously. They insisted again and again that the opinions I had of myself were false.  They were there for me day or night to talk me though my anxiety.  It took countless long talks and years of hard work to get me to the place I am today. 

This is actually me wearing my fave brown dress pants



I don’t know exactly when it happened, but at some point this last year the heavy fog of depression, anxiety, and self hatred started to dissipate. It wasn’t until this morning that I realized how far I have come. I found myself singing in the shower at 6:00am (sorry neighbor). I winked at myself in the mirror while rubbing product into my super short hair. I put on my favorite checkered socks and walked around the house in my underwear without cringing every time I passed a mirror. And when my grey dress pants were too small to button, I switched to the bigger brown pair and it didn’t even bother me. Really.

This is ME we’re talking about here. The same girl who, at 8 years old, covered her whole body with washcloths in the bathtub because she didn’t want to have to see how “fat” she was. The same girl who refused to look in the mirror for much of her teenage life.. The same girl who stopped eating because a friend mentioned that she had a “little pooch.” And there I was this morning, smiling at my curves and meaning it. I just thought “welp, guess I’m not a size 8 after all.” Those grey pants were milestone for me.

Don’t be afraid to reach out to someone who’s hurting. You don’t have to say much. Simply tell them the truth:

You are beautiful.

                                 You are smart.

                                                           You are strong.

                                                                                         You can be anything you want to be.

And don’t stop saying it until they start to believe.

Starving

This is a short story i wrote about anorexia for my Fiction Literature class. It is a modern retelling of "A Hunger Artist" by Franz Kafka. I drew from my own experience with disordered thought to write this.

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In the College years, mom and dad’s interest The Girl’s anorexia suffered a marked decline. It used to be that she could never take a breath without being asked if she was feeling well, but College changed all that. High school was a different time. Back then the whole family was engaged in keeping her “healthy”. At first they didn’t notice when she stopped eating, but it was never long before her hollow cheeks gave her away. Parental involvement grew from day to day, suddenly they wanted to talk to her, suddenly even her teachers seemed to care. Two weeks would go by, maybe three, and then they would take her to see the “Doctor.” It was a new one every time. They examined her with stethoscopes, needles, and prying questions. Some nights, mom and dad would make her sit at the table with them for a talk. So she sat there, knee’s pressed tight to her sharp unpadded ribs, and pretended to listen. They would cling to each other for safety, and mom would sputter and cry. The Girl would smile and nod, and sometimes let mom hold her hands, (if only to let her feel how skinny she was.) But inevitably she would withdraw back into herself. She wasn’t thinking about anything in particular, just feeling. She focused on that deep, delicious emptiness inside and took teeny tiny sips of cold black coffee through a straw.

Eventually mom and dad would give up on conversation. They would work together (for once) and take shifts discretely watching her, like guards. She often heard them whispering about drugs and boyfriends, trying to find a way to fix her. They thought she was troubled, or that she had become a victim of some kind. Sometimes they would lay traps for her, pretending to be late in picking her up from school, so they could watch and see what bad crowd she had fallen in with. Nothing was more frustrating to The Girl than these traps. They made her almost want to eat again, just to prove that she was fine. She stopped talking to all her friends, and would spend every weekend at home with the family. But this just made them all the more suspicious that she was hiding some bad influence. The Girl was quite willing to spend every waking hour with them, just to prove, again and again that there was nothing wrong with her. She was happy and well adjusted, and skinny.

Of course no one could watch her at all times of day and night, so they remained suspicious that she was harboring some deep psychological damage. Only The Girl herself knew that there was nothing wrong. She starved because she wanted to, because it made her happy. She knew that starving would completely satisfy her, if it were not for all the questions and doctors and worries and fears. There were other things that made starving unsatisfying for The Girl, things like Grandma’s eyes filling with tears at every family party. The little cousins were always afraid to come near her because they found the sight of her gaunt flesh too terrifying. She supposed they all thought she hated herself, but The Girl knew what nobody else knew: starving felt amazing. She made no secret of the fact that she was happy. She felt good and clean and delightfully hollow, but everyone insisted on pitying her. They all thought she was sad and sick, and she became more and more determined to prove them wrong.

