Daddy Issues

The first time that I cut myself, I was 12 years old. I had seen it in movies and TV shows, and I experienced trying to talk my classmate out of self-harm before I fully understood what it was and that it wasn't just something for "emo" and "goth" kids to do to spite their parents and the system. As my ten-year-old brain grew into a 12-year-old brain, I now saw self-harm as a good way to express my newly addressed hatred of myself. When I got in the shower before school, I used the edge of a face wash bottle to scratch my wrists. It left many small red marks on my arms, and I felt satisfied that I was able to go through with such a "bold" move. When I put on my uniform and headed for my strictly close-minded, Christian school, I realized that the red marks on my arms had not gone away. Considering that students weren't allowed to wear makeup or jewelry or nail polish or smiles, I assumed this may be a major problem. As well as it being the first time that I cut myself, it was also the first time that I had to hide it; there was no doubt in my mind that I wanted self-harm to be a private ritual of my own that I refused to share with anyone else.

Fast forward to a year later. I'm a freshman in high school still hiding my arms the same way that I felt necessary to do the year before. But instead of feeling proud of my bold actions, I experienced for the first time (of many) an overwhelming feeling of being ashamed of what I was doing to myself. My newly acquainted classmates, teachers, coaches, and counselors were beginning to notice the marks now covering my wrists as well as my knees. Although I felt overwhelmed, I firmly believed that nobody would make the effort to voice their concerns about the matter. And they didn't, until the very end of my freshman year.

I received a pass to leave class and report to the counseling office right away. Although the possibility of my counselor wanting to meet with me due to my self-mutilation was in the back of my mind, I genuinely did not think the issue would ever be brought up until I wanted it to be (never). When my counselor asked "Do you know why I called you down here?" with a note of concern in his voice, I remember feeling like there was a war going on inside me.

My heartbeat felt so strong that I was sure he was able to see it through my hoodie and I saw flashing images of my freshman imaginative version of a mental hospital in my head (the beginning of a very intense fear) as I calmly answered "No." As my counselor explained that the school nurse had brought my self-harm to his attention, I already began planning my escape from the mental hospital in my head. As I was deciding whether I would escape through the window or use my non-existent strength to overpower guards, Mr. Burns handed me a stress ball and told me that, although he in no way condoned self-harm, he understood my reasoning behind it. Mr. Burns was the first person to ease my concerns about not being normal. He made me feel like it was only an unhealthy stress-reliever that many other they-who-shall-not-be-named-students also found comfort in. I had no knowledge that self-harm was a common or even well-known thing among kids my age before Mr. Burns told me; I wanted to personally meet every other suffering student and look at their scars and ask them why they do it and why they picked that specific place on their body and what they use and how they feel.

For the next several years, I became obsessed with learning about self-harm. I would read blogs entitled "I am worthless" and "I hate my life" while googling pictures of different self-harm techniques. I was setting myself up for a long journey of self-hate and self-destruction, and at the time, I loved it. I finally found something that I didn't have to fake. It wasn't like volleyball or drawing or soccer that I forced myself to like only because my siblings did; this was something that was mine. Throughout all of this obsession, I was well aware that it would not be publicly accepted. Although I frequently felt ashamed of my own cuts, I loved the idea of it; I loved that it was something that I could love without having to tell anyone else. It was something that I got to unknowingly share with others that were hiding the same things that I was; we were connected on that level, even if I didn’t know them.

I'm aware that some may think that I'm painting the picture of self-harm to be delightful and self-fulfilling, but it was not. Through my obsession with self-destruction, I still felt the immense psychological toll of hurting myself, hiding my cuts, and lying to others when I couldn't hide them well enough. I found myself starting to use the adjective "sad" and "tired" as part of my personality rather than my mood. It became extremely rare to wake up in a good or even neutral mood, and I felt exhausted from being depressed all the time. I decided to voice my concerns to my freshman soccer coach about how unusual and numb I felt all of the time. My coach was very supportive about my situation and agreed (after 45 minutes of convincing) to not report my self-harm to the athletic director. My freshman year soccer coach was the first person that I can remember ever making me feel cared about. He would text me to make sure I was doing okay (I know. Inappropriate.) and I felt completely drawn to him because of his concern for me. I couldn't remember a time in my life before then that I felt cared about. Nobody had ever shown any concern about whether I lived or died or hurt myself or not before him, and it felt amazing.

