A Review of Prose Bits That Inhabit My Eternally Active Mind, Thoroughly Guilty of Overthinking

Your heartbeat keeps time, recording the moment of your first screams of newborn terror and your last shaky, relieved breath. Who cares if there's a heaven or hell anyways, once this life is over and done with shouldn't we just be glad. Sometimes, I think that I can't wait for my last breath. 

~

I love you because you've saved my life a number of times. I am scared of what I consider doing to myself so I talk to you because you're quiet and you never try to fix me. Let's sit here, have an animal cracker, or a tic tac and let's watch this YouTube video and don't try to hurt yourself because I care. I am your friend. 

Without you, I would be lost, yet I can never say a word to you about what's on my mind because we never see each other anymore and I'm supposed to have other people in my life who can represent what you mean to me. Sometimes I wish I could rewind back to the day where we watched all your favorite episodes of Spongebob (a show I hate) and I laughed because it was funny and we lay in your bed, our heads close together and our breath synchronized with my beating heart, my need to feel loved, my need to never be alone.

When I see you now, you smile. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, I suppose. The last time I called you, with the intent to spill another drunken secret, you hung up on me. Or I hung up on you? I don't remember, but I remember that afterwards,  I walked what felt like half way across the world to the room of a boy who had turned me away. 

Reminiscing, It was like being at a fork in the road. I chose one path but was pushed off of it. It wasn't meant to be. I drank about four bottles of his bottled water, and curled up in his bed, hating every bit of myself for not knowing when to take "no" for an answer and move on. Poisoned by bad decisions I lay there knowing I was making a mistake, and that I was only hurting myself but I couldn't stop whatever trajectory was laid out ahead of me. 

What would have happened if you took me in.

Would I have ever gone back to him?

I never see you anymore.

~

I don't believe in fate. I believe in coincidence. 

?

~

Will I see you in three years at our reunion? I hope you've grown up. I never think of you anymore unless I'm forced to.

I almost told him about you once, explained why I was too scared to love men. But there isn't much to explain really. It doesn't matter anymore.

~

I write about my memories more than I write about you. Maybe I'm scared if I put you into print and read you off a page I will idealize you, a condemnation.

~

The hall was quiet with the absence of sophomores who belt Taylor Swift or sit in their rooms lamenting their habitation of the friendzone. If that night hadn’t been so tactile, you could have probably convinced me that it was all a dream. A child’s dream. Romance and love are for children right? Although I’m too old for fairy tales, I’m too young to deny reality. The scent of birthday cake candles and the tiny flicks of light  illuminated his face, casting a shadow across all of his angles. I submitted my mind to him, although I normally flinch at the idea of intimacy. As his body lay on top of mine, he made love to my every imperfection, kissed away my depression and thrust insecurity out of me.

Kiss me again. I don’t want to go. I need you to make love to me until I forget what it’s like to be a normal girl who must get up in the morning and go to class, and go to work, and pay medical bills and have migraines and doctor’s appointments. I want to be yours. I want us to save the candlelight in a Mason Jar and tonight in one of Rowling’s pensieves. I want to revisit this night when I am unhappy and you are far away. I can’t put it into words. I am uneducated and dull with a word processor and even worse with a pen.

I've I undressed before him innumerable times, but this time; I was slow to let my clothing hit the ground. I felt no incredible rush to have him immediately, despite staring at his fully nude body, incapable of hiding his arousal. I wrapped a towel around myself and as the two of us stepped into a gross dorm room shower, I felt as if I had stepped into another universe. Our world became a pristine microcosm, inhabited by just two people dominated by something more compelling than sex, but certainly not void of it. Hot water made rivers down his chest and plunged into the crests and valleys of his abdominal muscles. His arms and chest heaved and sighed, creating chasms in my body, blankness in my thought. This is the most beautiful person I have ever seen. My hair matted down my back, as my eyes locked in with his. 

~

How can I summarize my year.

I can't.

My mind is wiped blank.

A series of analyses

and medications

and emotions

It's tough to grow up

It's tough to be an adult

You start to view things differently: your family. your friends. love. happiness. life.

~

I've kept track of all of it here, on this blog. I've written about countless things both fleeting and semi-permanent. I've made friends because I've found that some of my old friends no longer belong with the new person I'm becoming. I've shed pessimism because it isn't cool to have ungrounded angst. I've gained an appreciation for life and an appreciation for my culture, my looks, my heritage. I'm learning and growing. There are people who can keep up with that and there are people who can't. I try not to let things get under my skin as much as they used to. I can be more tolerant, I can be better. I can live without medication. I can find myself among assignments, due dates, obligations and stress.

Breathe.

Open your eyes.

Look around at the bustling hoards of undersexed super-rich and remember who you are. Remember that you deserve all the good things in your life. Remember that you work hard and you need to be happy. Keep your head up. Propel yourself into greatness with the force that has been lingering inside you. West Indians have this innate ability to adapt to our surroundings. But while doing so, remember to remain true to yourself.

Nugget #4

I've been overwhelmed with feeling for the past few days. I need to free my mind from chaos and return to peace. I can't say I miss these depressive episodes. I can't say I don't appreciate having someone to listen to. It's difficult though. I feel like someone is always trying to fix me but it's not possible. And it makes me feel worse knowing that I may be unable to live up to someone's expectations for how happy I should be.

I want to be back at School so that I can be free of all this pressure and negativity. I want to be sure of myself and have the ability to remain grounded and sure that I'm truly capable of happiness.

Patterns

Gotta get rid of these old patterns. I try to convince myself that I can do it on my own. You are strong. You are smart. You are important. I'm so tired of having to be the only one who thinks this about myself. I am tired of having to repeat it over and over and feeling like every time I happen to hear these words from someone else, I need to hear them again and again and again to believe them.



Excess

Pull yourself together. Stop being this person. You were meant to be better, you were born not to need anyone. Undo this destruction of your psyche. Stop being so hard on yourself. (Catch my irony?)

I am trying not to be driven insane by what is equal parts loneliness and being overwhelmed by connection. I need to feel like I am in control because I haven't been in control for so long. So I may pinch my skin past the point of being able to take it. I may write until my fingers ache from typing and my back aches from hunching. How do I avoid the urge to destroy? How do I mimic destruction without actually accomplishing anything just to satisfy my urges to return to depressive thinking or worse, depressive actions.

Keep calm, right? Remember that you are not totally composed of the mean voices in your head. Remember that people care about you. It's so easy to forget, when they're not sitting here, constantly reaffirming their belief in me. Insecurity is wrapping it's shriveled fingers around my neck with deceptive strength. Breathe, sweet ego. I want to resuscitate you, but I'm slowly forgetting how to as each self-confident breath comes closer and closer to being my last. Loosen your fingers. Loosen your mind. Prepare yourself to accept that sadness is only temporary.

I need to talk to myself here and force my insane ramblings upon you because no one else understands. No one else is really here. I need to protect everyone here from my voices, from my urges, my constant neediness. I should really protect everyone in my life I guess... but it's more important to protect my family. They are too chaotic to deal with another bit of my chaos thrown into the mix. They need peace, and calm, which are things that my mind never has.

I crave too much. I need to much. I want

silence
peace
love
silence
time
thoughts
blank
blank
silence
love
love
love
love
dreams
sleep
happiness
love
peace
peace

Do I get to be done with depression for good?

Another chaotic fantasy.

