I find myself saying that I’m having “one of those days” a lot. One of those days where you just want to cry or injure or something. One of those days where you just want to go to sleep and never see tomorrow. One of those days where you just don’t want to look in the mirror. “One of those days” is turning into every day for me. I’m slowly starting to hate myself again. I self-injured for two years. I loved it. It took me a while to see what it was doing to everyone around me, though. When I finally realized how scared of me everyone was, I stopped. I didn’t want to be the girlfriend who injured. I wanted to be someone else. So I tried. I pretended I was a good person. I pretended like I was all together, and that I was “normal”. For 11 months this went on. I laughed, I smiled, I refrained from doing destructive things. But now it’s all coming crashing down. It’s all snapping back on me and I just want to scream and cry. I’ve never felt so alone. I’ve never looked at myself in the mirror and been so ashamed of the reflection. It’s like, I don’t want to be myself anymore. I want to be someone who doesn’t hurt themselves, and who doesn’t cry themselves to sleep. I want to cry over boyfriends and drama, not whether or not my mom has breast cancer. I want to miss my best friend who went to the beach for the weekend, not miss my boyfriend who has been dead for 3 years. I want to be afraid of heights and the dark, not be afraid of whether every guy who touches me is going to hit me. I just can’t keep being so exhausted. I want out. I want away from all of this. I need something to steal me in the night and keep me away from the horrors that is my own mind. I just need help.
Holding stuff in and not showing who you are or what you are feeling can be really draining. It take a lot of energy to pretend to be someone we’re not. Those exhausting feelings can lead to the desire to SI (at least it does for me anyway). Sometime it helps to be able to be genuine with one person – a close friend, family member or counselor-so you don’t have to hold everything by yourself.
I know everyone lives different lives, but reading what you wrote is almost exactly how I feel sometimes. And sometimes it is easier to “want out from everything”. But as appealing as it sounds, there are other ways that we sometimes have to force ourselves to do – whether it be finding a support group, a counselor, or just merely telling a friend the truth. It can be hard, but worth the effort. I hope you will see you are not alone.