diary of a broken soul

Page 19

Dear diary,

You don't have to starve yourself as a punishment.
You don't have to cut your wrist if you can't feel yourself.
You don't have to forgive people.
You don't need to understand everything.
You don't need to ask permission to be happy.
You don't have to feel guilty for choosing yourself.
You don't need to be perfect to be loved.

I am used to starvation as a punishment for myself. For not being good enough—for being so lazy when I am too tired to do anything.

I cut my wrist when I don't understand myself. When I felt too emotionally numb, I craved to feel pain, even if it meant I was physically hurting myself.

I always intend to feel the need to forgive people who cause me so much damage. Who left me a scar that cannot be healed. That is, I need to understand where they are coming from in exchange for losing myself.

If I'm being happy, the urge to look around the room and see if people are enjoying the same thing I am is beyond my control. I have a fetish for which I always reflect myself to everyone. I mirror what they feel, but the irony of it is that people cannot mirror their emotions to mine. I am the one who is reflecting. I always see myself as the problem.

Behind the independent woman, there's a girl who always felt guilty about choosing herself. She didn't experience being asked what she wants—the one that is always left out, not chosen, always the last card, never the first priority.

The universe has punished me for aiming for perfection in all the things that I am doing because just being myself is not enough. I need to be perfect to be appreciated. I need to be perfect to be loved. I need to be perfect so they will see someone who, ironically, is not me anymore. They push me so hard that I set my feet on the standard of perfection.

What I am isn't perfect.
What they made me do is something I am not.
It is perfection.
I don't know myself anymore.