Since I was eleven- twelve years old I have believed that I wouldn’t live a very long life. I have never stopped hoping that my gut feeling was wrong but in the back of my head I have always believed that because of something, my life would be very short. At first I was convinced that I had some unknown disease that hadn’t showed its symptoms yet. But that was wrong. Then I believed that I would get into an accident of some sort and simply pass away that way. When I got older, in my teenage years, I even started fantasizing about it. How would I go? How would the people around me react? Would anyone cry?
It was kind of like when you run just to see who will follow. Except that in my case, I got more and more sure that even if I ran no one would follow. Even if I was gone forever no one would shed tears, at least not for very long.
I wasn’t a very positive young person. I never was very good at looking at things in a good way, from the bright side. I was the kind of person who thought that even if there is sunshine after the rain, it will soon start raining again anyway. Depressing point of view, huh?
I’ve never had many friends, and those who I have called my friends have all betrayed me in the end. I have been bullied, teased, ignored and because of that I have become something I never thought I would be. A lonely, depressed loner, that’s not what I saw in my future when I was little. Since I became a teenager I have been a bit mentally unstable with depressions, eating disorders and self-abuse patterns. I have tried to kill myself one too many times however without success (obviously) and without being discovered. I have hid so many unhappy feelings in my heart for such a long time that my chest is beginning to feel like a bag full of rocks. It feels so heavy and painful that my every breath feels like an accomplishment.
For quite some time I have gotten the feeling that I must have been meant to be alone and meant to be the bullied one. It seems that no matter which school I transfer to, I always piss someone off or annoy someone and even though it seems to be going well in the beginning, I always become alone in the end. Right now I am in high school, in the end of my second year. By this time next year (and a few more months) I will have graduated. But I am not sure that I can make it till then.
I have a very weak body that isn’t very well protected against diseases such as the flu and fevers etc. I am sick nearly every week and my attendance rate in school is pretty horrible. Not that I want to go. I want to graduate, yes, because it would be troublesome if I didn’t, but I sure as hell don’t look forward to going to school. I have no friends, and the ones who claim they are my friends are acting. They don’t really care about me, that much is clear. Even when I am in the hospital and I get these “I miss you” texts, I can’t believe them. Because I know that the minute I come back, they will have those faces on again that says “ugh, she is here again, so annoying” etc. That’s why more and more I seem to be losing my faith in humanity. Because how happy can I be when I am always shut out from everybody’s lives?
And there is another pretty big reason why I hate going to school. I am an art student and I am a very creative person who likes acting, drawing and designing more than anything. But everyone in my class happens to be girls. And most of my teachers and even my principal are also… wait for it… women. I am constantly reminded of the female sex that I biologically belong to but psychologically never have been part of. I am also reminded of all of the things I can never become even if I wanted to. I can never be the cute and lovely (although only on the outside) girl who would sacrifice her life for her boyfriend and not a penny for her friends. I am a boy at heart. I can never understand girls and although I do my best to act as one by wearing heels and feminine clothes I always feel so sad inside and so hypocritical that I feel like killing myself. And when I get compliments for my feminine look, I feel like crying inside. I find myself aching to go to the men’s department to look at clothes and shoes but I always force myself to go to the female section instead. I am a coward, I know, but when you hear the people around you in school talk about how disgusting they think cross dressers, transsexual, bisexual and homosexual etc. people are, you simply lose all confidence.
I have tried to be friends with them, even though I don’t want to, even though I want to hit them most of the time because of how they act. I try just because I don’t like being alone. Or rather, I can’t take being alone. Even if I have to walk beside someone I nearly hate, I would because it would cause more attention if I walked alone. Attention that would lead to me being bullied again and I don’t want that.
I have become so utterly disgusted with women during these years when I have forced myself to act as one, and every day I feel myself going further and further away from my heart’s true self. I feel myself growing b****y and mean and slowly I grow to hate myself. Because I am so terribly unsatisfied with myself and because I hate myself so much for not being the women my parents wanted, I hurt myself. I hurt myself over and over again to punish myself, to make myself realize I am bad to the core. I rarely eat, and when I feel like eating I push food I barely even want down my throat till I get really nauseous and I punish myself even more by not allowing myself to throw up. I do that so that I really won’t connect food with any positive emotions. To enhance the effect of that I put on my headphones, turn up the volume to max, grab my razorblade and cut my wrists and ankles till they are red with blood. Then I push my ankles together and my wrists together so that all of the blood mixes. I do all of this just to punish myself. And by each time I do it, I get more and more tempted to end it all while I am at it. After all, someone like me shouldn’t have been born in the first place. If I kill myself I would just be correcting a mistake that was made 18 years ago. Because that is how I look upon myself, as a mistake. I wasn’t supposed to have been born and no one would be sad for long if I stopped existing. No one wants someone like me around anyway. That much I have understood from these 18 years I’ve spent getting stepped on, bullied and rejected from everyone I have wanted to get closer to. I am garbage. And no one wants to befriend garbage.
