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Nothing made sense to me when I was a child. It just didn’t add up. No matter how hard I tried, I was never able to understand either my life or my circumstances. As a result, I lived with the ever-present feeling of dejection in an emotional world stuck somewhere between second-best and worst. In my heart, I knew my world was messed up, but I just couldn’t seem to change it when I was young. Events during my adult life only perpetuated that feeling of unworthiness and being unlovable. With little to go on, I continued to seek validation and answers. Sadly, I usually turned to wrong people. All I ever wanted was to feel loved, to be acknowledged, and to feel worthy. Two marriages, three affairs, and two divorces later, I understood love to be fleeting and painful. I never thought I was good enough for anything better, but I always wanted more. Despite years of therapy in the offices of many trusted counselors, I never confessed to my childhood habit of self-harm. Cutting had been my method of choice. It wasn’t until Thanksgiving of 2007, when the bloody memories and some new found understanding flooded every cell of my being. I was sitting on a neighbor’s porch talking to a beautiful, obviously pained 13-year-old girl who reminded me of my younger self. The connection I felt with this little girl was intense and inexplicable for I barely knew her other than seeing her walk around the neighborhood in her Nuevo-punk clothing. I knew this girl was obscenely smart, but I also knew she, like me, sought unhealthy love from outside her home in an attempt to feel worthy. As the girl got up from the chair in which she had been sitting, the bracelets covering her painfully thin wrists moved higher up her arms. There they were, those tell-tale signs of self-loathing: cutting scars. I instantly flashed back to the blue and white bathroom of my grandmother’s house where I cut myself the first time. I immediately understood the marks on the girl’s arm and her quiet expression of pain. I reached out and held the girl’s wrist, then gently caressed the scars with my hand. “What the hell is this?” I asked the young teen. The girl allowed me to continue holding her arm. She looked me in the eyes, looked down at her scars, then directly into my eyes again and said, "Oh, those? I don't do it anymore." "Neither do I," I responded. The girl was visibly stunned. Her eyes locked in a gaze with me. She then looked down at my hand as I continued to caress her cutting marks. The girl lowered her gaze to her feet as if in shame. Not quite knowing what to say, I looked her in the eye and told her, “Just know I’m here when you need me.” It was in that moment I understood why I felt a connection with this young girl. We were more alike than was visible on the surface. We both wanted to feel loved and worthy of that love. Neither of us understood our lives and neither of us knew how to get what we wanted. But in that very moment, I was able to say words I’d always wanted to hear someone say to me. It was later, as I sat in my house reliving my cutting days, when I began to see the course of my life and some of the solutions I needed to fix it. By seeing myself in this girl, then discovering we shared a dark and dangerous secret, I knew what I had to do for myself. I needed to love the little girl I once was in the way I wanted others to love me. I had to help her feel good enough. So, I quietly said to my younger self, “You are worthy. You are special. You, my friend, are loved.” My skin began to crawl as I uttered those forever-craved words. As my eyes filled with tears, I sat on the couch, closed my eyes, wrapped my arms around myself and bawled. In my mind’s eye, I saw the little girl I once was sitting in her grandmother’s bathroom, cutting and tearing at her small hands, draining the pain of the loss of her mother to cancer, and her father’s theft of her innocence through his perverted notions of what a daughter is supposed to do for a father. I recalled the intensity of the pain, the intensity of the insecurity, but then something flickered in my mind. I saw the faces of my past teachers, my childhood friends, my grandmother and grandfather, my aunt, my sisters, and many others who had reached out to me when I was a child. I tried to understand why I didn’t allow them to affect me all those years ago. Slowly, I realized I had been frightened by the potential for more loss and suffering. I was terrified of loving and losing yet again. Even at the ripe old age of 10, I was convinced love was fleeting, love was painful, and love was a pipe dream. Exhausted from the emotional response I’d had to this revelation, but feeling some relief, I realized there was more to do. Though saying those words to my younger self was cathartic, it wasn’t enough. I suddenly realized my life-long focus had always been to find love outside myself. Of course, that type of love had the potential of being fleeting, especially since I’d not considered myself worthy of much more than the words, “I love you.” The sincerity behind those words had been inconsequential to me. The measure of my worthiness had always come from others, and not from those strong, loving, healthy people who actually made appearances in my life. The measure of my worthiness came from the way those who most hurt me treated me. And the one person I’d never asked to love me was my self. As I sat alone in my thoughts, loving the little girl I once was, tears soaking my shirt, I finally began to feel love and compassion for the woman I had become. There was only one thing to do. I made my way to the bathroom, gazed at my reflection, looked deeply into the eyes of the woman I saw before me who had survived sexual abuse, the deaths of numerous loved ones, her father’s raging alcoholism, two divorces, and many other unnamed events. And to the reflection I said, “You are worthy. You are special. You, my friend, are loved.” This one moment of clarity rang through the craziness of my life because I saw the heart of a young girl who bore slash marks on her arms. This moment led me to the one earthly being who could love me unconditionally with an understanding of my intentions and my choices. That person is me. Who would have thought that little girl sitting on her father’s porch saying little more than, “I don’t do it any more,” could have brought forth such a life-changing, in my face, love thyself moment? I surely didn’t. But, as a result, I am now my own woman, no one else’s. I face the struggles and challenges of single parenting with determination rather than the sense of victimization. I move forward and grow with each new experience. Before seeing that little girl’s arms, every new challenge was the straw that broke this camel’s back. And though I still have my moments of insecurity, regret, loneliness, and fear, I am forever changed. I am focused on teaching myself to love myself as I’ve always prayed others would love me. Ultimately, this act is also helping my children feel the love they too deserve. When I look back on my life, I can list the exact circumstances and number of times and my father said he loved me. He’s said it four times in my entire life. But, as I sit here now, I can’t accurately count the number of friends who love me as one of their own. I can’t count the number of hugs and kisses, thank you’s, and I love you’s I hear every single day. Seeing that girl’s arms took me on a journey which has led me to answers I may never have found. And now, I can honestly and sincerely say, “I am loved. I am worthy. I, my friend, am special.” Comment on this story on our public message board |