The girl soon learned, however, that mom and dad would only withhold judgment for a little over a month. After about 40 days she would inevitably find herself in a cold white hospital bed, with vile, liquid nutrition being pumped in through a tube. They often came in the night, when she was lying deep in a mountain of blankets, hovering next to sleep. Dad would roll her up in the blankets like a straight jacket and carry her down the stairs while mom stood by whimpering and clutching at her nightgown. More than once The Girl had considered struggling, but she always found that her body was strangely weak and unresponsive. It never failed to make her angry. Why now after 40 whole days? Why did they insist on robbing her of her source of joy? She could have gone on so much longer, but they had no respect for her body, no faith in her choices. They would leave her there in treatment for days, and eventually welcome her back home with an obnoxious feast. “This time she’s cured for sure” they would say, and mom would spoon tiny mouthfuls of soup into The Girl’s dry mouth.

And so she lived for many years, with brief periods of “health” in between sessions of happiness. Eventually however, mom and dad grew tired. Grandma stopped crying, and the cousins got used to her horror story body. Every Doctor in town had long since given up, she was a lost case. They had all come to wrong conclusion, still after all this time, no one believed her when she said that starving made her truly happy. After graduation, she left for a college 9 hours east. It was a big busy place with a thousand new faces. There were people of every shape and size, and no one ever thought there was a thing wrong with her. They gave her a tiny room at the end of a hall, and she spent most of her time there with stacks of books and tiny little coffee pot that brewed one weak cup at a time. Sometimes she would leave the door open, and the occasional burst of young voiced would bring a surge of emotions. It was not long, however, before she learned that the voices were not coming her way. Every once in a while the Resident Assistant would stop by for a little chat, but even those visits became infrequent.

So The Girl turned her focus to starving. Soon she grew too tired to bother with class. She sat in the dark and felt the sweet shudder of the air slipping in and out of her lungs. She was finally doing it, starving for longer than she had ever hoped. The name tag on her door grew tattered and fell down as time lost all meaning. No one came to her door any more, of course they didn’t! They had nothing to be worried about. Finally they understood that she was perfectly fine. Starving filled her soul filled with unshakable satisfaction.  Days passed, the semester ended and another one began.

One day, the facilities manager happened to notice the tiny room at the end of the hall. “Why haven’t we rented out this room?” he asked. Then someone remembered the tiny girl, with feather soft hairs all over her body. “Did she forget to move out?” they wanted to know. They poked around in the dark until they found her, curled up under a mountain of blankets near the floor heater under the window. “Are you alright?” asked the manager.

 “Did I miss my finals?” she asked, her voice now a raspy breath. The manager gestured to his attendant to get to a phone. He mimed a 3-didget phone number, and then leaned down closer to the figure on the floor.

 “It’s okay” he told her, “they will forgive you.”

“I just wanted you all to respect me” she whispered.

“Why shouldn’t we respect you, you poor thing?”

“Because I HAVE to starve. I can’t help it. I can’t stop” The manager seemed moved by her pitiful words. He found her skeletal hand in the blanket cocoon and held onto it tightly.

“Why?” He sounded tearful, “why can’t you stop?” He moved his ear closer to her chapped lips.

“Because I couldn’t ever find anything else to make me happy. If I had found it, believe me I would have loved to live just like you and everybody else…” and those were her last words. The ambulance came, and calls were made to the family. Dad tried to sue the school for neglect, but The Girl had been an adult, and nothing ever came of it. The school cleaned that tiny room right up and rented it out to vibrant young soccer player named Maya. Girls congregated in her room every night, and caused a cheerful ruckus that kept the RA on her toes. Some people found Maya to be too boisterous and loud, but they mostly just braced themselves, surrounding her like planets to the sun, and never wanted to move on.

Un-Ignorable

My feet pound the pavement relentlessly.

