Clean

How do you fight a war against yourself, and live to tell the tale???

How can someone fight a war by themselves?

The war against my mind started with a loneliness that cannot be explained nor described. A desire for someone, anyone to hold me, and tell me it would be okay. Even if that seemed like a lie at the moment, it was pretty on the outside and I craved that. I searched for a friend in the hallways of my high-school--searched for a gentle face, someone who would tell me. I never found that friendly face, nor an intimate connection with a friend who honestly loved me and had my best interests at heart. What I did find however, was that the searching itself became a prison cell and that people were content to let me rot away inside its walls. My struggles gave birth to co-dependent relationships in which I was expected to be the caregiver.

My people-pleasing tendencies threatened to destroy me, not just because pleasing others had become an obsession- but because there was no end to the people who would use me because of it...When I failed to please someone- when I made a mistake, self harm was my only way out. it felt like there was no way to be released from my own shackles. My mind was a prison cell, my mind was the prisoner and also the torturer.

I was a slave to self-harm and the scars were my identity. I couldn't watch them fade, it was as though I was fading with them. In order to cope with being a "failure" I needed the comfort of pain. I was dependent on them. It was always:

After I gave in I was rewarded briefly with a moment of normal but directly after the release, I was back to suffering. Nothing was okay, how could anything be okay? I had ruined myself (so I thought).

and after the realization, that my behavior, my flawed thinking, flawed relationships were not in fact fine as I desperately wanted to believe, I told myself I wouldn't ever do it again. I grabbed a sticky note and wrote names down.

1) My brother

2) My best friend

3) My mentor....

Those were a few of the names on top of my blades and I went to war against my mind. The desire to surrender was strong, especially when my life was falling apart around me. Sometimes, my battle was not successful, and I would relapse. I would sink into depression -- and I would claw my way back out, until finally, finally I was a week clean. I was a month clean. I was three months clean. I am over a year clean.

How do you win a war against yourself, and live to tell the tale?

You find someone else to fight for until you are able to fight for yourself. You find a reason and you remember them. You fight and you don't give up. Despite circumstances.

You reach out, and you choose a new life.