Hey! This mytake will be the only one in a long line of mytakes that isn’t a question, anonymous or otherwise. Take it easy on me, this is my first time.
I was inspired to write something about depression, and personality disorders, because of what I’ve learned just during quarantine. I’m shocked at how much growing I’ve done in the past 2 weeks alone, that I think have made up for a good 4 year block in my teen years where I didn’t feel any growth at all, spiritually or emotionally. I can only write from my own experience, and I’m not going to point fingers at other peoples choices or personal experience. I only hope you can relate to some of what I write and gain comfort from that or at least know you’re not alone. I also write this mytake for my own clarification of the situation that I’ve just been enlightened about recently, and I hope that some of the pink anons on here who aren’t old men read this, and can relate, and feel more stable in what they’re going through. Teen years are strange and tough!
Its just that with the recent nervousness and anticipation of a new counselor, who would be my first female counselor, my subconscious suddenly decided to give me the answer as to why I’ve felt like I was floating through life like nothing really mattered.. why everyday felt like just a slight and depressing variation from yesterday, why all magic had disappeared from my life.
As I entered my teen years, I was one of the most enthusiastic individuals with the biggest smile, someone who drew people to her and loved life. I was very sheltered growing up, and happened to look up to a certain family who lived by us as the end-all to what our family should be. They had quite a few daughters and I looked up to the one who was my own age as the perfect role model. Of course, she was just the average teen who had her own struggles. But this family had a way of coming across as wonderful all the time. The mother was very very big in our community, and I was jealous of what I perceived their family to be, the most normal, cool family on the block who had everything together. We would see them daily in the morning for mass, and I would dress well and make my hair beautiful so the daughter would think I was as cool as her. Looking back, I was so beautiful, and I couldn’t see it. I really was beautiful.
About the same time, I began tugging on my mother’s apron strings, wanting the things that every ‘normal teen’ would have… namely, skinny jeans and makeup. Before turning 14, I’d never listened to any music other than classical radio stations, and I felt this was a massive mistake. I was suddenly desperate to change our family, to change myself. My parents are extremely conservative, and we fought daily about things like this. It was tearing me in two, and it only made matters worse when the mother of the family I looked up to decided to have me over one day after mass. She snuck me upstairs and her daughter gave me a pair of her skinny jeans. I spent the day in town with the family, feeling extremely insecure, and feeling as if the girls in the family secretly hated me because I wasn’t anything like them.
I’d joined the swim team at the local Y, and was one of the most beautiful girls on the team. I knew it, and that gave me confidence. I started flirting with a 19 year old boy, and when my parents found out they took me off the swim team. I felt trapped and discouraged. I felt alone in my quest to be 'normal.' My stability was made up of my insistence that I was going to change my family. In my discouragement, I gained a lot of weight. I felt like my father hated me, because of our fights we had over things like modest dress. I had a tough outward core, but inside I was crying. My father couldn’t see this. I was also breaking my mothers heart. She began to spend more and more time outside in her garden and soon stopped trying to get through to me.
Through all this, I began to be numb to the situation since it was literally tearing me in two. I began to see I was ruining my family, but I didn’t know how to fix it, since I thought for sure in my desperate run to be just like that family, I would see a light at the end of the tunnel if I just kept running. The more time I spent with the family, the more insecure I felt. The more insecure I felt, the more I dissociated whenever I was with them into a numb state of mind. I began to hate the mother of the family. My own mother, who considered the other mother a good friend, would often confide in her certain things I had said about the family, in hopes that the other mother could help me.. things like ‘I wish I belonged to that family’ and other things I had stated, such as ‘I’m too big for living in the country, I know I’m headed for big things when I’m grown up and away from you guys!’ This was the worst thing that could have been done, since I was so demoralized at my embarrassment, feeling as is the family finally knew all my hopes and dreams which made me truly vulnerable, that I couldn’t deal with the situation any more.