Home

I'm sure I will publish soon. I wrote a post that brought tears to my eyes (the happy kind) a bit earlier today. I may edit it and post it or write something else to satisfy your ever-interested minds. I am incredibly tired and I need to just take some time and knock the fuck out. I also need to buy a new toothbrush tomorrow (weird, because I totally packed mine). 

I'm taking lots of low-quality iPod pictures with instagram filters and I'm somehow going to have a ridiculously fun collection of photographs. I will greet and acknowledge the world here tomorrow. For now, I'm just savoring the fact that everything smells like home. I love it. I've missed home. I've missed every crack and sigh of this hot roof and sleeping half naked just to avoid the incredible humidity throughout the night. I've missed hot hot coffee and cold showers and getting burnt brown in the ruthless sun.

I miss my boyfriend though. I will miss kissing him and touching his face and being my complete self around him. I know this vacation is short, and I desperately want to see my family, but I can't help but wish to return to his arms and feels his lips on mine and delve my fingers into his hair and listen to his chest sighing as he sleeps. 

Try not to ache. It's only for a little while.

Nugget #3

Every time I want to write something ripe with emotion and gushing with naïveté, something reminds me of my place in the world and how insignificant I am to people. My mind is clouded with my little whisperers; I can feel their tiny hands grasping for something to destroy. They are always lurking, waiting for me to be alone, reminding me of why I should stay closed.

Pressure

I am generally horrible at being supportive when people tell me what is on their mind; I feel as if I have a tendency to talk about myself as a method of relating that really comes off as being self-centered. I am working on this tendency. I think in the heat of the moment, people tend to appreciate "I understand" more than receiving your whole life story. I worry that just saying "I understand" may seem hollow. Many of my friends are under an extreme amount of academic pressure. This pressure can originate internally for many of these people (myself included) but families also pressure their children more than they realize. West Indian parents have a particular kind of pressure that I previously believed was unique to my family, but now I understand is far more common than I expected, especially through meeting people at Middlebury and interacting with other West Indian students studying in the United States and England.



Once a child is viewed as "high-achieving", pressure to succeed doesn't decrease, but increases over time. Older children in families seem more susceptible to this pressure than younger children. I am making these observations based on what I have seen regarding the psychological impact parental pressure has on children's performance, and I'm growing to believe that this external pressure from parents can be increasingly harmful over time.

When you are younger, and school is simpler, like it was for me before I moved to the United States, parental pressure worked to my advantage. When you are pressured to be the top of your class, and then you actually achieve your parents' wishes, you are rewarded. Receiving rewards as a child is nice. Toys, more television time and more time to play outside is a wonderful incentive to perform well if you are already naturally intelligent. I performed well with ease as a child and parental pressure had no real negative effect on me early on. I knew what I had to do to succeed; I understood that my academic value was tied to something that I could easily accomplish.

My parents' (specifically my mother's) treatment of my academic success led to a burst of self-esteem regarding my intellect. I am intelligent. I am successul. Academics are associated with positive emotions as long as you continue to succeed. Parental love and approval seem to be achieved easily and you feel like you can have the freedom to enjoy your personal life, have whatever friends you like and engage in whatever distractions you see fit due to your success. Enjoying yourself is permissible once you perform well and bring home good grades. Parental pressure seems supportive when you are successful and young. "You will go to Harvard!" "You will become an important doctor!" all appear to be statements of support early in your academic life, even if later they cause unnecessary additional stress.


There is always an undertone of negativity in this parental pressure. Parents treat their children like future avenues out of poverty and this makes an impression on them early in life. Like I mentioned earlier, older children are more susceptible to this treatment. For example, I have always been encouraged to pursue a career where I would be financially successful whereas my sister has always been encouraged to pursue writing, despite the fact that it is rarely lucrative. Luckily, my wishes to become a doctor aligned with my parents'. I wonder what my emotional state would be like if I were not so lucky. Many West Indian children, especially those sent abroad to the United States to study, are pressured into careers like Law or Medicine. Business is not as encouraged as it is not seen as being quite so prestigious, but it is the third most acceptable avenue.

At an affirmative action panel held at my school a few weeks ago, an elderly white professor made the claim that "[College] is a time for leisure." This may be the case for the scores of middle to upper-middle class white men and women who attend this school. Have a West Indian boy or girl make this suggestion to their parents and see how far that gets them. (Answer: They will be on the next flight home.) White students here have the luxury to pursue "social entrepreneurship" and other lifestyles that will probably satisfy their desires for self-righteous morality, but leave them with a small income. West Indian students don't possess this luxury. We care too much about our families and the pressure they place on us has become so internalized that we cannot imagine doing anything else. I would be interested in doing statistical analysis of the West Indian students studying at prestigious universities, and analyzing what sort of graduate studies they pursue. I would be willing to bet that even the ones that claim to want to do something different end up in law, medicine or business. Having an ambiguous career is frowned upon.

Sophomore year is a turning point at most colleges and universities. We decide our majors. We consider minors and it is the last time to try something new. This is where we choose to continue the pursuit of our dreams (or our parents) or we decide to do something totally different. I personally have already dabbled with the idea of quitting my premedical pursuits but every time I think of a future without medical school, I feel totally lost. What would I do with myself that would make my parents proud? Why does it matter what they think? The second question is a very American question. Well bred West Indian children would never consider asking this. We are raised understanding the sacrifices our parents have made to send us to colleges like Middlebury, and in many cases, high schools like Groton or day schools of the same caliber. Due to the idea that we owe our parents for supporting us, and setting us up to be more successful than our peers, we tend not to defy them. Their wishes are ours, our academic success is theirs.

A part of this can be dehumanizing sometimes, not as dramatically as something like slavery can be dehumanizing, but often times, West Indian children can feel like we are only our accomplishments. We may feel like we become trophies to our parents rather than actual living, breathing people with the capacity for love and making mistakes. We become the sum of our accomplishments: she is premed and she takes Arabic and graduated from high school with honors. 

I have come to the point in my life where I no longer share my GPA with my parents, and I have tried to detach them from academic decision making processes (like dropping Arabic). A part of my ability to do this comes from having a white, American parent to balance the pressure of my West Indian mother. One of the times I felt like my value lay solely with my academics was on the day of my graduation from high school. I had scraped into graduating cum laude rather than magna cum laude or summa cum laude. Instead of congratulating me on an accomplishment I was ecstatic about, my mother said, "Don't worry, maybe in college you will graduate summa cum laude." I had not been worried previously.

West Indian children tend to be grilled when calling home about whether they are eating right, sleeping right, or healthy enough so that they have "time to study". My parents have cut back on this since I have been away for so long and I tend to be sarcastic when I am annoyed by their questions, but even last year, I remember a lot of emphasis being placed on whether I had time for academics rather than whether my social life was successful or fulfilling (it wasn't.) If my parents knew my GPA now, I cannot imagine what their reaction would have been when I told them I was dating someone. Personal relationships, that may actually make children (young adults?) happier are devalued because they are viewed as being at the expense of academic success. Not only are we made to feel like machines and trophies, but we are often times denied emotions in the world view perpetrated by our parents. (Note: It would be interesting to explore how colonial legacy plays into this.)

