Dear... Myself
I've been hurt for many years now and it’s been a big secret that continues to keep hurting me everyday.
As a child I was verbally and psychologically abused growing up, I still have PSTD from the events. No one likes to talk about the ugly stuff now. I’m a funny person, generally high spirits on the outside but it’s a coping mechanism ( I learnt) that gets me through my traumatic childhood.
I still feel at times psychologically manipulated by myself now trying to pretend that everything’s ok, but it’s not.
I live in a family which is flawed at ever angle, and the biggest flaw of all is everyone trying to hide their own flaws. Complicated, yes, it may sound, but in its entire entity it is clear.
Sometimes through my high spirits I leave breadcrumbs, little signposts of where I am damaged and hurt because I want someone to notice but they never do. They always try to ignore the flaws and I hate it. So yes thats what led me to 2 years of therapy. CBT, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. I started at around age 15 and had to end it due to a change in school.
I was too scared and ashamed of my flaws and figured if my signposts were not worthy of listening too then there was no point anyone else knowing about this but myself (and my support system of my teacher and my therapist at school). Anyway I'd love to say it helped a lot, because it truly did and I was now aware that my PSTD was normal.
Oh I forgot to mention about the panic attacks, that’s what led me to therapy in the first place, where I had to physically feel the pain of this to find help. I'd like to thank that first panic attack for being my own signpost in telling me to act on what’s wrong and that it’s unfair to live my life like this.I suppressed pain for over 5 years, pushed my emotions to the bottom of the barrel and made sure that my flaws were left undetected for all those years.
I think what’s most funny is whenever my mother says that 'she knows everything about me' - ultimately I pity her. I don’t even know everything about me so the sheer ridiculousness of her thinking that she knows 'everything' is hilarious yet something that deeply saddens me.
My therapy is probably the biggest secret of my life so far, I’m only 17 so who knows what’s to come. So 'myself' if you could look at 'myself' I know exactly who you would describe me as being. Someone who looks like she's got a plan, has it all together, sorted and someone who has no emotional or painful baggage from the past. I mean really how can one be so perfectly put together on the outside and on the inside be a complete train wreck? It’s completely unrealistic to be those two people at the same time - right?
This letter is about my deep secrets I’m not going to delve into my other problems and insecurities on how I look but one thing I want to get out of this letter is that I started writing this sobbing, with tears blurring my eyes as I wrote it (in all honestly i would’ve just written this with pen and paper but my eyes were so blurred the writing all merged plus the paper would’ve got soggy) but now I have no tears on my eyes and I’m ready to move on with life per usual.
I hope that one day you'll be able to be free of this secret and live a simpler life (mentally). Of course we all know life is not simple but hopefully you meet someone one day who will be able to share your secret with and feel completely free.