Looking for a document I knew I had on my hard
drive I’ve stumbled upon some old texts I used to write when I was younger,
when the need of telling my feelings was so great I needed to sit down in front
of the computer and type them down, even if it was only to keep them privately.
I’ve read a few of them, some of which go back to 2007 or 2008, and some of
them are actually really depressing, which brings me to the topic of today.
I don’t even know in which point in my life I
am now, but I know I have moved on, at least partially. In many of those texts
I acknowledged the need I had for someone special in my life to feel complete,
the need I had to love but most importantly to be loved, and how one after the
other, all the platonic relationships of love I had (always one-sided) were destroyed,
taking a piece of my heart every time.
Some of them talk about how ridiculously in
love was with this or that person, some of them talk specifically about the
particular situation of that love, and even some of them talk about my desire
for my own death. I look back now and reflect on how desperate I was to think
about suicide, when I was barely 17 years old, when I had barely started to
live and my whole life was yet to come; and yet I feel biased as to how to deal
with it.
A few years ago, when I thought about those two
horrible years that I seriously considered suicide, I didn’t want to. I was
afraid that if I thought about the reasons why I wanted to die, those reasons
would come back to haunt me, and I was afraid of succumbing back to the
darkness. Now, a few years later I can look at that in perspective, and I can
tell myself that right now, I’m not afraid of that anymore.
I’ve learned to love myself the way I am,
something that has taken me 22 years but I finally have. I look in the mirror,
I see things I can’t change and hence I have to live with, and things I don’t
like, can change and am trying to change. You see, when I was seventeen I
didn’t love myself either internally or externally. I would look at myself in
the mirror and be disgusted at what I saw, but when I reflected on my
personality, on how I was as a human being, I disliked myself even more. And
reflecting on those thoughts, I think it was because perhaps I was striving for
perfection.
I’ve always had a problem with relationships
because I tend to idealize the person I fall in love with, mainly because
usually they are much older than me and therefore have much more experience,
and their lives are just too great compared to mine. It’s always been this way.
And now I think that maybe that was part of my problem, that I compared myself
to people that doubled my age, when they had had twenty years or more to explore
and change, to basically live what I hadn’t because of my age. I felt so small
compared to them, so unworthy of their love, that I believed that I was worth
nothing; and that applied to both my personality and my physical aspect.
Comparing that train of thought to the one I
have now, I see how much I’ve changed in the span of seven years, mainly to
myself but also to the relationships with people. To start with, I’ve learned
to know my personality, to know when I’m in a good mood or in a bad mood, and
not to throw my irritation (usually) to people who have nothing to do with the
cause of it. I’ve learned to look in the mirror and, if I feel disgusted about
what I see, do something to change it. That change started barely a few months
ago, but I feel empowered enough to say that at least I’m doing something to
feel happier about myself.
Thinking about suicide was my way of coping
with stress. My family relations were reaching a turning point and the tension
was palpable, that added to the fact that I was (or thought I was, now I’m not
so sure) madly in love with someone twenty-something years older than me who
didn’t give a damn about me, made a breeding ground for me to feel incapable of
carrying on. Yes, I had my friends and I always have, but I didn’t see it at
the moment. So, thinking about disappearing from this earth was a much easier
way of coping with it all than stopping for a minute, close my eyes, think, and
then talking to my parents, or taking the reins of that love that took me
nowhere, or say enough is enough.
I know I’m rationalizing things here and in
that situation I was definitely not rationalizing things, but I have to frown
at the texts in front of me and think way back in time to actually understand
what was going on in my mind to think that, for some reason, dying was better
than living. Because I feel so much different now.
I still don’t like some things of me, but I’ve
learned to accept them or try to change them. I feel more at peace with myself
and hence with everybody else. And I finally don’t feel that void in my chest,
as though I need someone else to feel complete and perfectly happy. I’ve
understood how terribly confused I was about relationships and about love
itself: that you don’t need anyone else to feel complete by yourself.
Our culture of today tells us that, for some
reason, you must have someone by your side to feel completely happy. That’s why
we look awkwardly at people in their forties or fifties who have never been
married or never had a relationship we know of, that is, if we can find someone
like that. It’s not the usual. If you ask teenage people let’s say, about 17 or
18 years old, about their plans for the future they will likely tell you that
they want to study, get a degree, work in the field of their likes… and later
on get married and create a family. Some of them may even have a long-lasting
relationship from when they were 14 or 15 that is still going on today.
And that’s why I was so confused at how I
should deal with relationships. I thought that, if I wasn’t happy it was
because I felt alone and I needed someone to love me. That’s a perfectly
understandable train of thought, but then what? The relationship finishes for
some reason, and then what? You go back to being a living zombie, until you
find somebody else to complete you? That’s not how it works. It’s not about the
other person making you happy; it’s about the other person making you happier. There’s a big difference. It’s
about complementing each other, not completing
each other. It’s about loving somebody but still having time for your friends
and other acquaintances, not becoming a pack all together. And finally, it’s
about loving yourself first so that somebody else can love you and, most of all, respect you. In the whole wide sense of the word.
And that reflection gives me even more food for
thought. When you’re a teenager you believe what other people tell you, what
the media tells you, what films and books tell you, and what our culture and
society tells you. We need to conform to an ideal to feel accepted, and that
makes you accept ideas and concepts that a few years later make you say: what
the hell was I thinking? And in my case was suicide, but it happens with a
whole lot of other circumstances, for instance eating disorders like bulimia.
So, with that in mind, that’s some food for
thought for you. What do books like Twilight,
where Bella is left by his vampire boyfriend Edward and then all she does is
sleeping, crying and throwing herself off a cliff just to see his ghost? Or 50 Shades of Grey, which I haven’t read
(couldn’t get past the first 4 pages…) and which, as far as I know, there’s
sadomasochism involved? What do these books that are tremendously famous and
best-sellers, tell us about our culture and our way of seeing relationships?
Having in mind, as well, that these particular books are intended for young
adult readers…
That’s something to think about…
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