Mirror, Mirror

I've been in Denver for almost a year now. I go to school full time, I work two jobs, and I'm currently in the middle of moving to a new place. I've done well for the last year. I've gotten good grades, I've done well at my jobs, but as the classes have gotten harder, my stress level has gone up and now with moving adding to an already difficult quarter, the cracks are starting to show. For the first time, I'm not doing well in a few of my classes. I'm struggling with finding enough time to study. I'm struggling with feeling exhausted all the time. I go seven days a week. The snow day we had last Wednesday was the first full day I'd had off in a few months. The cracks are showing and I don't know how to fix them. I live in a stupidly expensive city. I can't afford to quit one of my jobs. I'm trying to graduate by next summer so I don't incur a ridiculous amount of debt and so I can actually start working. I mean, I'm 28. Most of my friends and fellow students around the same age have at least one associates degree and most have a bachelors. Me? I'm at my fourth college trying to get the associates degree I failed to get two years ago.

I stood in front of the mirror less than half an hour ago, breaking down for the third time this week. I'm so tired and I just want to be done. I hate feeling like this. I hate feeling so hopeless, I hate feelig like I'm losing it, that I'm grasping at strings. My response to my reflection was to say, "Pull yourself together, you stupid useless piece of shit." It's a habit. I look in the mirror and the words come without a thought. Would I ever say something like that to someone else? No. But I don't think twice about saying them to myself.

I came across the clip above a while back while browsing through Facebook. It's from a show I've been meaning to watch and I swear I have never related to anyone more than I do with this girl. She quite literally took the words out of my mouth for how I think of myself. Fat, ugly, useless, worthless, all words that I frequently use to describe myself. In the past, when I was suicidal, I would think to myself that it wouldn't be a big deal to kill myself because so few people would be affected. I was useless and worthless, no one cared about me. The number of people missing me would be insignificant. No one pays attention to fat, ugly people, especially fat, ugly girls. Still, I could never go through with it because I didn't want to cause anyone else any pain, especially my parents. Maybe I didn't matter, but they did.

I've never learned to be kind to myself. I can imagine ten year old me and I can tell her that she's valuable and worth something, that she can do anything she puts her mind to. I can tell her that she's beautiful and strong. But I can't look at myself and say the same thing. I can even look at me from a year ago and tell her that she's brave for setting in motion the events that have led me to where I am today. But I can't look in the mirror now and say anything positive about myself. Why? Why is it so hard to love myself? Is it the fact that I have spent so many years talking down to myself? Or is it the cruel words of others seemingly confirming what I've said to myself that have formed such an impenetrable barrier? Why do the cruel words we say to ourselves and the cruel words of others stay with us so much more easily than kind ones? I have friends who tell me on a regular basis that I'm pretty and beautiful and amazing, but no matter how hard I try, I can't believe them. When I look in the mirror, that's not what I see. I see fat, I see ugly, I see stupid and worthless and useless. I see failure.

There are people in life that I've met that I can't stand, a few who I would dare say I've even hated, but I realize now that I have never hated anyone more than I hate myself. I have never been crueler to anyone than I am to myself. I listen to this girl's therapist, telling her to speak the same words to herself that she says to her younger self, and wish it was that simple. I've tried that, tried being kinder to myself. It never seems to make much of a difference.

Maybe someday I'll figure it out. Maybe someday I'll learn to be kind to myself, to accept the kind words of others and block out and stop believing the cruel ones. Maybe someday I'll come to know this girl that others call beautiful and amazing and strong. I don't see her in myself at all, but I hope someday I will.