The pressure that West Indian children feel is unrecognized largely by society. Stereotypes about parental pressure tend to be about Asian parents (although the term "Asian" is so broad and the stereotype so racist). Yet, the West Indian children scattered around the United States feel the effects of our parents on our psyche every day. We think about it with every bad grade we have to bring home, or with every job or internship rejection we receive. We think about our futures and our families constantly and receive little recognition for our resilience. So, to those of us out there, struggling to get by and struggling to make our parents proud of us, remember that we are not alone. There may not be many of us, but there are plenty of us who understand and can relate to what we feel. Sometimes, just realizing you are not alone may be enough to keep you going.

Fall Academics

I have the option of sitting here contemplating my errors this semester, or I can move on into an increasingly uncertain future. This week has been an anxious one for me. My anxiety, although I have chosen to conceal its outward expression, has become more concentrated as the week has progressed.
Final projects involving group work, and attending my job and classes have become chores. My depressed brain is at work with regard to academics and my future. It is hard to shake anxiety and console myself from paralyzing fear. I have high standards of success and although it would be easier to believe, pressure doesn't come from only myself. My parents to an extent place a lot of pressure on me and I also fear the judgment of medical school admissions officers in the not too distant future.

This semester has been an emotionally intense one. Intense is not necessarily bad here. I've had to grow accustomed to being vulnerable and being my true self. I've also educated myself a lot about the various injustices that exist around the world and specifically within American society. My desire for perfection has made this recent education a burden on my mind. Once you have heard or read about the various inequalities, it is hard not to notice them and even more difficult not to be bothered by them. The combination of increased vulnerability and increased sensitivity to others' actions has been a difficult combination for me to get used to. I also struggle  with liberating myself from depression and bouncing back from psychologically damaging medication withdrawal. Struggling with emotions has strengthened me a bit, and allowed me adjust to a new persona who may withdraw a bit when faced with stress, but who can generally handle herself in difficult situations.

At the end of each semester, I like to think about what I've learned and how I can change. Academically, I am disappointed in what I have done, for yet another semester. This may mean that I have simply not developed a good strategy for performing well academically. The liberal arts method here seems to favor people who outwardly behave like idiots but who perform well on tests. Unfortunately, I appear to be quite intelligent in a way that isn't reflected by my grade point average. What new things can I do next semester to fix the way I learn and perform here? What am I supposed to do to change? I feel lost. My personal relationships are fine, but is this at the cost of my academics? I need balance, and I refuse to compromise my personal life like I've done in the past because I genuinely believe that I deserve to be as happy as I am now.

I suppose I will have Christmas vacation to ponder change. I need to find a way to start making Vermont work for me. Somehow I need to take advantage of this liberal arts system. I should be prepared to cope here, yet somehow, I feel as if I am not. I don't know how to pull myself out of this mixture of academic apathy and contempt. I need to feel like my intelligence is being valued again. No one here seems interested in helping that count however, so I suppose I will have to be more self-sufficient than I've been in the past. 

Snippet 2

Leave poetry to the poets and I will take  the leftovers: words that are too dull and plain and I will build a log cabin out of my thoughts. I am admitting that I have no way with words. At times. I choke on them as if allergic. Other times, words flow out of me; there is no dam to my noise. I am in love with words and sounds, but I am not loved in return. Unrequited love. Maybe my place belongs with tables and charts and graphs and adding one chemical to another to make a third. I should leave poetry to the poets, and writing to the writers. But then, what would be left for me to build my thought-house?

Snippet 1

Let's not care about the future. Live every day like it's the last one you'll have left, right? We are in Vermont. It is cold. It snowed this morning. I woke up in your arms. You kissed my shoulders and wrapped your arms around me while I panicked about spring classes. I missed my first class. I   ate lunch with a good friend and skimmed my lab readings. This is the present. Winter is here without any regard for slowing down to let us experience fall in its entirety. How quickly will the next semester go by? How long do we have the present? How long will it be before I have to confront ideas I am not ready for? An hour ago, you kissed me for the first time; I was shaking and nervous. It's already the end of November. I've never wished so hard for spring to remain distant.

Titles

I absolutely hate titles so I always do them over the top or just plain awful.
I may go through and re-title some things because I can't handle this at-ALL.

Disorganized Mind: November Edition

Writing on an empty mind is like drinking on an empty stomach. A lack of quick thought is a sickening vodka, churning up bile along with the coarse, forced retching of doing too much, too fast. I haven't been thinking about much recently. The inside of my mind has been a bit of a dream world. I spend my time bound by instants rather than having a constant preoccupation with the future. I suppose at some point I will be made to acknowledge the future and what it holds for me, but until then I am going to seek refuge in my head, and in warm bodies and sheets and in immense joy.


I usually question happiness and treat it as the fickle mistress that it has always been. I am slowly letting my guard down with this man. I am shedding layers of myself, like layers of clothing touching the ground aggressively as my body relishes in the freedom of nakedness and the purity of existence. A single touch releases the imprisoned girl within me. I am one hundred percent myself. I think he fears that I hold back with him. That may have been true when I first started toying with the concept of freedom in his bed; but things are different for me. I wonder if this is real or sustainable.

People spend so much time wondering; I am as guilty as the next person of thinking too much about places and times that have not yet come to pass. It's becoming easier for me to not dwell on the past or the future because the present is so tangible and I can taste it on his lips and see it in his smile. If you'd asked me three months ago what I thought of men or if I thought it was ever possible to feel this way I would have scoffed at you and gone back to internalizing my bitter loathing of men (which is really just a poorly expressed criticism of patriarchal thought.) Now, as this new feeling coincides with my depression healing, I am exploring new ways to feel and  trying to understand and change the feelings of fear that sit underneath any positive emotion I manage to choke out and actually express.

What I'm most scared of is being too much of myself, especially since I am just becoming accustomed to being "myself" in her purest form. I can be too obnoxious, too needy, too depressing and that scares people away. My extremes scare me, what kind of insane person wouldn't be terrified also? I know that depression scares people away because I've watched it happen - and not just to me. I don't want to be a burden to anyone and sometimes, it is difficult to see the positive aspects of my personality.

I'm told that I have a great capacity for love and that I am caring, but I see all these things as being burdens to other people. My caring is taken advantage of, or seen as pathetic and clingy. Loving people has got me into trouble more often than not. Even if I'm involved with someone who understands the good parts of me now, how can I be sure that this won't change? How can I be sure I won't let my darker persona take over? I am strong, right?

I don't want to hide my fear from him. At the same time, I can't continue to receive emotional support without giving anything in return. I take too much I think, perhaps to compensate for my immense ability to give that tends to go unexpressed. I am tortured by fear too much. I am scared of inadequacy, failure, caring too much and feeling too much. This insecurity won't get me far and I know that too well. I should fix myself without compromising how I feel. I don't need to choose a man or self-care. I can choose both, and I will be conscious about choosing both. And maybe I won't be enough for him. Maybe I will be too much. But how can I think about being enough, or being too much with my hand curled around his and my head nestled in his chest listening to his deep strong breathing through the night.

Selfishness

I walked to his room in the middle of the night eager to feel his warm body next to mine and eventually the sticky heat from wearing too much clothing to bed. I wanted him to be next to me as I slowly peeled off layers and settled into his arms and rhythm of his heartbeat. I feel like I am not as terrified of happiness as I used to be. I am formless, shapeless, elated nothingness, yet I am alive. I use my index finger as a pen, drawing the outline of his body and then filling it in with kisses. Last night, I clung desperately to him, not just the idea of him, and I said things that I really meant. I talked about my feelings. It's such a relief to be able to say what is on your mind without being scared. I wonder if he feels that too.