It’s been an hour and I’m coming up on mile 6. Four more to go… I’m cold and sore. I need motivation. On days like today I have to dig deep for the strength I need to keep on going. But my damaged psyche doesn’t know the difference between inspiring and belittling. My footsteps turn into words:

“fat, fat, fat, fat.”

I can suddenly feel the eyes of every passerby on my enormous body.

“fat, fat, fat, fat”

 I am mortified. I resolve to run faster.

 Maybe if I push harder these thick legs will melt a little,

                                                      these strong arms with shrink a little,

                                                                                  these breasts won’t protrude so far.

I find myself apologizing to the sidewalk for the weight of my body. More than anything in the world, I want to disappear.

As I drag my tired body over the last few miles, my mind is full of images. What would it be like, I wonder, to grow too small for all my clothes? To take up only half of a chair? To blend right in with the crowd instead of standing out like a sore thumb,

                                                                                 or a black eye,

                                                                                              or a broken nose?

I don’t want to be a skeleton, just small enough to be ignored. Maybe without all these eyes on me I wouldn’t have to hate myself so much.

I reach my apartment at long last, thankful for the opportunity to disappear behind my uniform grey door. It is easy to ignore my little home, and that makes me feel safe. As I’m stretching, I stare mournfully down at my legs. They are short and stout from the bottoms of my shorts to the top of my wooly running socks. I imagine how they will look one day, long and willowy and narrow.

 I reach down and grab my calves for deeper stretch,

                                                                                  .....and suddenly my daydream ends.

 My legs are all muscle; completely solid from the knee down and only a little softness around my thighs. Reality hits me like snow ball to the face: startling, refreshing, and somehow exhilarating.

I am not a big version of someone else, I am a healthy version of ME.

Call me big-boned,

                                     fat,

                                             athletic

                                                             or plus sized,

it doesn’t matter. I need to learn to call myself Sarah.  I cannot change my body any more than I can change who I am.

My body is muscled and curvy,

                                                           ......just like my heart is strong and compassionate.

Like it or not, I will never be able to disappear.

I feel a smile creep across my face.

Could it be that I have already arrived?

 Relief floods my heart as I realize the truth. My endless struggle for the perfect body finally over. My body IS perfect. Every unique inch of me is a reflection of who I am inside.

I am bold,

                       I am strong,

                                                   I am beautiful.

                                                                                 I am un-ignorable.

Bound and Gagged by a Lullaby

Lying alone in the dark, I imagined monsters under my bed. They were little devils with bony grey hands, hands with fingers just long enough to wrap around my little ankles and pull me down. I tucked my blanket in tight around my body. Even a smidgen of space would be enough for a serpent to crawl in. I was petrified, and this was a normal night for me. My ten-year-old mind ran frantically down a list of the day’s events. What had I done to deserve this? How had I invited this evil into my bedroom? I thought about the lullaby from my favorite bible-music tape. Maybe if I sang it enough times, it would work like a dream catcher and keep the demons away from my bed.

“I will lie down and sleep, and sleep in peace. I will lie down and sleep in peace. You alone oh Lord make me dwell in safety. I will lie down and sleep in peace”

I chanted the song in my mind, begging God to keep the nightmares away from me. Sometimes I would fall asleep, only to find out that He had not listened.

As I grew older, my fears grew older too. I could push past my irrational terror of the edge of the bed, but nighttime still brought fear. My mind ran relentlessly through the tapes in my head: the tapes that told me how ugly I was, and how fat, and how stupid. I still tucked the blankets tightly around my body in hopes that I could somehow keep the bad feelings out. It never worked. I planned out dozens of ways to kill myself, and wondered who would notice if I did. Whenever things got bad, that same old song would start playing in my head:

“I will lie down and sleep, and sleep in peace. I will lie down and sleep in peace. You alone oh Lord make me dwell in safety. I will lie down and sleep in peace”

I would beg God to let me sleep and keep the nightmares away. Sometimes I would fall asleep, only to find out that He had not listened.

