Pain

I loved it. Even though I knew I shouldn’t have, I just couldn’t help it. The more I did it, the more I wanted to. It gave me this feeling, a feeling that I needed and did not know how else to get. It was almost like a happy feeling, a high. It made me feel alive when I normally felt like I was kind of just existing. I craved the pain. Honestly, I still do. The pain of cutting my own skin open, the pain of toxicity, the pain of people hating me, the pain I got from ruining my own life.

           I remember it starting when I was about twelve but, it probably started before that. I would cut myself. I never did it very hard, not deep enough for anyone notice or to leave any lasting scars. Just hard enough to feel the throbbing pain, to get that rush of adrenaline.

            I was always different from everyone else. At least I felt different, like I never belonged. I would look at my friends and the other girls in my school and I would feel inferior, ugly. They had long, beautiful, straight hair. They wore cute, new, trendy clothes. They had boobs. I had short awkward hair that my mom cut at home in our kitchen, very badly. I always got all my clothes from my older sister or the cheapest thrift store we could find. I also did not get boobs till many, many years after all the other girls. I was unimportant, no one desired me, no one even noticed me.

           When I think back on it, I realize how blind I was to the important things in life. I had food, and clothes, and a place to live. But I thought my life was so bad and that there was no way it would ever get any better. At the time all that mattered was that very small point in my life. A point that honestly turned out to be one of the most unimportant parts of my life thus far.

           As I got older, I discovered the power of toxicity and hatred. It was just as good as the cutting, and honestly, it was easier. Making people hate me came naturally. I would see all these popular girls getting boyfriends and losing their virginity. That’s all I wanted, to have a boyfriend and to have sex. I wanted to fit in. I started going out to parties with my cool, popular best friend and which ever older boyfriend she had at the time. She always had a boyfriend and knew everyone at the parties. She would be drinking and go off to have sex with her boyfriend and all I wanted was to be her. I was weird and awkward and didn’t know anyone. I became so unapologetically desperate to be someone else. So much so that after one of those parties I lost my virginity to a guy I had just met in the back of his truck. I knew I shouldn’t have, I knew it was one of those things that I would regret forever. But I was so drunk I don’t think I could have stopped him even if I tried.  He was much older than me, he was an asshole and he was disgusting. When everyone found out, they hated me. They all thought I was just as disgusting as him, and in a way I was. But for some reason it felt good. Partly because I finally had sex which for some reason was the most important thing to teenage girls back in my hometown, but I don’t think that was all of it.  

           I wonder if maybe it was because I was finally being acknowledged, people knew who I was, people actually talked about me. I continued to develop this pattern. If I knew something was stupid and destructive I did it every time I got the chance.

           Eventually I hit the lowest my life could ever go. I met a guy. I was only sixteen, but I was madly in love. Well that’s what I believed at least. Even when he started to hit me, I still loved him. I didn’t care, I loved the pain of it all. All of the physical and mental abuse, the destruction. It made me feel so alive. We ran away together, literally. We stole my grandma’s car and went all the way across the country. I only lasted a month. It took him chasing me down the street screaming at me before it became too much for me, so I went back home.

           Just like any real addiction, I couldn’t say away for long. The robbing, the lying, the abuse, the humiliation. My life was comprised entirely of me demolishing myself for a high and I didn’t mind. So, I went back to him. Of course, it all got worse. We were constantly cheating on each other, physically fighting each other, we hated each other. But to us that’s what a relationship was. We were young and stupid, we loved each other despite hating each other and we thought that was okay.

           Eventually I did escape the cycle I was in, but it definitely wasn’t on purpose. I am not sure I ever would have left on purpose. I found myself having to move away from my boyfriend. I planned on getting a job and an apartment, then he would move out with me. I did get a job and an apartment, but of course the entire time I was cheating on him anyway. Then the greatest thing to ever happen to me happened. I got pregnant.

           It was like having ice water poured on my head. It was a shock. Not a “how did I get pregnant” kind of shock, I knew damn well how I got pregnant. It was a “what the fuck is wrong with me” shock. I suddenly realized that everything I was doing my entire life was absolutely ridiculous. There was no reason to subject myself to any of that. I had a serious problem, a serious mental health problem. Its amazing to me now that I never realized this before I was pregnant, it was so obvious.    

           In so many ways this is still my life, it probably always will be. I still miss that high, I am still angry for no reason and sometimes I still want to be destructive. I think maybe this will always be my life. Maybe there will always be a part of me that loves the pain.