Everyone, at some point, has had a critical moment of weakness where you couldn’t do anything but hate yourself. Whether it was for the way you looked, the stuff you did, the way you acted. For me, it was about how I saw myself as a whole.
There was this one time in my life when I contemplated writing a list of things that I hated about myself. It was something I was sure people disliked about me as well. I was weak, insecure, sensitive, and I gave in to the pressure. The only thing wrong with the word contemplated is the fact that I should say I decided to write a list. I’m almost positive there were about 77 things that I realized I hated; I wrote down physical attributes, personality traits, and even mental aspects.
Furthermore, I went so low as to print it out to remind myself what was wrong with me. I was my bully. However, I didn’t want anyone to know about it. I knew somewhere deep down that it was a nasty thing to do to myself. So I rolled it up, put a rubber band around it, and put it in a box. I stuck in my bottom desk drawer, and that is where it stayed in that box for a few years. It resurfaced in my junior year of high school when I was in my graphic design class going through my Google Docs, and there it was. I quickly changed the name of whatever it was initially, so no one accidentally saw what it was. You would think that I would decide to delete it right then and there to consider the time I didn’t that way anymore either, but of course, I just left it there.
A few weeks after I graduated high school, my closest friends, Danny, Siara, Gabe, and I hung out in Danny’s basement. We decided that night was the night to all drink together, and it was my first time getting drunk. I’ve had alcohol before because of my dad and family events, but that night I drank a lot. We were all just chilling and having fun, and I was sitting down against the couch when I took a few shots with my friends. For some random reason, my dad’s voice popped in my head with what he tells me on occasion, “If you are going to drink, make sure you stand so your body can process.” I suddenly decided to stand up and head to the bathroom to see if anything would happen.
Initially, nothing clicked when I stood up, so I figured, so far, so good. I went up the stairs to the bathroom that is right before the dining room, and still, I felt nothing. I thought, wow, okay, I’m doing good. Boy, was I wrong! I don’t know what made me think that it would just take effect as soon as I stood up instead of after a few minutes, but I thought I was all right. I moved down the stairs, as soon as I placed my foot on the ground below, the last stair was when it kicked into full gear, no warning necessary apparently. My body went completely numb, and I started to feel my body hum.
Have you ever been so zoned out that it feels like your brain has disconnected with a part of your body, so it feels like you don’t have that part anymore? Perhaps it’s just me, but that’s precisely how I felt, and I became terrified. I hated what came next. Moreover, I’m pretty confident I began speaking to my friends because they were already trying to calm me down as I started to panic and cry. I was breathing quickly and slowly, not able to catch a complete breath.
My friend, Siara, came over to me and tried to calm me down. My friend Gabe called my name, so I looked at him and Danny. They were saying all kinds of things, trying to get me to relax. I explained what I was feeling so we could figure out what to do, but nothing was helping me. All of these thoughts and emotions were filling in, and I hated every single one of them. I wasn’t the type of crying like that when I was said, let alone for no reason, but of course, there is always a reason. My friend Siara then decided to take me back upstairs to the bathroom where I was just at, so we could talk and figure shit out. We talked through a lot that I was feeling, stuff that I was dealing with, and even just random things.
I was going through an awful time with my best friend, and I didn’t realize how much I was affected, but being trashed was helping me know it. I didn’t realize it at the time because there was no explanation, but my best friend was feeling a type of way about how I was “acting,” and she didn’t like that I was “changing.” I put those words in quotations because I was never acting in a specific way, and I wasn’t changing, I was trying new things. I wasn’t choosing one person over the other, and she had decided to block me on all fronts without any explanation.
So I was left feeling dead inside as if an actual piece of my heart had been crumbled. My best friend is pretty much the sister I never had, and it hurt me that it was so easy for her just to leave me with no real explanation. As if she’s never done anything wrong before. It hurt even worse because I would never do that to her or leave her feeling worthless on purpose.
I was also dealing with past times of feeling worthless to others and not being good enough for someone to want me back. It also didn’t help that someone I had feelings for at the time, those feelings being one-sided, was right downstairs enduring all of my bullshit. Siara was trying to boost my ego to put me in a good mood, and it worked for a minute. It worked for a minute, and we managed to go downstairs but wandered back to the bathroom again to talk some more because I still hadn’t entirely stopped crying. Siara and I just kept talking and talking until I could go long enough without crying.
When we had finally got back downstairs, I was feeling sorry for myself enough to bring up that shameful list I’ve already mentioned. I don’t know why I thought it was a good idea, but I was like, “Hey, you guys want to know something? I have this list of things I hate about myself that I made a few years ago.” My friends were shocked and wondered why I would do that. I even showed them the Google Doc of the list. Gabe managed to take my phone and deleted it for me. But me, being the petty little bitch I was, at the moment made it back and said, “Well, it’s in the trash, and I can just restore it.” I don’t quite remember what he said, but it was somewhere along the lines of that’s stupid, delete it, don’t do that. I deleted it.
I think somehow I knew that I wanted to remove it in the first place, so him saying that just gave me more of a push to do so. I even said, “I’ll shred the paper copy when I go home.” I did that; also, I deleted the Google Doc and removed it from my trash. Sometime after I got home, I even shredded the hard copy.
The whole night was occupied with me crying and my friends continued to try and make me happy again. I genuinely think I cried for two hours straight, also face-time my friend, Meg. She was super friendly and felt awful, but I had promised her I would be okay and to quit bugging her. That night was rough, and after crying so much, one would say I was stone-cold sober. I just passed out on the couch with Siara later in the night.
That night affected me in the long run. It was like a dam had been broken, and all of these emotions had flooded out, and I couldn’t keep up. I ended up kind of broken for part of the summer. It took a bit of time to get myself back to the way I was before that night. My confidence was lacking, my friendship with my best friend was dangling by a thread, and I was dealing with emotions I had learned to bury. I have always been unbothered. I’m not phased by much, but like everyone, it eventually gets to be too much for you, and you just break.
I don’t like to talk about my feelings at all; it compels me to feel weird and to be violent. There are only certain times when I can get talking about things like that, and that’s when I’m feeling sensitive; otherwise, I just process it by myself.