Last night I was lying awake in the middle of the night and my thoughts began to stray. I wondered why my husband hadn’t left me yet. I’m so different now from the woman he married. He must be so disappointed. I thought about how much happier he would be without me. My mind slipped seamlessly into old thought patterns. I realized how disgusting and selfish I am. I started counting the pills in the bathroom cabinet from memory. As my thoughts grew darker, I tucked the blankets around me feet. The corners of the room grew menacing.

“I will lie down and sleep, and sleep in peace. I will lie down and sleep in peace. You alone oh Lord make me dwell in safety. I will lie down and sleep in peace”

I reflexively called out to God, begging him to keep away the nightmares. And then I remembered all the times He had not listened.

Bad dreams and suicidal thoughts are evidence of emotional disturbance. A person experiencing these things needs love, support, understanding, and sometimes even treatment. But I was always taught to ignore myself. Bad dreams happened when Satan was attacking me, suicidal thoughts were just my selfish sin nature shining through. Every time I expressed emotion in my home, my parents shoved God down my throat and silenced me. I picked up on this right away. All those nights lying alone and afraid, I didn’t dare get up or call for help. I took a giant dose of God and shoved it down my own throat.

I silenced my thoughts,

Silenced my fears,

Silenced my emotion.

After 18 years of self-imposed silence, I am finally able to speak. When my thoughts grow dark, I am learning to stand up to them. I acknowledge my emotions. I express my thoughts. I confront my fears. I will not be bound and gagged anymore.

Physical and Spiritual Abuse taught me that I was not worth hearing. It taught me that my heart was not important. It kept me trapped and wasted whole years of my life.

What words are written on the tape over your mouth?

Battling Depression

Anyone who has ever struggled with depression or addiction knows whats it's like to have that voice of oposition in your head. You fight against it every day just to stay sane. It pushes you towards that bottle, or away from your friends, or into the arms of you drug. I refer to this inner nemesis as "My Enemy." She is not a physical being. She is not the demon i always thought she was. She is simply everything in me that is wounded and broken. She is my depression. She is the voice of my past abuse. She is my self hatred, and she will do whatever it takes to keep me here alone.

My Enemy had built entire cities in my mind long before I learned that she was there. She used to run up and down the synapses in my brain, shouting and screaming in a voice just like mine. I thought she was me. I trusted my own voice. For so long time I thought that the things she said were true.

She used to scream at me for eating that extra cookie. She cheered me on every time I cut my wrists, and I secretly hoped I would cut too deep. She had me thoroughly convinced that I was ugly, and stupid, and awkward. She could say anything she wanted and I would eat it up, take it to heart, memorize it…. My Enemy owned me back then.

About a year ago, I was newly married, working two jobs, and trying to fit in in a new city. My enemy capitalized on my stressed body. She grew stronger than ever before. Vividly I remember that chocolate cupcake. I made it myself, with mounds of vanilla butter cream frosting. I had one with my friends, but when they left I couldn’t stop thinking about the last cupcake. My Enemy whispered that Husband would never know who ate it. “You could have it and be done. You know you want to!” But as soon as I took that first bite, her voice grew angry, disgusted, and ferocious. I ate the whole thing in three huge bites, with tears of shame pouring down face. The cupcake churned in my stomach and my Enemy churned in my mind. Before I knew what was happening I was crouching over the toilet, straining, retching, vomiting every last drop out of my stomach.

I sat on the floor outside the bathroom, hugging my knees and staring into the growing darkness. I was scared. I had promised myself I would never do that. I didn’t want to turn out like my aunt, with boney fingers chapped from the back of her throat. My Enemy promised me that it would all be okay. “This is the start of something great for you!” she promised. She showed me pictures of a thinner me. She showed me how easy it would be. No more guilt, no more consequences! The images faded to one my aunt....

