Self-hate can come in many forms and in varying severities. For Melissa, this hate was severe enough to trigger harm at her own hands.
“I cut myself for the first time when I was 11,” Melissa shared.
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I’m frustrated, I’m angry, and I am really embarrassed. After sitting with “the situation” I am referring to for a few days, it dawned on me that it was time to use my own voice and blog about this recent situation I experienced.
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You are so used to being identified and known for what or who they think you “are”… are you your job, are you your disease, are you your abuse, are you your anxiety, your gender, your body, your looks? Your answer to this question doesn’t matter because really, you are what they choose to define you as today, likely to be different tomorrow. But, you know that you are not defined by what you do, or how you look, or any one single thing that builds the package that is you. The pressure of creating definitions, and attempting to fit pieces of you into varying small little boxes feels like too much to handle. You’re left standing there holding pieces of yourself that have no place wondering where these “you’s” belong.
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From a young age, Ashley saw the challenges and darkness that life can bring. She saw instability, fighting, sickness, alcoholism, death, physical-mental-sexual abuse at the hands of someone she should have been able to trust, and discomfort in her own house; and soon her own skin. She felt like she had no control of her life, no opinion, and nothing was her own. So – she did something, something that could be her own, something that she could regulate, and something that she now wishes she could go back and reverse; knowing what she knows now.
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The mirror has always been my biggest enemy. I have always looked at it with disgust, picking every flaw apart, overanalyzing, and wishing to be something I wasn’t. Wishing I would see a different reflection, wishing my legs were smaller, or my stomach was flatter, that I was a little shorter and much skinner. Never did I look in the mirror and see the good. Everything that I ate that wasn’t within my normal healthy regimen made me feel fat and regretful, immediately. How exhausting and sad is that? I’ll tell you, the answer is very, it’s all consuming actually.
What if together we can begin a local movement to allow all ages to write in and share their stories. Whether they want to write, share photographs, lyrics, or have us help them share their thoughts in a way that allows them to creatively express their feelings so that others can resonate in them and realize that together we are more powerful than the isolation that we sometimes feel in our own thoughts.
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