Unfortunately, the first person that cared about me and the first person that I trusted enough to share my darkest secret with ended up taking advantage of and violating my trust. He told me that he had feelings for me which primarily made me feel like I may not have actually EARNED that spot as captain of my team. After the soccer season ended and he was no longer my coach, he began picking me up a block away from my house and parking somewhere secluded so that we could be together and talk without the risk of someone seeing us (a.k.a him losing his job). A couple weeks into the summer after my freshman year, he told me that he didn't think that he could handle being around me anymore unless I agreed to date him. I didn't want to date him. And I know that I never did. But the thought of losing the only person that cared about me on that deeper level seemed more potentially scarring to me then agreeing to date my ex soccer coach that was 20 years old when I was 15 (I was wrong). Our relationship continued the same as before: we snuck around and drove far away so that we would be able to go to restaurants without seeing anybody that we knew. After realizing that I had no intention of making it anything like a real relationship, he started bringing up the sexual things that he had done with his ex-girlfriend as well as a girl that was a senior on the varsity soccer team when he was coaching my freshman team. I felt uncomfortable at the thought of even kissing him, and I would dread any physical contact that I knew he would engage in every time we saw each other. I felt pressured to appear as a sexual object because of his "experience." Luckily, I was smart (I use that term very VERY loosely) enough to break it off with him before I did anything that I didn't want to do. I assumed I would break up with him and we would go back to just supporting each other with no other motives. (Once again, I was wrong.) He, the biggest support in my life at the time, told me that if I didn't date him, he would cut me off from his life completely and never speak to me again. I begged him to be that caring presence in my life that I needed, emotionally not sexually, but he only said that it was "too hard for him." I cried for weeks at my loss of support. Who was going to care about me now? Nobody. So to the razors I gave in. My self-harm got increasingly worse towards the end of the summer and beginning my sophomore year. One of the girls that I spent the most time with also struggled with self-harm, so at the time I felt surrounded and completely consumed by it. I know that I influenced her to self-harm, and I still feel guilty about it today.

Even though it helps absolutely nothing at the time when this advice is given, it is true that time can heal almost anything. The first semester of my sophomore year came and went, and before I knew it, I was surviving without my coach's support in my life. I was still immensely unhappy, but I wasn't craving his presence in the least bit. A couple months and one unhealthy, emotionally-abusive relationship later, I was already beginning the second semester of my sophomore year as well as my second year playing soccer. My sophomore soccer season was much more enjoyable than the first. We were actually winning games, and I actually felt like a valuable player. I wish I could remember what it was that triggered my downward spiral, but I remember being more reliant on self-harm than I had been in the past.

On the day of a low-pressure, away game, I was feeling particularly resentful of myself and my inability to meet my own expectations on the field. I chose to punish myself by cutting myself as well as the beginning of a dangerous journey of depriving myself of food. I went almost three days, an hour bus ride, and now the first quarter of starting in a soccer game on an empty stomach and a self-abused mind. A couple minutes into the game, I was pushing myself to stay standing while one of my coaches was yelling at me to push myself to get to the ball. I sunk down to my knees, and I remember it feeling like a significant amount of time before my coach noticed and pulled me out of the game.

I had two coaches that year: coach Sanchez was a funny, outgoing guy that didn't seem to know much about soccer but knew a lot about how to make us want to win, and coach Eric was a very reserved yet encouraging young man that knew all of the technicalities of the game as well as how to point out the things we could improve on while praising us for what we were succeeding in.

As I sat on the bench, trying to focus on not passing out, Sanchez was telling me that I needed to hustle and want it more than I was showing, and I knew that he was right. Coach Eric decided to approach it by finding the reason for my sudden lack of any type of performance. That's when he asked the question that still makes me cringe every time it's directed towards me: "Have you eaten today?" When I told him that I hadn't, he pulled me away from the bench and demanded to know the last time that I had anything to eat. When I told him that it had been a couple of days, I saw the same concern in his eyes that I saw in my freshman year coach. He began telling me that depriving myself of food would result in me lowering my own metabolism to eventually gain weight, but all I could think about was the fact that he cared about me enough to be this concerned. He asked if there was anything else that I was struggling with that he should know about; I eventually held up my arms and shrugged my shoulders when he asked why I do it. It was then that I realized how essential it was to me to have someone that shows care or interest in me. I acknowledged it, but I felt like it was something to be ashamed of. If everyone else can get through the day without being held together by somebody else, I must be too needy. I considered my past with my freshman year coach, and I decided that I was a terrible person for needing another person's assurance, especially considering both had been men.

Although I felt guilty, I still felt like I needed that support and someone to trust. He worked as a tech repairman in the school, and I felt the need to talk to him almost daily. I loved that he wanted to check up on me and see how I was doing, and those conversations were the only thing that I looked forward to for a very long time. Our talks were a total of five minutes every day (if that). He would ask how I was doing and suggest that I see a therapist and tell me about his friends in high school that struggled with the same issues. That was all that we said to each other every day, but that made me feel attached to him; that's when I mentally adopted him as my new support system.

