I’m ready to turn the page. I’m ready to start a new chapter.
I had been reluctant to write the new chapter of my life. Mostly because I had my life plan sorted and set in stone. I knew what I wanted in life and what I aspired to be… but as I have unwillingly discovered, life does not always go according to plan.
I’ve had a tough year. I’m reflecting back on it now at a time when I feel like I have a little more clarity. Today is an OK day. I say ‘OK’ relative to the days in June when I was literally banging my head against my bedroom walls, knife in hand, face puffy, eyes swollen, bodily liquids of all sorts running out of my eyes, nose, mouth, pores. Relative to the days when my heart was in so much pain, my brain a fog and body debilitatingly tense from my overwhelming emotions. Relative to the days when I was begging everyone around me to let me die.
I don’t have those days anymore. Although, some days I get the prickling sensation underneath the skin of my left arm that’s urging me to rip it apart. Some days, my mind finds itself thinking that life is way too hard and that jumping in front of a train would be so much easier. Some days, I feel like an empty shell of a girl with a heart that’s constantly drowning.
But I am alive. There are days when I feel like everything will be OK. However, the inner dialogue that goes on between my two extremes of ‘feeling OK’ vs ‘omg the world sucks, I hate my life, kill me now’ is very tiresome. It takes a lot of energy out of me. It’s another part of me that I thoroughly dislike but can’t help but have (hooray for Borderline Personality Disorder).
A lot of people say I’m brave. A lot of people say that I’m strong. I don’t feel it. Most of the time I feel weak and pathetic. I know that I am too overly-emotional for my own good and I’m severely lacking when it comes to being logical. I often do not see the strengths that other people see in me.
But you know what? I have to give myself some credit where credit is due. Because it’s true – I’m still alive. I spent a solid month in bed crying, unshowered, not eating and being self-destructive. I almost took my life. I swallowed more sleeping pills than I should have, had police show up at my door, visited the hospital, looked up ways to tie a noose and how hard it is to die from carbon monoxide poisoning. I took a huge hit to my self-esteem, my identity, my ego. I felt like I was nobody. I felt invisible, unwanted, unloved.
In the midst of all that? I managed to go to a job interview. I somehow landed the job (which still baffles me to this day).
The most important lesson that I have learned from this (aside from not giving your heart away to someone so easily – but that’s a lesson for another day), is that I am capable of feeling the most intense, life-debilitating emotions and still make it out the other side of hell. Frankly, I could be dead right now. I could’ve been dead for a long time but here I am, writing this.
With the knowledge that I am capable of surviving what I consider was the worst time of my life, I am assured that I am capable of creating the life that I truly deserve. That’s not to say that the road there is an easy (nor a happy) one. It’s to say that I am determined to become the best version of me that I can possibly be.
I’ll probably stumble a few times and get a few more scars along the way… but every scar that I wear – both on my arms and in my heart, are just proof that I am capable.
And so it is time to turn the page and write this new chapter.
Leonie xo.