It seems like everyone around me is falling apart. As my life is gaining sanity, and as I am becoming comfortable with this new found sanity, everyone else seems to be losing theirs. I am sealing myself in a bubble of happiness and ignoring everyone else's pain. I feel guilty about it, but despite my guilt I cannot fight compulsion to run back into safety and warmth. This is the first time I've cared about myself. This is the first time in a while that I've felt like my depression has a slight chance of being erased. Maybe I'll find the cure in his heartbeat or in his voice. At the very least, I may find a part of the cure which is more than I had in yellow pills or dwelling on my past trying to fix the unfixable.

As the people around me who I looked to for stability get shakier, I am starting to question whether anyone is truly stable and whether people are really as sane as they appear. I am starting to think about how fragile we all are. As I think of fragility, I recall a scene from the popular British television show, Skins. Emily (one of the main characters) is standing on the edge of a building as her girlfriend Naomi who has just cheated on her looks on. "Don't you see it Naomi, I could be dead in a second. Everything is so fragile." Emily gets off the ledge and walks away. Despite ending with an anti-climax, this is one of the most poignant moments in the series. The moment is honest and profound for a sixteen (or seventeen) year old's thoughts. People are fragile; their emotions and their behaviors are all tethered together by an unreliable glue. We are utterly reliant on each other, yet each of us is so unreliable.

What do you do when the strongest people around you are no longer protected? How do you help them when you are used to being the weak one? I am not dealing with my need to nurture very well. I am running to what makes me happy, and latching onto it, trying to ignore the fact that people I care about are in pain. I am consciously being selfish. I know what it's like to feel alone and to feel engulfed in sadness. I am irrationally scared that being around sadness or unhappiness will take me back to darker places in my life.

I am only now learning that some darkness can be alright, and manageable, but I still fear it. Protecting other people is a huge concern for me, but I wonder if I could even be supportive right now. I am almost too happy to be supportive and I'm scared that my happiness may come off as gloating. A part of me is aware that this is the anxiety-controlled piece of my depressed brain at work. I am fighting this piece of me that wants to be immersed in selfishness and ignore people who have been there for me.

But how do I act strong? How do I assure others that everything will be okay? I know that I cannot guarantee a happy ending for anyone even if I want to. There seems to be no viable solution for my conflict between selfishness and selflessness. I am ruled equally by both: an unexpected moment of balance in my life.

Know that I care. Know that I love you. Know that you deserve a happy ending. Know that everything happens for a reason... At least I hope it does. Stay strong. Cling to memories of when you were happy because I assure you that they exist. I love you. I love you. Remember that I'm here and I always will be, in the middle of the night when you need to cry or early on weekend mornings when the whole world is dead. I will be here because I care. It's the sort of caring I cannot help, that is almost too much. You are my sisters. You are my friends. And I want you to be happy.

If only I could speak half as well as I could write, then I'd be twice as helpful as I am. 

Latté

I've made myself a latté with four espresso shots. The foam is perfect this time. Even if my coffee has been tainted with milk, I'm finding a way to enjoy it. I should be studying for a Chemistry test I have tomorrow, but instead, I'm going to write and try to forget stress and pressure and these other things that constantly dominate my thought processes. The past two weeks have been wonderful in my personal life, even as I watch my dreams of a good GPA and being a real scientist seemingly crumble around me.



It's strange to have a boy (man?) in my life like this. I'm very much unaccustomed to it, and I spend a lot of time trying not to dwell on the future and what will happen and trying to focus on right now. I want to be there when he touches me, and when he kisses me and when I listen to his voice soothing the lurking spectre of my depression. Keeping myself present is a challenge. My mind has a tendency to wander off, and she gets lost easily and terrified. There are places my mind has wandered that I would like not to find myself in again.

So as I rest my head against his and feel his fingers tracing the outline of my lips, I try to anchor myself in moments. But anchoring yourself is risky. I'm not very fond of taking emotional risks, although I do it frequently. I have convinced myself that being present makes me free. And it does.

For a couple weeks I didn't have a single bad thought. Depression's sickle was kept at bay by this weird sort of happiness that didn't even have a manic, artificial tint to it. I've rarely had days in a row like that this past year and having weeks unnerved me. I tried to do what I always do, and tried to push my mind into remembering negative things that have kept me distant from men physically and emotionally. I tried very hard to remember anything and I ended up writing a good bye letter to the first boy I ever really loved unconditionally.

I don't know what that means. Maybe I'm growing up? Maybe I'm getting better? Perhaps I am freeing myself from my mental handicap. I've used the word freedom a lot. I think that's what happiness is. Or at least freedom is a huge part of happiness. I can feel vulnerable and naked and stressed and sad and happy and affectionate without really worrying about the aftermath. Balanced happiness is freedom.

This weekend I got quiet, and irritatingly introspective because I was scared that this boy's presence in my life was the only thing contributing to my recent happiness. This is obviously ridiculous, but the concept terrified me. I remember being the person whose happiness was tied to how someone else thought about them. I also remember how totally invalidated I felt  when I no longer had this approval. However, I need to give myself credit for being different now. I've done a lot to get myself to this place. I shouldn't have to feel guilty because I am happy. And I won't feel guilty.

How did this happen?

I would never ask this question unprovoked; but I've had it whispered in my ear inopportunely enough times to have it sort of sit there festering, waiting for me to come up with some half-assed heat-of-the-moment answer. I refuse to give impulse the dignity of getting to the question however. I've chosen to secretly mull it over, maybe one of the times I've avoided eye contact and bit my lip, unresponsive for a few seconds or maybe another time when I've been alone for too long.

I don't know if I have a good answer. I suppose there is no right answer. But I really do think "how" isn't important. Maybe I needed this. Maybe you needed this. Maybe we both need each other a little bit. It's okay to be needed and to be wanted without questioning it. It has to be alright to feel random bursts of happiness that are totally unexpected.

Sometimes I think back to when I first noticed this boy. I really liked a friend of mine at the time (completely unattainable physically and emotionally). I had no idea who this boy was, but he always looked at me as I walked into the dining hall, almost like he wanted to say something but either didn't know how or was too scared. (Alternatively, maybe I had fabricated all of this up in my egotistical head). He introduced himself to me one day, and I was amused in sort of a condescending way. People typically find me too unfriendly looking to approach so I suppose I ultimately appreciated it. I remember that I'd been having a bad day, and I was stressed about a number of things and I felt like I was a failure of a pre-med student and failure of a girl. After that one time, he never really spoke to me again for the rest of the year, so I guess I sort of went back to living my life in the throes of a major depressive episode. This one deviation from the norm of my depression felt good though.

It's strange when we meet people, the things we remember about meeting them or interacting with them. I don't think last spring I could have predicted anything that has happened thus far this semester. I don't think I could have predicted that this anomaly of a person would have been more than a random encounter to me. I think that I can tell a lot about a person from the first time I notice them. And so far I don't think that I've been wrong. I'm hoping that happiness doesn't betray me this time; she has occasionally been a fickle mistress. If I was the praying sort, I would pray for my mind to be peaceful and for me to really appreciate this boy. I'm still not sure if I deserve how I feel right now; but operating under the assumption that I do deserve this, I hope it doesn't go away anytime soon.

I don't know if I totally trust happiness, but I do like it.