What I failed to realize was that the end of my second semester of sophomore year was quickly approaching. To me, that did not mean fun times and nice weather and staying out with friends; it meant that I would no longer have my coach to talk to when I was feeling upset. I was losing my support system. My options were either to email him over the summer and see him at soccer camp or just practice what I had to do with my last coach: let myself be upset about the loss and have time deal with it. I did email my coach over the summer to check up, but that was the only communication I had and have had with him since. He got promoted to working for the district so I no longer see him around school. And that's fine. Time passed, and I learned how to not feel like I needed him anymore. I do wish I could find a way to contact him, only to let him know that I ended up pursuing therapy and thank him for being the first person to encourage that for me.

I don't remember much of the summer before my junior year at all. The first thing I remember after the last day of school sophomore year is getting my first job in the beginning of August. All I did was work until I started my junior year of high school.

My junior year was simultaneously my favorite and the most stressful year of my life so far. I was stressed from AP and honor's classes and my quickly worsening struggles with depression, anxiety, and self-harm, as well as the decision of quitting the soccer team. But it was one of my favorite years of my life so far, because through all of the emotional struggle, I reached out to the person who is still to this day the biggest support in my life.

I'm going to begin with the end of my junior year relationship with a flirtatious, Asian boy who was one of the best male cheerleaders on the high school team but one of the worst boyfriends I've ever had (not because he was a cheerleader). (Maybe a little.)

Sanders quickly told me he loved me after we started dating and I said it back without meaning it. After a couple weeks of him making me feel wanted and cared for (which was not something I was used to in a boyfriend) I began to mean it when I said I loved him. Looking back on the situation from the place in my life that I am now, I know that that was not love. Not even close. Our relationship was seemingly perfect and carefree until he found out about my self-harm. I didn't tell him about it, because I didn't want that dark part of my life to interfere with this new positive part of my life. I knew that I wouldn't be able to keep it from him forever, but I also didn't expect it to happen so suddenly. One day in lunch, he playfully grabbed my arm before getting suspicious that I was wincing. He asked me to roll up my sleeves, already knowing what was underneath them. When I refused to show him, he said, "We don't have to make this weird." I still refused to choose a crowded lunch room as a place for him to openly examine by mutilated arms, so he fell silent and treated me with disgust for the next week. He refused to talk to me or walk me to class or kiss me or say he loved me when I would say that I loved him. I knew what was coming, but the end was still hard. He texted me (yes TEXTED me) that he didn't think it was going to work out. I cried about it for months. I was angry that I let my self-harm get in the way of my relationship, but I was mostly angry and confused about how someone who claimed to love me would leave me when I needed them most. That's when my spiral happened.

I was cutting almost every day, getting deeper every time. I refused to eat or interact with people. I spent every day at school sleeping or sitting numb and unresponsive during class. I would talk to my counselor when I couldn’t handle being in class, and one day I made the mistake of telling him about my recent suicidal thought while driving. He immediately stood up and said that he was taking me to my social worker. I had the same feeling then that I had when he first told me freshman year that he knew about my cutting. Times 100. I answered the social worker's questions while having an unrelenting voice in my head telling me that the social worker thought I was crazy. Since my mom worked as a lunch lady at my high school (I know) at the time, they called her down to the office. I think that was the worst part of it all: the fact that my mom knew. She's the last person that I wanted to know about this dark part of my life and she was the last person that I wanted pretend sympathy from. I left the room before the social worker told my mom that I had to go to a mental hospital to get evaluated in order to return to school. We left immediately, and the car ride to the hospital consisted of my mom asking why in the world I would tell somebody what I was thinking without expecting that. I was so nervous that they were going to keep me in-patient that I answered every question as innocently and not-suicidal as I could.

"What does it look like when you get sad?"

"I cry then talk to my friends to make me feel better."

The doctor told me that I didn't need to stay in a mental hospital but that I needed to see a therapist once a week. After that day, I went to therapy once a week, joked around with my mom, and, as far as my mom was concerned, the issue was forgotten. I pretended for my family and friends while feeling completely numb and hopeless.

I went about this way for a couple months and saw no change in sight.

