Psycho Path

Nineteen

I didn't really realize until now that I really took initiative over my own life. I am nineteen years old and constantly reminded that I am grown and no longer the responsibility of my parent. I had never felt like it in the first place, if we are being honest. I felt like I have to beg to be nurtured, cared for, or received some kind of attention, or eligible of some kind of financial care since I graduated elementary school. I knew since I was young that I was different. I had been through so many things personally and alone, that still to this day I hadn't talked to anyone about. I always felt like me laying out my problems, my traumas, would run people away, but I have healed and my past no longer influences my present and future relationships with others. I have endured each of these painful events alone since I could remember. I know each of these events are important pieces to my character because I could remember them as if they happened yesterday. This is a very weird fact because I have really bad memory. As if the memory does not stick unless it was something that I could use later in life.

The quote "everything happens for a reason." floats through the air like the particles that exists around us, but we just cannot see. I have learned a lot through experience, healing, and reflecting, but I can't take all responsibility as I didn't play the part in each experience alone. It was not until August of 2020 that I realized my worth. I had to completely let go of my past life, old friends, and old lovers in order to completely set myself free from the picture, to see the bigger picture. There I had seen myself for who I truly was, but not who I convinced myself I was, and what people told me. I am beautiful. I am strong. I am caring. I am courageous. I am very talented. I am intelligent, and much more. I devalued myself with each failed relationship or friendship that I had, and for each one that I lost. Once, I learned my worth, I upped the price on my value.

Not only had I been disappointing myself for years, I never really knew why the path I walked was set for me. Why I had blindly felt through so much mental, physical, and emotional abuse. Healing from everything that you have been through, hurts way more afterwards than how you felt during any painful or traumatic experiences. A lot of minorities or teenagers have ptsd, and ptsd isn't always about such visual scarring like, getting in a car accident and being triggered when someone is driving recklessly or, seeing someone get killed by gun fire and being triggered by similar abrupt loud sounds. People can become emotionally scared and conditioned by trauma that is passed down through generations based on the lack of knowledge and self awareness, which I think is a heavy toll for anyone.

I remembered sharing in a town hall meeting in high school that I was traumatized by a shooting of a student that happened at a beach on senior ditch day. The students smacked their lips at me and scolded me because I didn't have a close personal relationship with the student that had gotten shot. Yes, I knew who the student was, I casually greet this person, but I personally never been that close to gun fire before. They may have been use to gang affiliation or gun violence, but I had never seen anything like that before in my life. These people were invalidating the way that I felt, that was not ok. It is never ok to invalidate anybody's feelings period. From the day forward, I barely even felt connected to my classmates. All interactions from the point forward just felt weird.

I had a mental breakdown and cut my hair of with my clippers and I sat there and wept while everybody stared at me. When I showed even a bit of vulnerability, no one knew what to do. I felt shut down, insecure, and alone. I had already shown up to school that day, feeling horrible, not even wanting go, and had already cried-- they led me to the counselors office in caution to protect the students from me. Asking me if I wanted to harm myself, when really I just wanted to off myself, wishing I was strong enough to even carry that out. I felt isolated the rest of the school year, I didn't enjoy one senior event, including prom and graduation. All supposed to be the best teenage experiences of high school right? I had looked for comfort in the all the people who made me feel those feelings of loneliness in the first place, my first mistake. I embraced the new look and went on with my life and act like nothing happened, just like everyone else, they made it easier for me to pretend like I didn't just lose my sanity, I guess I should be grateful for that.

Out with the old and in with the new. No need to mourn the pain of the past, just some things that pops when talking about trauma. They have to resurface so that it can find its way through you, as it no longer serves purpose to me anymore, as I learned that in high school, I did not have any true friends. I called these people my friends, I showed up for these people, supported, and celebrated these people, but that consideration was not reciprocated. In a friend, these are simple things that no friend should even have to ask for, but I learned and I took into account, what a real friend looks like and what it doesn't look like. I think this was the year of me learning what is not. What love is not, what is not a friend, what self love is not, what is not honesty, and what is not my reality. This year was the year of reflections and lessons, it was not easy, it was not linear, nor was it stable.