 ...I was 11 years old, at a birthday party. I climbed up on the roof of our house to suprise my cousins who were playing in bedroom. As i crawled along the shingles under the bathroom window, i heard a noise, like someone pouring water in a pool.  I peaked in the window and saw my aunt there, doubled over the toilet throwing up. Her shirt was folded neatly on the counter to avoid being splashed. I could see her ribs poking up through her skin. My aunt, strong and beautiful, was here alone on her knees....

That forgotten image came flooding back into my mind. My aunt was not free from guilt. She was chained to that toilet for an hour that day. I knew then that my Enemy was lying. She was bitter, she wanted me to be alone. For the first time, my mind rebelled against her. For the first time, the foundations of her city began to shake. 

When Husband came home from work that night I was buried deep in the covers, wide awake. He kissed me held me in his arms. If he could have seen the battleground in my mind, I think it would have frightened him. My Enemy was using all her influence to keep my mouth shut. But something within me knew that it was time to speak. “I threw up tonight” I whispered. And that was the beginning of the end.

Possessed

One of my earliest memories is of playing hide-and-seek at Grandma and Grandpa’s trailer. I was lying in the dark under the bed with my face pressed down into the red shag carpet. Waiting. There were dusty shoe boxes and plastic-wrapped blankets stacked all around me. I felt like they were waiting too, for the sunlight, for someone to open them again. Like most children, I was patient only when it came to hiding games, and I was willing to lie there all night, if need be, for someone to find me. I put my hands over my eyes and pushed down on my eye balls. When I lifted the pressure, the space in front of me exploded with imaginary fireworks. I pressed down harder, and harder, until suddenly I thought that maybe I could see a set of eyes. They were big and round and silver and stared right back at me unblinking, like an owl. Completely forgetting the game, I wriggled out from under the bed and went charging down the hall into the kitchen.

“Gramma! When I hide under the bed, I can see an owl’s eyes looking at me!”

Grandma looked up from the dishes with concern on her face. Grandpa, who was sitting at the kitchen table while Grandma cleaned, ordered me to come and stand before him.

“What did you see?”

“Owl Eyes!” I laughed. “Big round silver ones! Under the bed when I close my eyes!”

I don’t remember what he said next, but I remember my excitement went suddenly cold. Grandpa was not happy. He asked me lots of questions, and before long, Grandma dried off her hands and came to sit with us at the table. They laid their hands on my head and prayed. Grandpa rebuked Satan in the name of Jesus and Grandma whispered “yes Lord” under her breath again and again.

I used to look back on that day as the moment when Satan entered my body. Later when I started hearing angry voices in my head, Dad told me it was Satan attacking me. But I was certain that Satan had already won. Those voices were coming from the inside where Satan had certainly taken up a residence. I didn’t tell Dad.

As a kid, I interpreted my hunger and growing pains as attacks from Satan; tricks from the devil, trying to make me fat and unsightly. I remember staring at myself in the mirror, screaming in a whisper. In moments like these I was consumed by hatred for myself, hatred so powerful that it terrified me. I remember digging into fleshy thighs with my fingernails until I bruised. Once I accidently cut myself shaving. I soon grew addicted to the sight of blood swirling and mixing with water on its way down the drain. I cut my fingers, toes, arms and legs, It was sweet release. I couldn’t stop. When my Dad read the story of the demon-possessed boy who threw himself against stones and into the fire, I was sure that I was like that boy. Possessed with rage, with hatred, with guilt. Possessed by the Devil.

I was ashamed of my sexual feelings from a very early age. I used to agonize and beg God to take away the demon that made my fingers stray to forbidden places. At around 13 or 14, I had my first explicit sex dream, and I dreamed about a girl. I was horrified. Dad had once told me that the homosexuality demon was particularly evil. I knew I was doomed.

I remember once I borrowed an old News Boys CD from a “liberal” friend and listened to it secretly at night. I had to sneak the CDWalkman under my pillow because they were not allowed in the house. I made copies on a tape recorder before returning the CD so that I could listen whenever I wanted. The songs were stuck in my head for days. When I started to pray, the lyrics would surface in my mind. That was when I knew my Dad was right. The Devil was in this music. It was preventing me from prayer! I crushed up the tapes with my bare hands and threw them in the garbage.