Three Parts

These days I only write when I can hear you telling me to. Finding balance between my different parts has been getting easier of late, but I haven't forgotten you completely. It would be stupid to forget that you were here because you always are. Maybe one day I won't have to worry about you and your need to control my mind. Your grasp, although gnarled and icy is familiar.



You are the only person who won't leave me alone I suppose. You are here with me, reclining on a couch,  wearing my face with black eyeliner thick as I wore it senior year. I imagine your black uniform, sweater and pants hanging loose around your thinned body. Your arms are spindly, your face expressionless. You are frozen with numbness, but if I dare make any contact I know you will snap me in half. You know how to push my buttons, and cave me in. This gaunt she-devil knows my every insecurity and picks up on the minute triggers that sometimes surface through my daily interactions with the world around me.

I've tried to send you away but you seem adamant regarding your residency here. I suppose it would be rude to kick you out. You have spent a lot of time in my head. I can't just evict you like a stranger when I know the outline of your skeleton so well and I have helped you put makeup on your face and held you as you scratched and scratched your skin trying to break free of it.

I have led you to other rooms in my mind's mansion. You never blink and it unnerves me. You only speak to criticize or scream or to threaten me. You are filled with hate, and a part of me feeds off of that hatred and takes masochistic pleasure in entertaining you. Perhaps I don't want you to go away at all. Perhaps I am simply trying on the façade of pushing you away to keep up a beautiful delusion. Do you think I need you to stay with me? Oh. I need so many things and you're the only one who has never really left I suppose. Maybe that's why I let you stay. You never blink. You are so reliable. You are the concealer, the liar, envy, self-loathing, wickedness, hatred, anger, bloodthirsty and morbid. I know who you are and I know that you will stay if I let you. Unlike most other things, the simple act of letting you sit here is assurance that you will stay.

It's getting colder and colder and I am trying to stay warm without your sweet sister. She lures me in with her pretentious smile and her ignorance of reality. You two work together quite well despite the outward appearance that you are polar opposites. Unlike you, she wears skintight black dresses that make the boys look twice and she takes pleasure in consuming their attention just for a second; she can pretend that their looks hold great significance and in being wanted for a minute, she will stop feeling empty. Her laugh is contagious, easily provoked and can sound organic if she wants it to. You stare at her, jealous of her mad energy and her impulsiveness. In a way, you envy her, but another part of you wants to hold her head under water until her sick naive smile is wiped off her face. But she's just as bad as you are, don't worry. She doesn't believe in her happiness at all, and all her energy and need to take risks is just a disguise for the part of you she sees within her.

Sit there. I know it's cold. I know it's cold. Don't be scared of being warm though. It's okay not to feel pain. I need you to reconcile yourself with the women in the other rooms. I'm sitting here ready to make peace with the two of you. I know you want to kill me, your bout of silence isn't fooling anyone. And you are sort of stopping my mind. Well really it's going too fast. And I want to slow it down by kissing and kissing and forgetting and forgetting but it still won't stop. Can you at least blink. Let me know you aren't dead. Save me. That's what you're good at. SAVE. ME.


Let me hold your frail hand for a minute. Let me talk to you for a minute. Tell me how to be safe again. Maybe I will join you. Imagine us just holding hands again, and we can wear matching faces and matching eyeliner and match match match forever. And it doesn't matter if I'm never free of you right? Because if we only have each other we only have to worry about hurting each other. And no one else.

And I won't need to feel my heart turn to cement the more men it touches. Because I am scared of men and you are scared of men, we can unite against this common enemy and maybe we won't be so terrified anymore because we won't care about them. You can remind me of their evil and I will tell you how to be normal to protect you from them. I will teach you how to keep your little demon heart locked up. Or maybe you will teach me.

I don't know if I want to let you in though. You are so sad, I want to show you how to be happy. But I see that fixated look and I worry maybe you will never know happiness. And I see the way you look at boys, eyes darting around, like you are terrified to make eye contact with them for fear that you will share too much. Keep still. Please blink. Let me know you are not dead. I think I need you. Or you need me. My bed must be warmed on Saturday, and there's no point running to the wrong boy just to convince the both of us that I don't care. Stay with me. Help me punch out these ramblings with quick moving spindles. And then I'll sleep with your head cradled in my arms and I'll touch your gold leaf skin and trace the outline of your big brown eyes. And I'll let you stay just for the night, only to lock you up tomorrow in exchange for some real comfort.

A Couple Photographs

A Good-Bye Letter Long Overdue

I'm finding pieces of my happiness that you wrecked. Maybe it wasn't all you, but I'm tired of blaming myself for loving you too much and too poorly. Each day, I feel a little bit happier. I have more weeks where good days outnumber bad ones. There was a long time when I really felt cursed for what happened between us, as if nothing would ever be good again. I'm sure you thought that I would only be upset for a week or two and then I would move on. I did a very good job of acting that way, being sure to laugh loudly when you walked by and of course going out every weekend with groups of my friends, refusing to make eye contact with you, for fear that you would catch a glimpse of the sadness concealed by an excess of dark makeup.



It took me six months to stop having nightmares.

For nights on end, I would wake up in the middle of the night, suffocated and distressed. My tiny L-shaped single, with its empty walls and floors covered in fleeces and towels, provided me no comfort. Your face, your name, every good thing that we'd ever had constantly bounced around my mind. I barely survived on coffee and the presence of my friends, which would only last until graduation.

It's been about two years since we last spoke. Fall has crept up on me again, to remind me of death and change and sadness. There is nothing joyful about fall. Each celebration is funereal; more like a celebration of the life that once was than the cruel winter to come. (And I'm sure this winter will be cruel to make up for the pathetic one last year.) I rarely think about you, and I worry about you every once in a while too. I want you to be able to feel love more than you ever have before. I want you to grow up to be successful, so you can take care of your mother and outshine your father.

I'm different because of you. Even if we met each other again three years from now, I could never love you. And it has nothing to do with how we parted ways the last time. I am just a different person, and I'm not capable of having the friendship that we once had anymore. Anything else would seem forced. I want to preserve what happy memories I have.

I took sort of detour in discussing my happiness; it is hard for me not to reminisce about being younger and having happiness that I didn't have to work at.

I cannot escape the feeling of death that comes with fall. It is when my grandmother died, when Hunter died, and when a number of other bad things have happened to the people I've cared about. But today, I was walking to a dining hall here, listening to an awful song, having just spoken to a professor about a bad grade, and I realized that I was smiling, all on my own.

This shouldn't be a big deal, but it happens to me so infrequently. I think I'm almost done paying my dues to the universe for anything bad that I've done to you. I am starting not to blame everything on your born-again Christianity. Every day, I love you less, but appreciate our friendship more. I am happy without you. It really is possible. There was a point when I never thought it would be. I am at the point where I will stop writing about you. I've printed you in Times New Roman often enough; our time is almost through.

Closure isn't something that comes all at once; I think that I was wise not to force it upon myself. I have met people who have let me come to terms with the effect you've had on my psyche. They have watched me deconstruct and rebuild different love affairs in my head in order to compensate for missing you.

I don't need you to weigh on my conscience anymore. I don't need to remember your warmth or feeling small and safe with you in order to be comforted. It's taken a long time for me to get here. And I will probably still think of you on cold days, or when I listen to particular songs, but this part of my life is done. A finished book. The curtain closing at the end of a play. You will still be in my mind when I think of Groton and the unique situation of my adolescence. However, you will no longer have power over my emotions, and I will no longer torture myself by forcing you into the role of the villain in my emotional breakdowns.