I guess most people reading this will think that I am crazy, insane even but really I am not. People like me are not even that uncommon. It’s just that, most people who hurt themselves can be divided into two categories. The first groups are the ones who hurt themselves to receive pity from others and the other who hurt themselves because they have no choice but are terrified all the same of people around them finding out. I belong to the second group. I think that the second group is desperately clinging on to life whichever way they can but the first group is so clearly depending on others attention that they should find other ways then self-abuse to bring attention to them. However this is just my opinion.
I hope there will come a day when I can be happy but at the moment that day seems so unlikely. I dream of the future when in truth I don’t know if I have the strength to go on long enough to get there. I am weak, yes, but I don’t feel strong enough to change that. Not the way I am right now.
Today I started thinking, that maybe I could give being a woman a shot after all. Although that was only if I could change some things first, I want to become taller, at least 8 cm, I want to have a lower voice and I want to be thinner with less curves. I want to be able to speak in front of other people knowing that it is my true self that is talking to them, and not the person I am acting as. I wonder if I could be happy then, if my appearance suited my inside at least a little bit more. Right now I am the smallest in the family, and I get laughed at a lot. I get insecure and I tend to go away and hide my pain in silence. I have thrown away a lot of dreams because of my insecurities, so many in fact that I can no longer remember which one was the most important. I have become accustomed to give up, run away and keep everything inside. I am used to failure, although maybe it is closer to say that I am used to not being brave enough to pursue things till the end, and that is considered failure in my mind. When I was eleven years old I wanted to be an actress and although I have had a lot of dreams since then, and I have somewhat different dreams now, that dream is still strong inside of me. It still shines brightly like a star in a dark night, inside this cold heart of mine. I miss being on stage, the connection between you and your co-actors and the feeling of becoming someone else for a while. I miss that a lot. I get slightly pissed off when I see theaters, musicals or concerts but not on the artists and actors, but at myself. I want to be up there and I get pissed off at myself because I was too weak to pursue my dream. I get even more upset when I realize that I could have been up there, if I had just persisted enough.
Now I am not sure if I can become an actor/actress anymore. Or if it is my fate to become one, since I have fallen in love with other things as well during the time I’ve spent away from acting. I love making clothes and drawing and it feels good to create. But now and then I think back on the good old days on stage and I keep feeling that although my new dreams are important to me, there is still something important missing. Something that is a big part of that I threw away many years ago, and that it something I have regretted ever since. When you get told ‘You can’t do it. You are just dreaming. You don’t have any talent. It’s impossible for you.’ Etc. eventually you start to believe it yourself. That was what happened when I stopped acting. That day I didn’t so much give up on acting as I gave up on myself. That day I threw away the part of me that was happy, naïve, cheerful, full of dreams and honest and instead I gained a cold, warped and lonely personality who pushes whoever tries to get close away.
Why do grownups tend to stop dreaming? And why do they always want their children to stop dreaming as well? Is it because they think we will hurt less if we start thinking in cynically realistic patterns from the start? Why do we let ourselves get accustomed to thinking that our dreams are impossible and useless, no matter what they are? We all know that all people aren’t suited for all jobs and professions, but I doubt that anyone can with a quick glance determine someone’s abilities. I don’t believe that parents who tell their children they cannot become actresses or actors, or artists say it because they know their children has no talent. I believe they do it because they don’t want them to get hurt. But even so, when you tell your child or anyone that they can’t do something, you are hurting them.
What if Obamas parents had told him since he was a kid that he would never be able to become president, that he should give up right away since it was impossible for him to ever become the president of the United States of America. Do you really think that a child who has been told that so many times could have become someone as great as him? Well I don’t think so at all. He must have had a tremendous support from his family. Or if not his family, then from someone else close to him. Even if the world tells you that you cannot do it, if someone special tells you that you can, then it becomes possible. I believe that most brilliant people have someone behind them that has told them from the start that they are meant for greatness. Everybody needs someone who pushes them, lends a helping hand and supports them. It’s human nature.
I lost to people’s words and I have never stopped regretting that. I lost my dreams because of it, I lost my heart because of it, I lost my hope and my personality because of it, I lost my faith in other people because of it and most of all, I lost my faith in a happy future because of it.
Someone who glowed with confidence, rough talent, outspokenness and happiness became someone timid, alone, weak, afraid, silent and introverted in just a couple of years. I am dying to see that first person again, the person that is hidden somewhere deep inside of me, whose potential exceeds her surroundings by far. I want to meet that person again, and I would do anything to do that. I don’t know if I can stay a woman in order become that person again, or if my fate all along in order to find that person has been to become a man. Or if I am destined to be a very masculine, rough, rowdy and loud woman, I just don’t know. Who in this world knows what life is supposed to be like for them? I have no idea what my fate is but I am dying to find out. And hopefully one day I can look back at my past and think, I have finally found my way in life, and I am finally happy. I want to die with a smile on my lips thinking “Ha… that was fun”.