cw: menstruation, suicidal ideation, self-harm, substance misuse, disordered eating, internalized fatphobia

to anyone reading this, i need to emphasize that first off, i am okay. i'm on my period, which tends to make me more emotionally unhinged than usual due to my pmdd. i'm not going to do anything seriously.

i remember when i was twenty, having an absolute breakdown in one of the university bathrooms, then walking to a nearby bridge and contemplating jumping down from it. i was hiding how severely unwell i was from everyone i knew, almost flunking out of school, texting suicide hotlines in a bathroom stall, misusing cold medication just to fall asleep, starving myself by strictly counting calories, going to the gym every day to do cardio for two hours in a desperate attempt to be skinny, and carving things into my arms to hurt myself as 'punishment' for even thinking about ending my life.

how could i dare to do that to my parents? i had almost died from illness as an infant and they, along with all those medical professionals and my relatives, expended all their energy and money to save me. i was wasting all of that time and effort by wanting to kill myself.

after years of therapy, i'm better. i'm medicated and less self-destructive. but every month i feel the creep of old habits come up on me again... like now. the urge to hurt myself to release all these heavy feelings so i don't burden others by talking about them, but deliberately choosing a self-harm method that looks "normal" to everyone so no one would ever ask. i tattooed the arm i used to hurt so much; i guess that's a very common story.

i am a lonely person. which is weird, i think, because i have a lot of people who love me and i know this logically, but there are the nagging parts of my brain that hate myself and think that i'd be better off somewhere not on this earth. that i am not meant to take up space, physically or emotionally, and should cease to exist.

i'm extroverted and thrive off socializing with people, even strangers, because it makes me feel like i belong. that someone would spend even a little bit of their time talking to me and enjoy it already means so much to me. but despite how much i like talking to others, sometimes i feel like i need an invitation to show my personal feelings on something, positive or negative — something like a vampire needing an invitation to step into someone's house.

maybe it's because i had grown up with a mother disinterested in what i did as long as i did well in school and didn't lose her face. she didn't know what instrument i played for four years. she never attended any performances or competitions i was in. she was spread too thin with my brother, who required more attention than me. my dad lived in a different country. my brother and i didn't like each other. he tried to drown me before and suicide baited me in front of our mother, who told me to let it go.

my hobbies were always evaluated by their usefulness by my parents. reading and writing? good and okay. everything else? a waste of time. shame is learned very early, i suppose.

the hilarious, hypocritical thing is that i was shamed whenever my parents thought i showed too much emotion, as if they both aren't people who externalize whatever they feel and take it out on the rest of the family. i know their anger very well.

i gave up having the ideal, loving parents. they love me, of course, in some conditional way, and i care about them, but they're not people i feel emotionally safe around.

READ MORE