Wherever you may be, I want you to stay safe. I want you to find a way to conquer your past, and feel emotions like I know you are capable of. Be happy. Be strong. And I will try to do the same. 

Misery

I made up a best friend all in my head.
He was Latino with giant puppy eyes that reflected the sort of hope that only a boy from the ghetto who grew up taking care of his mother can have. There's something about being raised without a real father that makes a man want to be the best he can be.  I made up a best friend all in my head and I gave him a name and a mop of black curls that framed his face when he was young, and as he got older, the curls slowly receded until he cut his hair every two weeks and tried to grow a beard. I invented a smell for him, that still brings tears to my eyes when I smell it on a strange boy who couldn't possibly understand the beauty of fiction. I gave him stubble on his face that prickled when I hugged him and when we pressed our child-faces together. Love love love.

I invented a world where he loved me. I invented a world where we were inseparable. On my bad days, I would turn to this marvelous fantasy and he would wrap me in his arms that got less pudgy and more muscular as I got darker and more self-involved. I heard everything going on in his head because I'd made him up, yet somehow I'd managed to obscure his screaming, and ignore his pain, just so I could be loved by a fictional character. We shared each thought. We shared our childhood until White noise drowned out a voice I should have heard, calling me to be the protector he'd raised me to be.

Teetering on the cusp of adulthood, we held hands, anticipating a leap of faith into the world of grown-ups. We never have to change. What will you do without each other in college? The answer was never important. The question, never significant.

My imaginary friend clawed his way out of my brain before I could formulate words, any attempt to answer the big question that plagued our relationship when we finally realized that not everything lasted forever. People died. Love was temporary. We both were scared, but he ran first. He scratched and scraped at the weak tendrils of optimism that held me together. He took with him my love and scrambled my brain. He revealed the monstrous fears that I concealed and he let go of my hand before I was ready to be on my own.

My imaginary friend is dead. I have killed our memories together and it's almost as if I'd never thought him up. Sometimes I try to recall specific times when we were together. I try to think of conversations that we had. I want to remember the feeling of being completely engulfed in the arms of someone else and leaving your heart in someone else's hands.

I can never be protected again. My little Latino boy is grown up and has left my head. Only on days like this, where the wind chill forces me to wrap handmade scarves tight around my neck, or on days when orange leaves bring back warm fall memories, when tears creep on the edge of my eyelids ready to spill forth, I think of him. I look back and I understood why he ran. He left a shell of a person who was once happy behind because he could no longer stand to see this wraithlike thing absorb a girl once full of life. I was growing into oblivion, and he couldn't stop me. Even if he'd held on tighter, I would have pulled him into death eventually.

I'm shaking.

I'm asking you what's wrong.

What's wrong?

Please.

I want to fix this.

I want.
I want.

Just talk to me.
Why can't we talk about this?

Please...
I want to talk to you.
I want.

Please be happy.
Please.

I want.
I want you to be happy.

Fear

I'm not a writer. Don't call me that, I hate it. I tiptoe around feelings and emotions and brush them under the rug in exchange for facts and logic. Give me a comforting fairy tale, talk of heaven and I'm likely to run to cold-hard facts, the only thing I trust. I've been fucked over by emotions too many times to count and now I'm getting older. But you're only eighteen, I hear it over and over again. But if I'm only eighteen, why does each morning feel harder. Why do I feel so burdened if it's only eighteen why do I feel like the important days of my life are almost over. I think life is monotonous now? What about the future? Will I be tied down to some wealthy boy I don't love, with a few hated children running around reminding me of a youth I've lost or a boy I should have loved better? Eighteen is too young to think about this. Eighteen is too young to think about marriage. Eighteen is too young to decide what I'm going to do with the rest of my life.


I'm afraid of commitment. I say it myself; other people say it too (about me and about themselves). What a load of crap though. It's so easy for me to maintain that façade in front of people who don't understand what commitment means and it's not just deciding that some man or woman is your whole world. Commitment is sacrifice, and there should be no sacrifice in choosing one person over all the others, it should be intuitive and organic. I've committed my entire life to my future career. I want to run away. I want to travel the world. I want to drop out of New England and learn that the United States is not the epicenter of the universe. Being a doctor is something I could love. Perhaps I can give life to someone who needs another chance. Maybe I'll save someone and they'll fall in love, and have a happily ever after. Or maybe I'll just be a source of inspiration for someone younger than me, who knows me, and knows the good things I have accomplished, ignorant of the nights of violent depression and isolation.

Once I heard someone say that your career won't get up one morning and say it doesn't love you anymore. How depressing. The girl who consumed Disney movies and literature from the time she could open her eyes for more than a mother's teat does not want to believe that. Love is real. Love is very real. And I try and I try to feel it properly and to feel like I'm not the only one who loves blindly and madly. My friends claim that they love too, but it's hard to trust their words. I can't believe them. Loving feels so isolating; it's easier for me to believe they are ignorant of that isolation. I am dumb when it comes to love. It terrifies me, and drives me to self-destruct because I feel like I'm in a straitjacket, unable to express a damned thing except fear. Fear takes over all the time and maybe it's a symptom of something else, but symptom or not, I am constantly imprisoned by it.

I want a job that I love because I don't think anyone will ever be able to love me properly. It's my biggest fear. The feminist part of me who parades around touting misandry and female empowerment is genuine, no doubt about it, but a part of it is fueled by this fear that I will never be loved. And I realize that this fear stems from a white-supremacist patriarchal society that tells me that I am too dark, my hair is too wild, my temper is too hot. I will forever be an angry black girl. My accomplishments will forever be obscured by the idea that I only got where I am because of affirmative action or some kind of imagined privilege. My accomplishments are zeroed by society. My looks are insignificant to most. It's hard to believe that people who are attracted to me don't see me as some sort of "exotic" mixed girl with a wild island-girl sensuality. I am alone. I am different, and I don't mean to make a big deal out of something that isn't but this is a big deal. Every interaction I have with the world is influenced by a preconceived notion of me and there are only a few boxes that I can even fit into. But I don't fit into any box, I am not either one type of person or another.

I am a summation. I am equal parts prep-school girl who loves to dress up and girl who cries for hours about a sad Doctor Who episode. I am equal parts a feminist and anti-racist as I am someone who has fallen in love with white men (despite them upholding a power structure I despise). I feel like other people don't look at me holistically. Something is always missing. I present a different person to each of the people I know, and I worry that in doing this I will further obscure who I really am. To some people, I am entirely misanthropic, always seeing a problem with society or individual people. To others I am a casket of lost loves, haunted by wraiths of regret. I can be an academic just as well as a girl who enjoys getting dressed up and feeling like nothing matters except feeling good and being beautiful. Everyone looks at the world so myopically and so filled with arrogance and unwillingness to change.

Is it normal to be so young and already so disillusioned? I cannot go a single day without fighting and I am getting tired of constantly being at war with myself and with others. I try to choose my battles, but there are some things that I can't afford not to fight against. It's strange, but it's almost easier to fight than to live knowing that I have allowed others to continue perpetuating injustice and ignorance. But I am exhausted. I am tired of struggling, although oddly enough, fighting and struggling prevents me from succumbing to some of the worse symptoms of depression. (Some might argue the worst symptom of depression.)