As I write all this my mind is flooded with demon-tainted memories. I mourn all those hours wasted begging God to take Satan out of my mind, out of my body, out of my wayward heart. Who would I be today if I had never been told there were demons to fear? How much blood did I lose as I stood stoic at the sink, watching Satan slip down the drain in swirls of red?

 What memories did I miss while I hid my true self from the world, afraid they would see that I was Possessed?

Teenage Identity Crisis

Every kid reaches that age where they struggle to discover who they really are. It is natural to the process of growing up. We stop defining ourselves by our family, and start defining ourselves by our friends. We naturally want to push the limits, push our bodies, and push the rules. During this time, our dreams and feelings are larger than life, and Oh-so-real. Parents often make the mistake of shrugging off the teenage years as a “faze” in which their kids are overcome by hormones. They often chuckle behind closed doors about the latest “teenage moment” and make their kids feel patronized and misunderstood. Parents long for the day that their teen’s hormone levels will normalize and they will have an adult on their hands instead of a large, moody child. Talking and listening to your teenager is the best thing you can do for them. As young adults, all we want is to be taken seriously, and to be heard. The teenage years are a beautiful, fragile time in which children become adults.

In a Fundamentalist Christian household, the teenage years can be a very different story. My parents didn’t want their daughters to grow up. Ever. We were trained to serve and submit from an early age. Pushing the limits was NEVER tolerated. Emotions were either irrelevant, or labeled as rebellion. As early as age 11, I remember having those “teenage moments” of huge emotion. Like every kid, I felt misunderstood and unjustly suppressed. Instead of being asked how I felt, or what was wrong, I was taught that my emotions were the manifestation of my sinful nature.

Tired and sore in all the wrong places? Laziness, Sloth.

Sad, depressed? = Bad Attitude, Selfishness.

Anger? = Rebellion.

Whenever I showed emotion, my mother would be disappointed. “this is isn’t the Sarah I know!” she would say. “who are you trying to imitate?” She wouldn’t let me see my friends anymore. Not even my cousins. Because I was “copying” them and not acting like the sweet happy daughter she knew. Instead of asking me what was wrong, or how I felt, she questioned my identity. As a teenager, I was already struggling to discover myself. She told me that she knew me better than anyone else. I tried so hard to be who she wanted me to be. How could she love someone who wasn’t her daughter anymore? I second guessed every word I said. I was paranoid that my motives were impure, that I was a copy cat, that I had no personality. I am still struggling to trust myself, all these years later.

 I remember at around age 13 I rolled my eyes at my dad. This was a BIG no-no. Sighing, stomping, folding my arms, and rolling my eyes were all deserving of a spanking. He grew angry and ordered me to come to him for a spanking. The injustice of it all welled up in my chest and I suddenly shouted out “No!” He was shocked. I was terrified. My legs took over and I took off running down the hall. I had never run from him before. He caught me, in what turned out to be one of my worst memories of my dad. He grabbed me by the arm and threw me into the bathroom. I tried to apologize, but he mashed my face into the corner. I screamed and I cried and I begged, and I hated myself for every “I’m sorry” and every “please stop.” I had hand prints on my arms and bruising on my face. The wooden spoon left bruises all over my newly developing body. And I hated myself. My mouth had betrayed me. If I hadn’t shouted that word this would never have happened. My body had betrayed me as well. If I hadn’t ran away, my punishment would not have been so severe.

 I hated myself for not having total control over my sin nature. I started cutting myself. I picked apart shavers with a pair of tweezers and saved the individual razor blades. It was freeing to exercise this type of control. It was like bleeding out all my emotions so they could not cause me problems throughout the day. It was freeing, it was addicting, it was frightening. My body learned to crave punishment, and I learned to oblige. When growth spurts made me so hungry it hurt, I agonize over every bite I ate. I would stare for hours in the mirror, begging for the courage to deny myself these gluttonous urges. I cut myself again and again. For every extra bite, for every surge of anger, for every misplaced tear.

