
Occasionally, while waking up or when I’m too deep in thought- there might be a brief moment when I have no idea who or what I am. I simply haven’t thought of myself yet, and I experience thoughts with no identity attached. As I gradually begin remembering (I am a person, I am in my bed, I am fifteen years old), I have the emotional sensation of being born: I am pushed into cold air, and I need to rip myself out of the birth sack (dysphemism for bed). I feel small, and there is a cord of life still attached to me. It’s in the space between being awake and opening my eyes, which is where I’m trying to exist for a while. I want to stretch out that period and figure things out. But I don’t have long before I come-to and remember who I am, and how I don’t like anything about myself.
Insecurity was not a part of me that I could tolerate. It is not any part of how I envision my future self, and I believe it to be pointless. So when I find myself dwelling in insecurity, my gut instinct is to examine it until my entire life has made sense, but do nothing productive. I both hid from it and tried to hide it from myself; throwing over heavy blankets, concealing it from my sight and muffling its sound, thus muting as many of my senses as possible. But this only gave it a slight comical edge, as it turned out, my insecurity would continue to pounce on me wherever I went. And despite my best efforts over the years, I cannot cleanse my outward presentation from any form of personal struggle, moments of poor self-esteem, dysmorphia, or just bad memories and sickening nostalgia. I have spent a lot of time denying and rejecting the existence of my need to control in particular – as if shutting off the part of my brain that registered it would make it go away. Cognitive dissonance was the mental bandaid. There is something so isolating and humiliating about trying to hide certain aspects of yourself when all you do is seek to control them.
As I later figured out, I need someone. I need someone to take care of me and tell me how to live my life, but not exclusively. I need a figure to wake me up and get me dressed and tell me to go make us breakfast and send me off to work and tuck me in at night, but I need the leeway to not be embarrassed in doing so. I’m very independent though- I can live alone but I can’t take care of myself in other senses. I need someone to muffle my insecurities and console me because I can’t be wrapped in heavy blankets forever.
I am a person, but I can’t believe that’s all I am- that I am tied to just that life and identity. Is she the one thinking right now? That stuff didn’t happen to her, it happened to me. I am just sick to death of being her. I am so bored and done with her. I saw nothing good about her and I wanted to pretend I wasn’t her to the extent that my sense of self became deformed. I would dementedly try on clothes that fit me years ago and convince myself they fit. I began to see her in the hallway and when I looked in mirrors, they turned into windows that she was staring into. I haven’t taken a picture and seen myself in years. Mirrors are not reflections of the self either. Neither of those can be me? Both of those are two extremes.
Sometimes I’m worried nobody understands my cravings or wants- like my emotions are so unheard of that I should have a mental illness named after me and I deserve to be the subject of the first experimental therapeutic Krokodil drug trial at Harvard. Staying abroad at Harvard for a drug trial would be an easier way of explaining to people why I haven’t been present in their lives or too quiet. It’s much easier than saying, “sorry I haven’t messaged you back. I feel like I’m stitching my entire life back together most days or like a candle that’s fizzing out every week and then relighting itself. I have been losing interest in my hobbies for years. I am trying to save myself over and over again. I feel like a snake choking on its own tail. I’ll get back to you later.”