A Month of Reflection: Day Thirteen
I am realizing that I really have always tried my best. Sadly, at times my best just really wasn't very good.
Reflecting is hard for me. That may sound silly coming from a woman who dedicates a whole month to it, but it is. Reflecting is hard on me because I have a part of myself that is really hard on me. Really hard.
Sometimes I worry that she hates me. I know that can’t be true though. She is me.
She’s been there since my earliest memory.
I was four or five. We were still living in Baldwinsville, NY. It was right after either Easter or Memorial Day in spring. I believe it was the year before the year we moved to Marcellus. The memory isn’t perfect, more of a blurry scene.
I was running around in my dining room for some reason. As I turned the corner around the table I heard a loud *snap* when my foot went down and I was horrified when I looked at what I had done. We had just hosted a little party for the holiday, may it was Mother’s Day, and people had left their dishes and my mom had stacked them in the dining room to be return. One of them must have fallen to the floor and I stepped on it and broke it. In my mind I shattered it, but that seems dramatic and it definitely was plastic not glass.
So not only did I break this thing, but it was not ours. On top of that it belonged to my Nana’s very best friend, Peach.
This story is the first time I remember lying, too. A lot of firsts in my first memory.
I had told my mom I knew nothing about it when she discovered the broken platter. It didn’t take long before it came back to me, there’s really only two other options and I don’t think one was even mobile yet. So I got caught. I made a mistake and I lied about it and I got caught. Then I had to confront the woman and confess my sin of the lying and the breaking.
And that is the first thing I remember about myself.
That I fuck up.
From that moment on, almost every memory has this same kind of focus of, “What was it that I did wrong though?”. Eventually that manifested into a constant state of preparation for what I will mess up. All of this kind of built this part of me, this part of me that never lets me forget that I will make a mistake. I will probably handle it wrong. And I have to be extremely open and humble about this mistake because it makes me bad.
I don’t know how to verbalize how…deeply engrained in me these thoughts are…which sounds scary and I don’t mean it to, I just have come to realize that the goal in my life, or of my healing, cannot possibly be to “stop the thoughts”. It has to be to live with them. I have to figure out how to live with them.
My therapist and I are doing something called “parts work” so perhaps that’s why I feel so called to talk about this part of me. This self hating self critical? Maybe that’s a gentler reframing…this self critical part that feels the need to interject every chance it has and remind me of my mistakes. Or what I could perceive as mistakes. My personal favorite it when it tells me all about the ways others probably think I have made mistakes.
My least favorite is when I want to hurt myself. Trigger warning, I know that can be a lot, and I also never know when or how to give the warning. So here it is. I am going to talk about self harm.
The first memory that I have of hurting myself was on the volleyball court.
I played all through middle and high school. I loved the sport, I loved my team. Looking back, it may have been one of the more toxic things I ever did.
My coach was harsh. Really harsh. And as I said, I am really, really harsh on myself. SO one practice the two of us were really laying it on thick. To be fair, I was playing like shit. To also be fair I was a child, I was deeply depressed and lonely. Well, at this time in my life the part of me that is…critical…she finally found a way she could do something she had always wanted to do…make me feel how bad I was.
I had seen my friends cut themselves and heard about others who had done it. I had thought about it but just always thought I was a coward because I was afraid to go through with it. So I would just be cruel to myself for not even being able to follow through with my own hurting myself when I deserve it. But that day on the court I had the best idea: bruises are easy to explain and I am clumsy!
The rest of that practice every time I would miss a hit or shank a pass I would slam my left fist into my thigh. It was quick and easy. I didn’t think anyone noticed. My spandex covered it. So I kept going.
I remember people asking about the bruises, but I also remember them taking my excuses very easily. It continued. It got worse.
When I drank I was able to hit myself a lot harder, so I would drink and punch myself over and over. When it was my body dysmorphia fueling the hatred I would claw at the parts of my body I wanted to rip off. All of this while screaming the cruelest words in my head. I am too afraid to write those words, I have worked so hard to stop that…I haven’t hit myself in four years. Four years. That feels really incredible, and honestly, until now it was not something I really let myself acknowledge. I never “celebrated” this milestone. I never realized how big a deal it was to have overcome these thoughts.
The reframing is working I am realizing. Things are getting more clear and I am finding piece with my self critical part. She is learning to accept that I am who I am, she is learning to be able to see that even though I make mistakes daily, my intention is always in doing what’s right and protecting others. That part of me needs to know that I need to start protecting myself too.
I deserve that love from myself.
Thank you for being here, reading my words, and sharing your kindness. Below are some links you can check out with different ways to makes an impact in this world! Remember community is everything. Be kind to all, be kind to yourself.
GoFundMe for Fadi's Son's Medical Expenses
GoFundMe to Help Save Mohammad's Family in Gaza
Operation Olive Branch: One-Click Email List
Code Pink's: The the Senate to Stop The $20B Arms Deal to Israel