Prologue
There’s so much I could have done. So many different choices that led me down this road. I could have reached out. I could have gotten help. I could have let someone in. That’s the thing about things like this. There were options, other choices I could have made that would have saved my life. I just didn’t think it was a life worth living at the time. There was so much tragedy and so many damn demons I had to fight on a daily basis just to survive. That’s what I was doing. I was surviving but not truly living. That’s why I gave in. That’s why it was so easy to let someone take every decision away from me.
I’m not weak. I have never been weak. I have spent every day of my life fighting an internal battle that no one else can see, built an indestructible fortress that no one could get through. Even though I was my own worst nightmare, I was the only one I could trust. It seemed like no one else could understand what I was going through. When I was younger, I tried to put out feelers to see if anyone else my age had these thoughts. It only reinforced my resolve that I was alone. My first memory of thinking the world would be better without me was from when I was just four years old. I remember being in my mother’s room with my mom, my older brother and my youngest sister. They were all on the bed laughing and I was lying on the floor, in full sensory overload, just thinking that no one truly loved me, that my family and I would be better off if I were dead, that there was something fundamentally wrong with me. I know none of these thoughts were warranted. I fought those thoughts everyday since. I made sure to do everything within my limited power to stay strong and resilient.
Most days, my struggles made it hard to be authentic. I don’t believe I ever found my true self. I never had that privilege. I only have the identity that others have assigned to me. The brilliant over achiever who never truly had to try in school. The perfectionist and rule follower. The one people believed was intelligent due to the fact she never spoke up. Due to her being in all AP classes and having perfect grades. The one who went off into the world and never lived up to her full potential. My stress over being perfect on the surface so no one would ever see the hordes of demons taunting me was viewed by others as success.
When he found me, I was in the darkness. He never brought me out of the darkness. He helped me embrace it.