Perhaps I am destined to be a warrior on the small scale of my existence. Perhaps this is the greater purpose that I desperately seek. Maybe I am not meant to be loved or to really love others. I ought to be content with a life of relative selflessness, and perhaps dedicate myself to being a little bit better at perfecting that selflessness. Wouldn't it be better to avoid hedonism and dedicate the entirety of my being to fixing other people and the world or at the very least trying? Is this more noble than trying to find a boy to love or satisfying my base desires for money and power and control?

I want to shut my brain off. I want to stop thinking all the time. I want to be able to be entirely present. People are beginning to notice how absent I am from life. When I roll over, unable to look into his eyes for fear that I will become too involved in moments that can only be temporary,  when I stare off into the distance mid-sentence trying to hold onto a single instant and keep it close to me forever or when I ignore and neglect my academic commitments, it's my way of avoiding the present moment because I fear the temporary far more than I fear permanence. It's not commitment to anything that I am truly terrified of, but the idea that I will commit to something that will go away.  This may be a person or success or really anything that I give myself to entirely. I want to be less empty. I want to be here, now, with everyone I know but I can't do that. So I want to find meaning by picking off pieces of myself, and giving them to those who need something from me. I want to ignore my desires and give and give until I'm essentially dead. It's the stuff of suicidal dreams without physical death.

How do I eliminate fear? It's a question I ask myself almost constantly. I want to be less scared of existing and less scared of being happy. I may settle for a life of selflessness and giving until I am nothing, but what I really want is to feel free to be totally hedonistic and throw myself at all kinds of pleasures. Being intelligent is a prison. Being black is a prison. Being beautiful is a prison. I am eternally held captive by something.

This is why I want to die. I want to die in order to be free. Don't worry, I haven't worked up enough selfishness to let myself be truly pursuant of the freedom that comes with death. I am not done with this world. I am not done fixing everyone and fixing everything. Injustice still exists. Sadness still exists. Feeling needed keeps me alive. A shock to the heart. A quick jolt of reality. I'm a masochistic child, kept alive by the same anguish that places me on edge and very nearly pushes me over. I might feel alone in my head, but that doesn't mean I am not needed. And I say it again and again until I believe it. I am needed. I may not be loved, I may not be wanted, but I cannot yet die. 

Monotony

Every day starts the same for me. I am primarily exhausted, and rarely want to attend class. My body aches from either sleeping on my arm or not getting enough sleep or some combination of the two. I attend as many classes as I can, do my homework, go to my job, hang out with my friends, text some other friends, do some more homework and go to bed. I hate living this way. It is in my nature to crave spontaneity and each day becomes more boring than the next. The weekends provide a brief unsatisfying escape from my every day life. Brief and meaningless. I may get drunk, destroy my body or find myself in someone else's bed, but this is ultimately unsatisfying in the long run.


This semester has been difficult for me. When I went off my medication at the beginning of the semester, I struggled with a lot of things. I had a lot of academic problems and emotional problems. I could actually almost hear another version of myself: the anxious and depressed version, screaming at me through almost every social interaction. I doubted myself a lot and didn't trust in my ability to make sound emotional decisions. I hated everything about myself and found myself very close to actually inflicting pain upon myself a number of times. A number of external factors led to me feeling even more out of control; I've always had problems with wanting to control all aspects of my life and knowing that I couldn't be in charge of everyone's feelings and reactions to me sent me deeper into a psychological rut.

Another thing that exacerbated my problems was everyone's insistence that I was "normal". I know it seems like the sort of thing that would be comforting, but it really wasn't. I was hearing voices, in my head, telling me to slice my skin open, or chug half a bottle of rum or to burn my room to the ground. That isn't normal. My voices told me I was worthless, meaningless, a blip on the space time continuum. I could never be loved. I would never love again. I was vile, disgusting and an abomination. I'm sorry, but I know that isn't normal, and my friends' insistence that I was fine drove me even closer to actually hurting myself. Luckily, by the will of some higher power, or just as a result of my general destiny, I managed to make it out of the three weeks of hell without doing anything remarkably stupid.

Those few weeks were terrible on my body and on my mind, but I found a twisted pleasure in the novelty. Fighting against myself brought me something new to do. I found fulfillment in the struggle of survival and in the battle against my mind. If I could find the will not to hurt myself, I felt like I was better. This control over willpower extended to food, and I would go hours upon hours without eating anything substantial. I ate just enough to prevent my stomach from growling and drawing attention to what I was doing. In a sense I felt like this would give me control over the people around me. They would think I was alright, when I really was not.

Now that I've stopped participating in odd deceptions of this kind, I find myself without any kind of challenge. I have never been good at dealing with boredom (or disappointment for that matter). I want to break out of this monotony and be a different person, or experience something different from just classes, school and relationships that leave me emotionally unsatisfied and psychologically drained. I want to be better. I don't want to hear negative voices and I don't want to focus on negative thoughts. How do I combine my need to break out of monotony with my desire to be a happier person? This is something that I suppose I will continue to figure out on my path to freeing myself from depression. It is a difficult thing to do, especially feeling as isolated as I do now.

Other people saying they are here for me is really quite different from the reality of the situation, which is that people are mainly there for themselves. They exist in my world only for whatever life they can suck out of me to boost their self-esteem or for whatever other purposes I might serve. I need to focus on fighting monotony on my own, without relying on other people for suport or falling into depressive habits. I am ill. My brain is at war with itself, but at least I am at the point where I think that I can be better, and I will be patient with myself for this not happening instantaneously. 

Body Image - Some Thoughts

I have not always loved myself.
Even now, I am slowly shedding the negativity of self-loathing that is so deeply entrenched in women. There was always something wrong with me.  From the time I was a child, the idea that I needed to control my appearance to fit convention was pounded into me by a mother with only good intentions. Black and mixed girls (and maybe some white ones, I can't speak for them), can all directly relate to the hair-struggle, which is the first manifestation of this that we become aware of.

Combs yanked through beautiful knots.
SIT STILL.
STOP CRYING.
JUST TEN MORE MINUTES.
CALM DOWN.
IT DOES NOT HURT THAT BADLY.

I am probably one of the lucky few who was never hit while getting my hair combed, but I know some of my sisters cannot say the same. From the time we are children, we are taught that what we are born with is wild and unruly. What our bodies and hair look like are wrong and need to be tamed. It starts with our hair, but as we get older, we learn that we mustn't wear too-short shorts, we must try not to look fat, but we can't look too skinny. Fix it, fix everything. Your body is not perfect. You are not right. We are bombarded with these types of messages from our youth. The media is not all to blame.

When we are younger we are not really sure how long lasting these effects will be. We do not understand how early we are being abused and how harmful these messages about body negativity will be. It influences everything, from our interactions with others to our interactions and perceptions of ourselves. We begin to enter the world of adulthood, not with our heads held high, but with our eyes towards the ground and our confidence lowered.

Although, women face the majority of these problems, men are not immune to them. A few young men attempt to understand what women go through, in well intended attempts to "fix" women, they say things like "Embrace your natural beauty! Girls who wear makeup are gross and I like girls better without makeup on!" Another common one is, "I think all women are beautiful. You should love yourselves. I don't know why women have such low self-esteem." Nice. Thank you so much! You have fixed us all you benevolent penis-owner (Note: not trans-erasure, just making a point about the people who do this). Good intentions do not erase the negative effects the male gender has on self-perception however, and these teenage boys attempts to enlighten the silly girls with poor self-esteem does more harm than good in the long run. It makes girls who do like makeup feel bad about themselves and telling a girl she is beautiful might not change the way she feels about herself because it really needs to come from within.

