I am coming up on my 30th birthday in less than a month, and I've found myself thinking a lot about the years that have gotten me here. I spent so much of my life trying so hard not to feel, to starve, purge, bleed, and even try to end my life. All those years that I was supposed to be soaking up life, finding myself in college, and make all those stupid mistakes that kids make on their road to becoming a grown up. I spent those years in hospitals with tubes down my nose and IVs in my arms, and when I wasn't there I was hell bent on ending myself. It has taken me all these years to accept the three words that set me free..."It's NOT your fault"!
I've always had this belief that if I were better I could save other people. I remember thinking when my mom told me that her and my dad were going to get a divorce, and my first thought was, "If I had been better, not thrown so many tantrums maybe they would still be together". With that thought at eight years old the seed was planted that everything wrong was somehow my fault. My dad got a new family, my mom drank more and more, abuse started, and I turned to anorexia and cutting. "If I am thin like mom wants she will stop drinking, she won't hit me, tell me how I'm not good enough...If only I were thinner". Those lies managed to cement themselves in my brain and in my heart and I become hell bent on "fixing" everything by punishing myself.
I remember the first time I took a blade to my flesh, I had been trying so hard to make everyone better, to be the perfect daughter, sister, student, musician, and I felt like I was exploding. How could I keep the smile while not eating, exercising, still getting homework done and keeping up my practice schedule. It some how made sense in my damaged mind that if I opened my skin I could bleed out all of the pain and frustration and be..NUMB. One cut turned to two and eventually I found myself years later needing stitches to patch me back together. I became obsessed...I would starve and starve, smile and joke while doing my best not to let the world know that I was dying inside. A person can only hold that up for so long before they break and I would turn to the closest sharp object I could find desperately breaking my picture frames and anything else my friends had tried to keep out of my reach. I couldn't let all that pain stay inside me, I would fall apart, and everyone would see how bad I was, how I poisoned everyone who came near me. I had to take the blame because I had let everyone down, and eventually believed I let God down to the point that I didn't deserve to breathe.
Six and a half years ago I took the first step in my recovery...I dared to eat and handed over my razors willingly. Eventually all the things I had been keeping in the cobwebs of my mind started coming out, and I had to face them. My mom drinking herself to death, the things she said or did to me while she was drunk was not my fault. It wasn't my fault that a guy took from me what was suppose to be mine to give, and it wasn't my fault that my family didn't understand. I slowly started to see that other people's demons had nothing to do with me, and no matter how much I hurt myself it wasn't going to fix them, wasn't going to make my pain go away. I realized that it was time to put my broken pieces back together and not be ashamed of my scars.
Now I would be lying if I said that I didn't have bad days, that my recovery seems like it is on shakey ground. I have learned how to see the difference in the truth and the lies, I've learned to turn to my faith, and to trust that maybe I am not seeing things clearly. There are days when I would love to pick up a razor and "forget" everything going on inside me, all the crap that comes with life. I never saw the light in my life, everything was constant chaos and I spent all my time in crisis...trapped in the darkness. I slowly put my mind back together and my body began to fall apart, and I wondered why even try? It was then that God reminded me that there are beautiful things in this world, beautiful things that make all the bad, all the pain disappear. On February 17, 2011 I saw the light looking up at me from a swaddled blanket, with a scrunchy face, and bright eyes seeing the world for the first time. My son didn't know anything about the darkness in the world everything was new, and I watched him grow and every small thing he leaned seemed to heal the parts of me I thought were beyond repair.
I understand not everyone has a kid and suddenly things seem compeletely different. But, you have to find that thing in your life to hold onto that is worth so much more than starving or cutting. My soul was dying all those years, I lost myself and became anorexia. My world was nothing but my illness and my blood. At some point in your recovery you have to accept that you didn't deserve what happened to you, and you didn't' cause the abuse, you didn't ask to be raped or hit. I couldn't accept living until I accepted that everything bad in the world wasn't related to what I ate or didn't eat, how much I bled. So, I'm turning 30 and I've learned that the world is way bigger than me and that is wonderful, I do not have to control everything, and I am not ashamed of what I have survived. I'm here despite the predictions that I would never see this day, I'm a wife, a mother, a survior of rape, abuse, anorexia, cutting, and I survived suicide. I am a lucky woman, and I am going to face 30 realizing how far I've come in the last decade. I may not have a strong body anymore, but my mind is free, and I have moments of pure happiness that I never experienced before, moments that my smile and laugh are not planned or controlled. Life is already too short, I might be damaged in some people's eyes, but when I look in the mirror for the first time I see a whole person and not pieces that need to be different or bandages covering my sharp obsession. It has taken thirty years for me to be happy just being...striped shirt, plaid pajama pants, two different socks, and a Jack Skellinton hat, kind of crazy...ME.
