Blast from the past
April 02, 2008 / 23:11
I'm overcome with a bittersweet feeling as I read this old diary. .
It feels as if an eternity has passed, I must have been 16 (17?) when I started writing down my thoughts here. I can't even remember anymore. It makes me feel a bit sad, somehow I've created a wall around me since then and I feel that it's difficult for me to truthfully ventilate my thoughts in a public journal like this. But just because I felt such a strong urge to log on here, I’m going to try.
So much has happened, so much has changed. I turned 21 a few weeks ago, for one thing. .
When I started writing here I was very unhappy. The depression grew and I became suicidal. Life seemed too difficult for me to handle. A lot of that misery is still there, only locked away. As a defense mechanism I’ve started to repress all my negative thoughts and feelings, it gets me through each day. I think this diary saved me back then, I’ve always had such difficulty opening up to people but in this journal I felt free, truthful.
Somehow, I believe I was better at handling my depressive thoughts at 17. Nowadays I don’t want anything to do with my demons so I just pretend they don’t exist. It doesn’t work.
I wonder if I’m doomed to live a life inside a shell. I’m so shy, I wish I weren’t. I feel awkward at all times and I still avoid social gatherings because I don’t want any attention. If I notice that someone is watching me, I get nervous and feel like putting a paper bag over my head.
People have tried to help me during the last two years, people I’ve met. Sadly, it hasn’t worked. I’m cursed with a low self-esteem and despite all the compliments people have given me I can’t believe I’m anything but ugly. The mind works in mysterious ways. It’s been several years since someone called me “ugly” or “fat”, but I can’t forget it. I guess I’m scarred, and I desperately hope it won’t last a lifetime. Strangers taught me early on that beauty was important and I wasn’t beautiful. I wonder why I believed them, people who didn’t know me, who’d never met me before. And I wonder why it still makes me sad to think about it. It’s odd, the way I see myself. When I see my face in a mirror I can see that I’m not “ugly”, but I can’t feel it. Also, considering that I’ve gotten compliments from men, I can understand that I must be attractive in some way, but I still don’t feel it.
At one point, I thought that love would set me free. It hasn’t, it only brought more pain. Perhaps I just haven’t found “the one” yet. My shy and awkward personality presents a problem when it comes to finding that person.
Life goes on though, the years pass so quickly. I’m trying to move on with my life, I desperately want to get rid of my demons and break out of my quiet shell. This fall I have plans to study at a university here in Sweden. Maybe knowledge will set me free. .
Until we met again, dear old diary. I don’t think I’ll ever have the heart to delete you.
With love, Emma