It has been 23 years, and I can’t remember if I ever loved myself. I don’t think I ever did. All my life I have felt that everyone else is in every possible way better than me. I went through a phase where I would make other people happy and keep all the pain for myself cause I believed that they didn’t deserve it, and I did. I have managed to forgive people who have hurt me in the worst imaginable ways. Although the pain never goes away, I have forgiven them a thousand time over. Yet, deep down, all I ever feel is empty. As if there is a black hole deep within me that I can’t get rid of.
I have my moments. Sometimes, I am happy. Sometimes, I make myself happy with the simplest of things and it’s more than enough for me. Sometimes I dare to dream, believe in myself, even believe that I am talented. But the rest of the times, every little thing about myself disgusts me. I look at myself in the mirror and I hate myself for how fat I am, my hair feels too heavy that I just want to chop it all off, my head feels too heavy that I want to bang it against a wall endlessly. I feel like there is something within me that needs to be carved out with a knife; something that is polluting me. Maybe if I lose all my weight, and my hair and somehow destroy the remnants of my body, it’ll go away. Maybe if I burn myself, it’ll burn with me.
I remember back when it was nothing but a tiny speck inside me. I used to be stronger, I was able to fight it, make it my strength. But somewhere down the line, I broke down. It grew and took me over. I became a victim of the emptiness within me. Every time I interact with someone, I hear this voice telling me that I am worthless, that I don’t have anything useful to say anyway. So I shy away in a corner, pushing people away and drowning myself deep into my emptiness. When someone tells me that I am good at something I try to deny it; I believe that it could have been done better, that I should have tried harder.
The worst part is loving someone when you cannot love yourself; I feel like I don’t deserve to be loved. There is the constant terror of him seeing me for who I really am, the monstrous piece of trash. There is the constant struggle to do better, be a better version of yourself, but mostly just trying to jeopardize things because you believe that you don’t deserve to be loved, that you will be saving them from your wretched self. Sometimes I just wish to run away from everything, start over and somehow learn to love myself. But most of the time it’s just the need to stop being yourself, stop existing so you won’t have to feel so much pain, and hurt everyone else, every second of your life.