It has taken me a long time to accept my physical appearance. I used to care a lot about whether or not men found me attractive. I tried to get rid of everything I thought was ugly - fat, curly hair, glasses, body hair - just to name a few things. I developed an obsession with comparing myself to other women who were better, more desirable and more beautiful than I. Whether these women were photoshopped celebrities or friends who were always involved with some boy or another, I used their looks as a weapon against myself. I felt threatened and in trying to eliminate that threat through changing myself, I ended up causing myself a lot of emotional damage.

Somewhere along the line of being rejected by various men (Perhaps boy #5 or someone along those lines) I began to realize how hurtful my self-image was, especially as a reaction to being rejected by men. I was at a point where I could hardly look in the mirror without finding some small feature to obsess over or something to put myself down about. I stopped caring about whether men found me attractive, because no matter what I did to myself, it didn't really seem to convince them that I was beautiful. I tried very hard to conform to what I thought was perfect for a long time.

I wouldn't eat for as many days at a time as I could handle because I felt like I didn't deserve food, and I would feel guilty every time I caved and ended up consuming "too much". So, rejected by myself and a large number of boys, I started to become angry. This anger was projected inwards at first, but then I began to get angry with the world. This tied in nicely with my religious crisis, where I stopped believing that I needed to attribute everything to a higher power or a deeper purpose. People seemed to be so shallow and empty, obsessed with worthless physical appearances. They didn't understand that physical beauty for short lived and insignificant in the grand scheme of things. They didn't understand that everything was insignificant and all we have was ourselves. I blamed my world and the people around me for the way I viewed myself. Although I was not necessarily incorrect in where I directed my blame and anger, blaming people and being angry wasn't going to solve any of my problems.

I hated men. I hated myself. I hated my friends who were so critical of themselves and others. I didn't want to think of myself as ugly, and I made a conscious decision to change my self-perception. I started to really feel what it was like to be inside my body. I felt what it was like to breathe, to speak, to hug someone, to touch someone else or to feel desire. It wasn't disgusting. It wasn't painful to be myself. I realized that the body that I had was adequate for my purpose in life and I had no reason to be upset. Was there any reason for me to be stressed about a little bit of fat? Was there any reason to hate my hair the way it came out of my head? This was one of the few times in my life that I turned my anger into something positive. I changed the way I viewed myself. I changed the way I presented myself.

I started by dressing for myself, without caring about whether or not I would run into the boy I liked on a day that I was less-than-perfect. Then I looked at my body, and I looked at the parts of it that I hated. I have really crooked teeth. A solution would be getting braces, but I didn't want them, so I forced myself to acknowledge and embrace the fact that my teeth are crooked and will probably be coffee stained for the rest of my life. I looked at my nose, which seems to have evolved from a mixture of my genetics and is not predominantly "black" or "white". It's awkwardly shaped and has a freckle on the tip that draws attention to it. There's nothing I can really do about my nose however, so on days when the freckle is particularly annoying, I cover it up with makeup, and other times I do nothing and just try to kill my obsessive thoughts. I used to hate my lips. I thought they were too big for my face. I got over that insecurity by forcing myself to wear lipstick of bright, obnoxious colors. I needed to draw attention the perceived flaw and "flaunt" it to help myself come to terms with its presence. After a few times, I began to like the way my lips looked. I started not to care about them being awkward or not fitting my face because if I wanted to highlight my lips, I could do it if I damn well pleased. I could love my flaws.

I hated that my upper body was disproportionally larger than my legs, which still managed to be so thick I had to spend ten minutes putting on jeans. I hated that my butt was flat and so obviously not inherited from my mother. I began to spend a lot of time naked. I spent a lot of time looking at my breasts, that were not perfectly perky and my butt that wasn't the round "black girl booty" I wanted. I spent so much time looking and analyzing and trying to think of good reasons to hate myself, that after a while, I didn't want to hate myself anymore. I didn't want to be ashamed of stretch marks on my thighs just below my butt. I didn't want to hate the fact that I didn't have perfect breasts or a perfectly proportioned body. Self-loathing was tiring me out, and the more I forced myself to stare into the mirror, I began to come to terms with myself, one piece of my body at a time.

I stopped comparing myself to girls who were "prettier" than I was. I no longer cared about the stereotypical New England girl athlete's body and face. I couldn't be a skinny blond field hockey or lacrosse player even if I wanted to. And the more I forced myself to acknowledge my nakedness and own my nakeness, the less I wanted to be someone else. My view on men changed as well. Why would I want to be with someone who made me feel insecure about my flaws? Why did I care about the juvenile boys I was surrounded by who would frequently talk about how "ugly" or "fat" other girls were?

It isn't my job to change the shallowness of men around me. Half the time, I don't think they notice how hurtful it is to say things like "I'm not attracted to black girls" or "I only like blonds" in my presence or in the presence of any other girl for that matter. Sometimes I think they justify their behavior by saying, "Well, I'm insecure too." The point is, their thoughts stopped mattering to me. Their critique of other women, as annoying as it was, stopped becoming relevant. The only opinion about my body that I care about is my own.

My mother is still critical. I don't think she can help it. She really does want the best for me. But she will comment on my shorts being too short, my shirts being too wrinkled, or my clothing choices being too manly. (I do tend to shop in men's sections more than the perfect child would, I suppose.) This was the most difficult criticism for me to overcome, and for most girls I think this is the case. In general, we have the idea that our mothers were perfect. My mother specifically, also accomplished something that I never will; she was married at 19. She successfully found the love of her life when she was only a year older than I am, and although I don't particularly have the desire to get married, it certainly adds to the feelings of inadequacy that are only compounded by any criticism, no matter how small and regardless of the intent. I don't know exactly how I overcame my mother's criticism. I think I stopped trying to acquiesce to her wishes of what kind of child she wanted me to be. And in putting up a fight for so long, against her and against myself, I eventually came to terms with the fact that she will never be completely happy with how I look and how I present myself.

I envy my sister sometimes for being the perfect girl in that regard. She is smart, independent and manages to have successful relationships with men. She can relate to my mother on that level, which is something that I have never been able to do. Acknowledging my envy, and the fact that I will never be exactly who my mother wants me to be was liberating and played a huge role in developing a better self-image.

I am surrounded by beautiful women. I'm not going to spin you that crap about how "everyone is equally beautiful" as a method of "solving" women's problems with self-esteem. I'm being honest. From my roommate, to friends I haven't seen since graduating from Groton, to girls I've had a couple classes with, I have been absolutely blessed to be surrounded by women who radiate independence, intelligence and incredible beauty. A few nights ago, I was surprised to find out how many of these women, who in a sense I look up to in various regards, struggle with their self-perception.

I remember feeling that way, but due to egocentricity, I suppose I forgot that not everybody has come to the point in their life where they decide to love themselves. It has to be conscious. It has to be something that you invest yourself in. What I find most distressing, is the vast number of women and girls who feel inadequate about their looks. I want to help, and I want to change it, but there's really no way I can impose myself on other peoples' lives without seeming rude. I suppose all I can do is acknowledge that I went through the same struggles, and talk about how I overcame them and - also due to some egoism - hope that I inspire women and girls to talk to each other about their problems with their self-image or spend some time with their bodies, exploring their flaws and learning to love them.