I began slurring my words around them, and lost the ability to be friends with the girl who was my age. Everything was a show, and I could’t even try to smile around them anymore. The climax of those years I believe is when I had to go through with the play I had promised to act in, which required me to be at their house twice a week so they could drive me to practice. I was so mortified to get on stage and dance and sing frosty the snowman but I had to because I’d promised I’d be in it before I really knew what I was getting into. The night of the play, I bawled my eyes out. On stage, I’d done okay. But inside I was bleeding.
After that night, I stopped talking to them altogether. We just sort of lost contact with the family. In my desperate teenage attempt to impress them, I left a contemptible impression. I’d come off as a rude whorish girl, who was overweight and had orange hair. Whats more, I was now what society would consider a cooler type of girl. But I was so unhappy. And I’d ruined my family. I’d been a bad impression on my little sister, and I’d demoralized my father. I’d beaten down my mother and her moral system, and I wasn’t happy. My heart felt like it was bleeding every day.
We had child youth services called on us more than once, because people were sure I was the victim of abuse. I was a victim of abuse, but I was the abuser. I could do nothing but beat myself up. I hated myself. I hated everything.
As life moved on, and time passed, I tried to move on as well. But I didn’t know how. And when I joined a new school in my third year of highschool, I didn’t make any friends all year. I’d taught myself that friendship was a facade. I sat by myself at the lunch table, not in self pity, but because I couldn’t understand what it meant to be friends. I lost the weight I’d gained during that first year at my new school, and I was very beautiful. But it didn’t matter.
My senior year began with me bawling my eyes out in front of everybody at school. I didn’t want to be there. Around Thanksgiving, the new principal came up to me and told me to stop wallowing in self pity. I was surprised, and it made me look at my situation differently. But I still didn’t know how to fix it. I began to hate the principal and a new side of my personality began to show after years of being completely passive from the outside. I began to be angry at school, and destructive, and loud. By March of my senior year, I’d gone to the principals office more than three times over shouting matches with the teachers or swearing. I’d switched medication twice, from zoloft to lexipro, and I felt off with both. Neither of them really did the trick.
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The reason? Because drugs don’t solve your problems. You do. I had a problem to face that I didn’t even know how to come about facing. Those years in my teens when all shit was going down, were too much. I hadn’t accepted them as a part of me. I’d blurred them out completely. I started a new timeline in my head at 16, where none of that shit even really existed. I even went through times where to avoid being completely passive in my passive stage, I would tell myself, pretend you’re only 5 years old and its just like that other thing that happened when you were five. Then I could pretend, and smile, and know how to act. I was literally subconciously trying to ‘start over.’ But it wasn’t working, and I was frustrated, and I didn’t know why. I couldn’t enjoy anything anymore. I was trapped in life. I wanted out. I wanted out!!!
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About a week ago, I realized how afraid I was of facing that time in my life. My instagram page recommended me following that daughter of the family that I’d looked up to, and I couldn’t hit the button. I eventually made myself do it. And I’m getting back on and I’m going to follow the rest of them, and all the other families that were connected to that time in my life. Because that was a time in my life! An embarrasing time. A terrible time. A lonely time. A time that broke me. A time where I hurt my parents. A time where I felt like I didn’t deserve to live. Its a part of me! Its like a chinese finger trap. Trying to get away from it, you only get caught tighter. As soon as I recognized and owned those years as mine, I felt so free. Even now, I know that every day is a new day.
I still find it difficult to do, following all those new people I mentally excluded for my life for years. But its time to grow. Its time to move on. Its time to accept them, and accept me. I’m a new person. I’m an adult now. I’ve got Jesus, and I’ve got my life ahead of me. I’ve got college in the fall to look forward to. I’ve got a man waiting for me. I’ve got so much to live for. And I can’t let my past hold me down anymore. I am new, and I know where I’ve been and I can be free accepting all that.
Till next time,
~Angie
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