Broken But Still Good

A series of memories flooded my mind this morning as I read an article about a woman who mercilessly tormented another while they were both young girls in middle school. I remember being made to feel inferior every day, no matter what the circumstance or the others with me, I was the one singled out as the target and it started even before middle school.

Top Row, Middle (The only girl). First grade me.

With one of my only middle school friends

To be honest I have never forgotten those days or how they lasted all the way through my entire career in the Franklin Community schools to the end of my junior year at Indian Creek. I see my tormentors here on Facebook; mutual friends here and there tell me that they are doing fine and I'm glad they are doing well. But there is still a part of me that will always be that scared, hurt, emotionally devastated girl who just wanted to be left alone to read her books or listen to her music or be with the few true friends she had that wouldn't turn on her at a moment's notice to be one of the 'cool kids'. I want to ask those people who encouraged me to commit suicide (daily) why they did it. What did I do to warrant being their punching bag? I was tall, awkward, smart, and painfully naive. All of those things combined to make me a social pariah for too long. Even to this day I have trouble meeting new people and I by default assume that even those I consider my friends are going to stab me in the back and that somehow, even if I don't know how, I will have deserved it. Those few friends I have held onto since the early days know how I can be when it comes to betrayal, how I always expect it and am rarely surprised when it does finally happen.
To those who made my life hell I also want to ask them if they knew what they were doing at the time. Did they know that they were systematically degrading my emotional foundations by treating me that way? Did they even care in their hearts or minds that they drove me to the brink of suicide more than once?

I am leaving this as a public post so that those who tormented me to within seconds of suicide can see that while they might have shattered me more times than I can count, they did not destroy me.

That's right bitches. I'm still here.

I'm Angry

Posted on as my Facebook status on June 25, 2014:


I’m overweight. Obese. Morbidly obese if you want to get technical. And there’s a reason that I am. Well, several reasons. The main reason is that I don’t take care of myself. I don’t eat foods that are good for me, I don’t eat regularly unless I’m reminded, I don’t exercise enough (or much at all on any consistent basis), and I have a general sense of ‘eh’ about it on the surface. There is a core reason for this. And for why I’m posting this on Facebook for you all to critique and see.

I’m angry. I’m angry that I was unable to have what I had planned for, budgeted for, begged the gods for...children of my own. For many reasons, many outside of my control, I was never able to have children. My health was a factor, true, but it was always something that I was told could be overcome with weight loss and medication therapy. But my (now ex) husband wasn’t ready to have kids so I put off the weight loss. I did try some of the medications but they made me sick so he asked me to stop taking them. So I did.

He and I are now divorced and I have been told by doctors that I’m pretty much beyond the point of no return. My chance of successfully bearing children is in the low single digits, and that’s only if I get down to a manageable weight and nothing goes wrong. And seeing my friends, who I love dearly, holding their children in smiling family photographs makes me feel like I am somehow less of a person. I don’t judge anyone else who doesn’t have children, whether it is by choice or by chance, that’s their life. But I do judge me and I am my harshest critic.

I am angry. I am hurt. And I am done. I’ve reached the point where I am barely restraining tears at work on a regular basis, crying at home when I’m sure no one is around, and forcing myself to smile at the baby pictures when my friends show me their adorable children. I don’t want to be upset. I don’t want to be angry. I want to be able to show my friends and family that I love them and their children as much as I can, but I just can’t.

I’m broken. And I don’t know how to come back from this.