I thought I was better; my life is the present, not the past. The past is just something I lived through, a series of events making me ME. I was fooling myself, but to what extent I was never sure. My personality was altered, sure. My views on life were a little different, but whose wouldn't be?
I'm not sure why this term, in my final year of university, that I really started to show symptoms of my past again, but it was here and now, nine years after my external torment ended.
Things that may have caused it: (1) being given an executive position in a club and then being excluded from meetings and decisions, never being asked to help with anything, etc. (2) getting a part-time job at a cafe and then being fired for being too slow, but nothing else. (3) being part of a group of four very intelligent, yet stubborn, people for lab work. (4) getting yelled at for not pulling my weight as a volunteer even though the other person always refused my help when I asked. (5) not getting the high marks even though I wasn't doing much this term.
I've always had a belief that people shouldn't see me crying, that it shows my weakness. It wasn't a good thing to show weakness as a child because that's what the bullies liked to see. I used to keep my tears in until I could find a corner to cry in. I still try to, more out of habit and not wanting to ruin the atmosphere of the room than anything else.
My boyfriend doesn't like it when I cry, he doesn't like it when I'm sad and he's honestly the best person I could have ever hoped to spend my life with. He tries to find me when I disappear, and when he can tell I'm sad, he lets me cry it out and helps me forget about the pain so I can keep going.
I got a really bad mark on a midterm, worse than most of the rest of the class, and I started to call myself stupid, useless, worthless. I yelled at my boyfriend for no real reason and then ran off, hoping to make it back home so I could cry my eyes out. I had approximately a twenty-minute walk, at the end of which I concluded that it would have been better for everyone if I was never born, that I made everyone's lives miserable and it would be a favour to everyone that I just vanish. My boyfriend made it back to my house before I did and was waiting for me. He gave me a giant hug and then cried with me, partially because he thought he was part of the reason I was feeling like that.
This was only one of the many times this summer that ended with me in tears. Any time I was around the clubs I was on the exec team for, I'd end up crying because of how excluded I felt, how useless I knew myself to be. Whenever I was in the room and people weren't actively interacting with me, I felt ignored. If people said anything less than perfectly positive, it was negative.
It got to the point where I couldn't get out of bed anymore. If I did manage my way, the world was just grey, like a miasma was floating around me similar to Olaf's snow cloud. I wouldn't look in the mirror while getting ready so that I wouldn't see myself; I knew it wouldn't be good. I didn't see happy, and I was envious of those who were. I couldn't laugh and everything I did or looked at made me either feel empty or like I needed to cry.
I'm not one to be suicidal. My peace with that was made when I was thirteen years old; when I considered it and all of the pandemonium that would follow. But I knew enough about mental health to know that I needed help before this could get worse before it took over my life.
I guess the thing I'm trying to say is this: the last demon you'll have to fight, the last darkness you'll have to brave, is yourself. It's the shadows that are in your head, whispering dark things.
