So I guess I'm an adult now. I'm turning 27 in a few months and it scares the crap out of me. I have been in survival mode for so long, I forgot that I was supposed to be enjoying my life. I'm trying to convince myself to go to counseling. I feel like just taking that first step is tough for me. Admitting that there is something wrong with the way I feel and behave is not easy to do. I like to be tough on the outside and pretend like I'm perfect. I don't let people in, so that way I don't have to really look at who I am or what I am doing or thinking. Its pretty fucked up.
I wasn't always this way. I feel like I was born to make a difference in the world. I always felt this strong urge to do something different and be totally myself without worrying what other people were doing. I totally lost myself these past few years. I denied myself a lot of joy and experiences over the years because I was never living for me. I felt betrayed. I was pissed. I was going to escape or destroy myself as revenge. I never planned for the future because to me, it seemed no one else cared what my future held. I tried to please people but really didn't care about me at all.
I blame everything on everyone else. It makes it easier to not do anything.
I can't escape this feeling of disappointment, resentment, anger, and sadness. I am living in the past. I have been living for what happened in the past. I have not chosen to make my own future and that is sad. I wish someone would have been there to talk to me about what happened or treat me like a child instead of an adult. I knew too much. I was too involved in my parents relationship and problems. I should have never known about any of them. I was not given the chance to just breathe and just be a child that is oblivious to the complications and difficulties of life. All I wanted was hugs and family time. I feel like my parents cared so much about their own problems, my sister and I were left to raise ourselves. I feel like I owe my sister a lot. She was there all the time. She taught me how to laugh and love. Even when we fought, we clung to each other's love. I can't blame her for the torment she put me through as a younger sister. I think that picking on your sibling is natural. I think that it escalated to the point that it did because no one stepped in and put their foot down. I don't remember very many rules when I was a child. I remember being told several times, "I wasn't there so I don't know what really happened so there is nothing I can do." I felt like no one was there to protect me.
I started using drugs when I was eleven years old. I think that I was given too much freedom, but that I also was in a state of depression already. I don't want to blame my parents, but I still feel like someone should have been there and been involved with what I was doing. I definitely lied and hid things from them, but I was a pre-teen. When I was eleven or twelve I had smoked pot outside my best friends house with a few older kids. We ended up at Waffle House at 2 in the morning where I ran into my dad. We saw each other across the room, and I behaved like the adult and approached him. I still feel like he was more ashamed for me to see him there than concerned about me and what I was doing there with a group of older kids. I remember him telling me that we would both just not tell my mother about it. I remember wondering what he was hiding from her but being grateful that I was not in trouble. That memory haunts me. I don't know why I was raised so carelessly. I want my children to be the best they can be. I want to protect them from bad choices and people that are bad influences. Why did my parents allow me to be such a loose cannon? I never felt like I had to be held responsible for anything.
The only time I ever got grounded I was caught shoplifting. I remember crying and crying in the back seat of the car hysterically when my mom picked me up. I felt so guilty and so bad for what I did. I remember my mom telling me to calm down and that it wasn't that bad. Looking back, it was a big deal. What I did was wrong. I was only grounded for a week, one weekend. My boyfriend at the time had sex with my best friend over the weekend. She was 13, he was 16 and in the same grade as us..
I sometimes look at my life and wonder what it would have been like had there not been so many crazy fights and incidents in my childhood that shaped who I thought I needed to be. I wonder what I would have been like if I came home to rules and family and expectations and love and support and encouragement and questions about my life and what I wanted on a daily basis. My dad was gone during most weeks and my mom worked until 5 or 6 pm. My sister started band. For a while, I was left alone for most afternoons. No children in the neighborhood to play with, just me and the T.V.
I was a nanny for three years..
I had to quit because I became so jealous of the children and families I worked for. Their parents provided so much for them and seemed to live mostly for them. Even the busiest family found time to have those special bonding moments between father and daughter or mom and daughter. It made me realize that my childhood was not what it could have been. It made me realize that I was not given the tools to become an adult. I learned mostly everything on my own. I taught myself how to ride my bike because I was sick of waiting for someone to teach me. I still remember rolling down the hill and hitting my mom's car because I didn't know there were brakes on the bike. I hit my crotch on the bar and it hurt so bad. I don't know if I even told anyone.
All I want in life now is to be happy. I want to feel confident and love myself the way I love others. I always wanted to please my parents. I don't know if it was for attention, to keep the family together, or to counteract my sister's bad behavior.. I just know that it didn't allow me to be me and do things just for me. I never asked myself what I wanted. I knew school was what my dad wanted for me and that my mom loved my creativity. I went to school for art and never looked at it as learning but just another stepping stone to prove something. I graduated and since then I haven't been the same. I got lost in a downward spiral of self-doubt and depression. I was unaware of how I viewed my life and I couldn't figure out how I got to where I was. It was like I woke up. I thought for some reason that the world would magically change and life would get easier when I graduated, but it got harder. I have had to take a long look at myself to try to get myself back.
I want to live only for me from now on. I deserve the best. The love I feel for others has to become the love that I feel for myself. I can't expect anyone to love me, if I don't love who I am.
I need a break. I need to get out there and enjoy life. I want to have fun. I want to laugh and smile and dance and sing and not give a fuck again. I was really good at it for a while.
I am a strong woman. I am fearless. I am stubborn. I am opinionated. I am loud. I am silly.
I love me and if no one else does, they are stupid.
xo
Elle
