"Anyway, so the vase is smashed again. I smashed it."
Notes to Self are long-form journal entries posted in full. See Seven Yrs Ago for excerpts. Read Hold in My Headlock for more on reconstruction. I was 20 in late 2013.
I think the reason my mood and my emotions have been so erratic lately is that I’m 20, a (usually) responsible, hardworking, fair thinking adult but I’m now dealing/reopening the emotions of a depressed 14 year old who for a year cried every other day, and some in between, and never really talked about it with anyone.
Like I just decided one day before I turned 16 that I was going to start being normal, human, a part of what’s around me rather than staying in the darkness by myself.
On one level, that’s admirable. Not that I’ve done research or really know, but how many emotionally unstable teenagers just decide that they will be okay, put away the razors, then apply and go to a good college? And have great things and friends to boot?
My mom was semiright when she said that when I was young, I kept myself so busy that I never took time to look at myself. I was always busy, but when I got older, I did look at myself.
The problem was that I never really liked what I saw, or that when I did like something about myself, I would dismiss it or not fully believe it in order to keep thinking/feeling that way.
I think I just need to believe in something. Ultimately that something would be myself, but until I fully do, I need to believe I like at least little things about me.
I’ve been thinking of some metaphor:
When I was young, I was a vase, shiny, clean and intact. Then, when the divorce happened and other teenage things at the time, I broke quietly, but I swept that under the rug and it was okay cause nobody noticed/was looking that way because everybody else has their own vase to look at.
Then when it came to college and having to become an adult, I took out the pieces, and quickly reassembled it into something I liked the look of and it’s all mishmashed together with disconnected patterns, but overall it holds the same shape and it’s enough for people to stop and look at and think “that’s interesting,” but of course, they move on as they should.
Now what I’m dealing with is that I’m looking at the vase and I’ve decided to smash it. At first it was because I was angry with the external factors like arch, Jason, life present etc and thought I needed to destroy myself because I’m not good enough for what I’ve surrounded myself with. What I’ve chosen to surround myself with.
I think “chosen” is the right word, because yes, I did choose these things, which means that I wanted/maybe still want them. Also, I’m an adult, and as my mom reminded me, as adults, we make choices and we have to live with or make do with the repercussions or results.
Anyway, so the vase is smashed again. I smashed it. I have to realize that I can’t change the events that smashed the original model the first time. I can never be that original model, and since I was young, I wasn’t mentally or emotionally equipped to handle what happened. It’s done. Also as wonderfully brave? as it was of me to reassemble, I didn’t take the steps to do it the right way. Though there is no one right way, there are ways to make the pieces fit together more than before than if I left them to fall apart by themselves. Slowly, because I will have to accept that it will take more time now, I will put the pieces back together. The colors may not align, and the fractures will show, but it will be whole again and secured. To repeat some cliché, I have no control over the past, but I do have some say over my future, and it’s about time that I start seeing a future that’s unbroken.
For more context, read here.