For me, this is my way of “becoming naked”; of showing the vulnerable side of me and explaining to people why I am the way that I am. I open my past to everyone to hopefully make it okay because today, I relived a part of my life that I shunned to the shadows of the darkest place in my soul. I left it there to sulk in silence and I now understand that this hidden part of me is longing to be released. My friend asked me to write a piece for an art instillation she is creating. So, I decided to pull out the old journals and began searching for some inspiration from my own material. Well, one of those journals was one I hadn’t opened in probably five years. Now, I remember why. The pain that was stored in that journal was that of years of oppressed feelings and thoughts and things I didn’t want to remember. So, I never opened it. I have done so well to make the things I went through be okay, until now. At this moment, it’s time for me to let it go. To many, I seem happy and free and energetic. But what most don’t know is that this woman before you, this person I am now, there used to be a shivering, frightened person that came through a raging fire storm. I used to be severely depressed, scared, and even terrified of living my life. I was alone, and had been deceived, manipulated, and even used. I thought I was nothing. I had given up on myself only because I thought no one else had hope in me.
For a while, I forgot how to feel the pain. I have become so incredibly good at “pretending” I have communication with myself and this self expression is always there that I’m just simply, okay. And today, I reminded myself it’s all a bunch of bullshit. I will try my best (for myself) to remain as positive with this situation as I can but I honestly don’t know how manageable that will be. Sometimes, when I look back on my childhood and the things that happened to me, it seems like a mere shadow has overtaken my mind. I can’t remember certain things; which, for me, is nearly impossible. I remember everything. And I literally mean everything. I can remember dates, faces, directions, places, words that are said to me but when I think of that time, nothing. I remember nothing.
Opening these journals was like reliving everything I worked so hard to block out. Once I read the first entry, everything rushed back and almost bombarded me with emotions. I remembered what my life was like. I remembered the pain and the suffering and the self infliction and for a second, I felt powerless. I felt like I was being ripped apart by an overly hungry alligator. This fire I put out years ago had again, been relit. In a way, it’s okay to feel the pain again but it also hurts to feel lonely again. For years and years the one thing that has troubled me so much is the feeling of loneliness. I worked extremely hard to make that feeling diminish itself and deteriorate somehow. And now, simply reading a journal made it all rush back. For me, loneliness was something that I’ve always known. Loneliness had become my best friend. When I was younger, I had no one, nothing, but my own sorrow. As a child, I remember nothing but screaming and fighting and having things happen to me that shouldn’t have happened. I remember being seven years old waking up and my mother not being there and being told she was visiting someone unexpectedly. For days, I sat watching out the window waiting for her to return. I remember being lied to over and over then hearing what the lies really were at night. When I think of my childhood, I think of rocking my two year old sister to sleep every night when I was only seven just to make sure she felt safe and to make sure that she knew she was loved by someone.
It’s ironic when I think about it because my urge to make others feel like they weren’t alone ended up being the one thing I struggled with most. This thing, almost obsession, with loneliness wasn’t a literal term. I wasn’t alone. And I knew that. But I felt alone. I felt like I had no one to talk to, no one to be excited with, or sad with. I had felt like, literally, no one was there for me to fall on when I needed. This term of loneliness became everything that I desired to get away from. But in a way, it became the only thing I had. Without feeling alone, I felt nothing. I had numbed myself so well that the only thing I felt anymore was tired of searching for someone to be there for me. When I looked into my soul or into my mind it was just empty space. I heard sounds of echoing and the sound of black shadows. I was walking on a life of eggshells that I had built for myself by the influence of what I dealt with. All the lies I listened to as a child initially, made my reality and the vision I had of myself. I believed it. I believed everything they told me. For a while, they even convinced me of the biggest lie of them all….. “You aren’t worth it. You won’t make it. This is just who you are; nothing but a poor child with a dysfunctional life. You and your dreams are pathetic. You’ll never make it.”
The saddest thing about reading these journals is feeling the helplessness I had for myself. Believing in everything I was and everything I knew I would do and just being so powerless to do anything. I didn’t know how to escape. I couldn’t get away from the deterioration of my own soul. I began to deny any space for truth because I knew nothing more than unbalance. I became an oppressed hole filled of darkness and deception. I faded so far from any sort of reality that even I, myself, can’t figure out how I managed to get away. Repeatedly, the only thing I wished for, all that I wanted was just to survive. Just to make it another day and yet every single fucking day there was something new stopping me from moving on. It took years for me to pull myself away from these fucking lies that everyone in my life told me. But guess what, all you sick people that brought me to pieces, I survived. I made it. Try to break me down now. For once, YOU will be the one that will not succeed.
Over the years, I learned small tools to inspire myself and believe in no one but me. I taught myself how to love and be okay. Being alone, in the state of how I view it now, is almost comforting. I’ve showed myself and proved that everything will be alright because in reality, I’m the farthest thing from alone. I think the only thing that was missing for all those years in my life was love. I failed to feel loved as a child. And as I grew a bit older, the love I yearned for so much was still nowhere in sight. Even now, I don’t have a man to love me but I sure as hell have myself. I have the love from my friends, and I proved to my family that I’m still worth loving, even strangers I help inspire have told me they loved me. The love that was so lost before is now surrounding me in full swing. When I was a teenager, I read many self help books and the only thing I can remember from any of them are the lesson of learning to love yourself. Even if I didn’t believe it, I learned to fake it. I faked my own love for myself and eventually, it became true. From the last five to six years of my journals, every single entry ends with “Stephanie, love yourself.”
I’ve spent a lifetime trying to be someone else’s guidance, strength, backbone that I have so effortlessly forgotten to be that for myself. So one day, I had to end it. I had to stop this bullshit of a life that I was trapped in. I needed to make my own reality. I found my soul again. I learned to consistently look at the beautiful things I’ve done in my life, instead of dwelling on everything I had been through. I became my own fan. I would write everyday and every entry I would write something to encourage myself to believe in me. I would tell myself that I was unlike anyone, I could do anything I put my mind to, and I sure as hell was as amazing as I believed I was. This sense of belief that I formed for myself became my own power. It gave me the strength to do and reach for anything I ever thought was possible. My dreams have always been out of this world and beyond anybody’s desires but I’ve achieved almost all of them because I BELIEVE in myself.
With the help of writing my feelings and expressing everything onto paper, I’ve healed myself. I found the power that I missed so much and I did it. I have been healed.
