Before 2016 perhaps was the darkest time of my life (it makes me seem as if I’ve lived long, which is not true). A state of depression one would call it, a recurrence of suicidal thoughts that eventually never happened. One that triggered a massive turning point and a desperate plea for help.
‘a kid’s childhood paves its own path to who they’ll turn out to be in the future.’
I think everyone has their own story to tell, perhaps a traumatic, experience that pushed the accelerator button that drove oneself to a one-way trip down a pitch-black web of hopelessness.
I still remember my maths teacher in 8th grade slamming the test paper onto the table in front of my parents and questioning why wasn’t I able to even scrape a pass, (I got a 0, by the way). The look on his face held, disappointment, and probably thinking that I had a learning disability in mathematics. I wasn’t much of a bright kid, learning wise (in school), I had trouble understanding and would never raise my hand in class because everyone was a smart arse; back then, the thought of speaking to both teachers and students terrified me.
Looking back, it felt as if I was always walking around the hallways with a looming rain cloud above my head that was waiting to burst into a thunderstorm, lightning and all.
I didn’t get along with the people in my class, in fact I kind of clung onto the people who I thought looked at me as their friend and treated me ‘nice’. I was constantly betrayed by committing into a red-flagged friendship, and didn’t notice how much toxic air I was inhaling. Struggling to find myself, friends, schoolwork and motivation to continue attending classes was like ‘home’ to me. The partial escape would be at home, where I would constantly hear my mom in the background nagging at how little my responsibility was towards school effort.
Faced with inner turmoil, and external factors eating up the confidence barrier around me; I was struggling to keep my head up and was stringing along the patience of my parents that they had for me.
I was sad. Like very sad.
I stopped caring for myself, school and my well-being during the beginning of 8th grade; by the end of December of that year was my breaking point, I would have dreams about getting into big accidents and not waking up ever again. I was then in therapy for a bit, it didn’t help much to be honest; I covered up my pain with lies and spat those lies to the therapist hoping that it would somehow mask the pain of the truth that clawed me so deep. I was at a point where even the therapist couldn’t help me, a point where I was going to go on the roof and plunge to my death.
It felt worthless to be alive, was what I had thought. By then I got into a school abroad to continue my studies, in hopes to somehow give up there too. But, I had to wait at least 6–8 months for the next year to start before going abroad.
I was actually coping for once, although I was still hammered down with people casting me to the side, my grades falling apart, and motivation levels were as bleak as it could ever be. I was holding on to myself so hard that I don’t think I knew how to succumb into the pain. The feeling of constantly being drowned in my own bubble, the emotion rising in every pore in my body; the strength of me suppressing the intensity of those emotions is a feeling I can’t describe now, (I don’t know how). Escaping the toxic filled community of I-don’t-know-what, made me realise that I haven’t done anything in my life that somehow made me feel fulfilled or at least, whole. It’s a scary thought, because it meant that if I gave up everything; this life would actually be meaningless. And something inside me, told me that I didn’t want to give up; at least not yet. Telling me to do so much more than to be sad and low-key crazy. I want a life I can look back to and say ‘I did so much, and that I accomplished a lot.’ I didn’t want my life to be like the notebook I bought but never used, instead I want it to be bursting by the pages; a book where I can look back and smile, cry, laugh, make fun of.
I want to live a life on my terms, a life where I would want to re-live again and again.
Parts of my life, especially in the beginning where I consider them to be dark voids, and although they happened and I’ve healed from majority of them, they’ve created who I am today; it gave me the push and the strength for me to continue.
My heart gave me a second chance at living.
Going abroad meant that I would be starting all over again, meeting new people, transitioning into a new environment and I took this as a reset to somehow ‘put-away’ who I was and sealed it in a box; floating in the sea of thoughts. I tried so hard to fit in, and for the first half-year or so it was difficult finding my own group of friends; I then realised that I didn’t need to adapt to who my friends are, as long as I kept being who I was as a girl with scars I am able to fit in just perfectly.
I practiced self-care.
I didn’t know what was self-care, in fact; after implementing self-care in my life I’ve become more bearable as a person as well as seeing more laughter in all aspects of my daily life. Not only was I working on myself, I was also coping with my internal thoughts a lot better and I no longer thought of suicide. I began opening up and owning up to my bottled feelings, thus the relationship with my parents got a lot brighter than it was before. Being abroad meant that I had to be dependent on myself, I didn’t want to fall into a dank dark hole again so I chose to regain some sort of control over my life’s direction. There needed to be some change. And, it had to start with myself.
I reorganised my life
Everyone had their priorities, and I made sure to clearly label mine in bright fluorescent writing so that even on the darkest of days; my priorities would still shine brightly.
There will always be ups and downs in our lives, perhaps for some of us more downs than ups and vice versa. And as a woman approaching the end of her teenage years, I can acknowledge the pain as an experience that has somehow shaped the path for my future as well as made me love myself for who I was and am. I’m not ashamed, nor angry because I know that it is what it is and as long as I focus on what’s in front of me and not behind me; I’m already doing a lot better.
To the tears I’ve shed, the self harm and excuses I made to cover who I was; cheers to you because you’ve made me into someone I would never have thought I’d become, thank you.
— and, I love you.
Edited: included some more ‘sun’, more about how I feel and loving more of myself.