My parents were happy with me. I was showing self control. I was being their sweet compliant daughter again. My mother was happy to have me back. She thought she knew me so well. Thought she had encouraged me right back into the girl I used to be. But every conversation was tailored to please. I had no idea who I was anymore. I was a bloody, torn mess, buried under a hard shell called Self Control.

 Parents, your children are going to change. Please let them. Don’t pretend to know them. Ask them questions, listen to them talk, and understand that their reality is just as important as your own. Don’t use the teenage identity crisis as an excuse to avoid meaningful conversation. You’re children will grow and change whether you want them to or not.

If you want to have any influence on the rest of their lives, embrace them for who they are.

Anonymous Letters From Myself

I am my own worst enemy.

Since I set out on this journey of self discovery, i have uncovered massive amounts of self-doubt. It permeates almost every part of my life. Honestly, I'm amazed I had the courage to fall in love last year with so much subconscious struggle going on. I have discovered that i constantly doubt my own intelligence. I dislike my writing, i HATE my body, and I don't trust my decisions. Believe it or not, I am not a quiet, introverted girl with no confidence. I am very active and outgoing. But on the inside, I am always reminding myself that I'm not actually interesting, pretty, or talented. Every compliment is a lie.

Sometimes my inner demons keep me from doing things I love, like writing. I throw away a hundred pages because i tell myself it's not good enough. I could be standing on the edge of something great, and i will refuse to jump, for fear of failure.

Sometimes, my inner demons drag me down. I spend days, weeks, stuck in depression, because my mind wont stop reminding me of that extra pound, that unwanted hair, that belt that doesn't fit anymore.

Where does my mind find the words to say the things that hurt me? I battle with myself every single day just to stay "Okay," just to keep my head above the water.

I have come to see my "inner demons" as a daily anonymous letter. You know, the kind that's been pieced together with glue from a million different magazines by an unknown perpetrator in black gloves. After a year of scrutinizing these "letters," I have begun to see a pattern. Every word of every line is something i have heard before. I am not smart enough to do well in math? My Dad said that once. I'm clumsy and unattractive? Thanks Mom. They probably didn't know that i was subconsciously recording every word they said, and didn't say. As a kid, everything i did was either to please them or spite them. I thought i was over by now. I don't need their approval anymore, even my dad saying he loves me has little to no effect now. So why are their voices still playing on a loop in my head? Why is every day a struggle against careless words from years passed?

Today I learned that the mean voice in my head is not my own. I am not fighting myself, I am fighting my past and all the lies it holds. My inner demons are just the echoing voices of everyone who ever doubted me. My self hatred is not based on facts or reality. I am not fat, or stupid, or worthless.
I'm sure my mind will keep sending me hate mail. Carefully constructed pages full of words and memories that bring me pain and shame. But now I understand that they are not worth reading.

I hope i will be strong enough to just throw them all out.

Enemy

My Enemy is near bye. Closer than she has been in a long time. Her pull is powerful, she wraps her cold arms around me and whispers "it is better this way." She is all sadness and understanding, caressing the the ache in my heart till it is raw. I think for a moment that maybe i don't want to go with her. I muster my strength, try to struggle. I want to stay here in the light! Suddenly she is stronger, and angry.

"YOU DESERVE THIS!" she insists.

She forces me to stand on the scale, in front of the mirror, i pinch my belly: hard. She makes me remember the lies that i told, the things I did, Or worse! The things i DIDN'T do. She is right after all. How could i have dared to pretend i deserve to be happy? At what point did i start to believe the sweet lies my husband tells me? Who do i think i am? She asks me,

"who do you think you are?"

I am ashamed of myself. She holds my hand, gentle again. Promises to never let me get so lost again. With strange new clarity I follow her into the dark. I shiver from the cold, the bruises from her fingers are throbbing on my arm. I am acutely aware of the stinging in my eyes. The tears i do not deserve to cry.