To My 14 Year Old Self: Goodbye

When I was 14 I had already been through things that some adults will never have to face. Right before my 14th birthday my boyfriend and I had made plans to have sex for the first time. My boyfriend at the time is now my husband and neither one of us can really remember how it all came about or how it fell apart except for bits and pieces, but it did fall apart.

For years I’ve been wondering what happened that made me not be able to go through with it. In therapy one day it started to slowly come back to me: the situation had reminded me of what had happened to me as a child. That was the first time that I had really thought of the sexual abuse as sexual. I’m not sure what I thought about it before that, I really think that I just didn’t know and I didn’t think about it.

I turned 14 a few months later and began sleeping with a man in his mid-twenties which was the beginning of my life of trying to find love in the arms of anyone who would take me, even if it was for a few minutes. I still had no words for what had happened to me, all I had was an open wound and a lot of anger. I ran away and acted out.

I would spend so much time in my room (which I painted black) writing in my journal, making up stories and listening to music like Nirvana, Metallica (the Black Album) and The Cranberries. the more depressing, the better. I was swimming in pain, listening to pain and acting out in pain.

I am now about to be 39 years old in a month. I have been in therapy for a couple of years now which includes EMDR therapy which is used to help people who has suffered from trauma. It has helped me a lot. I am now standing in this place of being able to look back and see myself in a way that I was never able to before and what I see is me at 14.

I have been that wounded and heartbroken 14 year old version of myself for so long. When someone hurts me, lies to me, goes behind my back, takes advantage of me, rejects me or is just an asshole to me it is that 14 year old girl who reacts. She is the one who speaks back in anger, she is the one who throws a fit and she is the one who hurts all over again. I was looking for music on iTunes this morning and found Zombie by the Cranberries so I bought it. I thought it would be fun! It is amazing the flood of memories that my brain released as the music flowed. That’s when I realized just how much I have grown up and how fast it happened.

I have less outbursts and even when I have them, I no longer find them to make me feel better. They make me feel terrible because I seem them for what they are: the pain of a little girl who should no longer be allowed to speak or act on my behalf. I know now that I can’t hide behind my pain, my suffering or my abuse to justify my bad behavior. I am responsible for my words and actions.

I am naturally rude, snarky and whiney. I don’t write about my struggles so that people pay attention to me or so that they will feel sorry for me, I write about them because that is one way that I get through them and also in case anyone else feels like they are the only ones that struggle they know that they aren’t. I am trying to do the best that I can with what I have. I know God is calling me to this writing life which means learning the craft, writing and still taking care of myself, my marriage and my children. All while trying to grow spiritually. That may be a walk in the park for some people, but not for me. I just learned how to be an adult and not allow myself to act like a heartbroken teenage girl! That means not being defensive or angry and for sure not being a bitch.

That was my #1 defense against rejection. If I felt that you were rejecting me (even if you weren’t, but were just disagreeing with me) then I would reject you first and you would know it and never again want anything to do with me. It was a safe way to keep myself from hurt.. until the loneliness would set in.

The power of being comfortable with myself has killed the need to do that, even if it happens at times because I fall off the “I don’t wanna be a bitch” wagon. The need to please, the need to be accepted by everyone at the expense of being myself or silencing myself or editing myself, has all slowly started to fade away. It is a very slow process and some days it all comes back. I am happy with who I am right now. The music tastes, the TV show tastes, the new things that I am learning and have learned and the Faith that I have in God. I am no longer trying to earn His love, but rather, I am basking in it even when I fall very short from deserving it. I guess maybe this is what 39 is going to be all about, letting go of my 14 year old self. Bye Felecia!