Until one day, in my eighth period AP Psychology class, my favorite teacher was telling another lively and interesting personal story that was relating to the topic that we were covering that day, when he mentioned that he used to go to therapy as a teenager. Everyone seemed to dismiss it, but I felt an urge to know more. After class that day, I asked him if I could stay after class to talk. I asked him about his therapy and if he had ever had experiences with self-harm. I was surprised when he told me that he used to struggle with self-harm when he was in high school. Of course, that led to him asking his own questions about my experiences. I told him about my addiction to self-harm among the many other issues that were taking a psychological toll on me. He listened intently then said, "I had no idea. I never would've known what you're going through by what I see during class." He then went on to explain how many people would miss me if I killed myself. I saw worry in his eyes as I used a slow, monotone voice to talk casually and unfazed about the prospect of suicide. He wrote down his number and told me that it was for emergencies; I could call him or text him if I ever felt like I was going to hurt myself.

That's when the feeling came back. Not only the feeling that I got when my coaches showed that they cared about me, but just feeling in general. I saw this person that was dedicating so much time into finding ways to be there for me. He talked to me differently than my coaches and my counselor did. He talked to me with concern, respect, understanding, and genuine care. He also shared personal experiences with me, not only about his own struggles, but about his former student's. One of the first times that we sat down together and talked after class, he told me about former students of his that committed suicide; he wished that he could've done something more to stop them. At that exact moment, I had no doubt in my mind that suicide could no longer be an option for me. There was no way that I could put him through that again.

He started meeting with me after class almost every day after that. He would ask me about my childhood and how I was handling the stresses of everyday life, but most importantly, he made me feel like he genuinely cared about me and the things that were bothering me. He would go out of his way to think of solutions to my problems and he would delay his other responsibilities when I told him that I needed someone to talk to. To this day, he is the only person that has consistently showed me through his actions that he genuinely cares about me.

That's not to say that I think that nobody else cares about me.

He's just the only one that knows exactly how to show it.

So naturally (for my needy and emotionally scarred self) I became extremely attached to him. I felt like I needed to talk with him every single day and it would effect my mood drastically when he wasn't able to. I knew that I was setting myself up to be miserable, but I didn't care at the time; I needed somebody to care about me, and he did.

Towards the end of my junior year, I realized that I was approaching losing him as my teacher; I wasn’t going to be able to see him every day after class or absorb his teachings of psychology for 50 minutes every day anymore. I felt completely panicked and hopeless. Although I knew that I still had an entire year left of being in the same building as him, all I could think (and tell him) was that, "It's just not going to be the same." He told me every time that I brought up the sad departure that his classroom would always be open for me to talk to him the following year. Of course, I wouldn't listen, because in my head, this terrible, awful thing was happening and there was no way for me to stop it and as I was panicky and devastated, he was excited and hopeful for my future as a senior.

I asked him ahead of time if we would be able to meet after school on the last day so that I could say my final goodbye (for the summer), and he agreed. I was anxious the entire day, only because I knew that I would be an emotional mess. At the beginning of class, he gave us our final, then said, "I'm leaving early, because I don't feel well. A sub will be up here shortly. It was wonderful having each of you in my class." Then he left.

Although I could hear the obvious sickness in his voice, I couldn't help but think that he left early to avoid my emotional and potentially embarrassing goodbye. I dropped my eyes instinctively from embarrassment as he announced his departure. I refused to look up from my test as tears immediately filled my eyes. I felt angry and betrayed. I tried my hardest to push my psychology final to the front of my mind instead of his leaving.

As summer came and went, I felt sad about not having his support anymore, but I also got through it. I began a wonderful relationship that made me feel wanted and genuinely happy, and I worked as much as they asked me to.

As I began my senior year, I was consistently content. I liked all of my classes, and sometimes looked forward to the school week compared to the dreaded work weekend. A couple weeks into school, I decided that it was an appropriate time to reach out to Reyez again. I texted him and asked if I could come by his classroom to talk after school, and he agreed. It felt different, only because I left early and had to come back when he was done with classes. It was also a more anticipating and intimidating feeling, because I was no longer just staying after class to talk; I was leaving school, waiting, then coming back to an empty classroom.

Maybe I was over analytical, but it "just wasn't the same."

Once we sat down to talk, it felt wonderful to have him as a support again. I proudly showed him my clean wrists, and was filled with joy to see him filled with joy about the progress that I had made. Although it wasn't as often as my junior year, I met with him maybe once every month to check in. It felt great to actually have positive things to tell him, unlike the endless negativity of junior year.

As I furthered into my senior year, anxiety became a bigger factor in my life. I've always had social anxiety, but this is the first time that I would feel the physical effects of an anxiety attack that could be triggered by only a thought.

The dilemma that I was facing very similar yet very different to ones I've faced in the past.

I had grown used to talking with Reyez weekly (sometimes more) and I'd grown too dependent on him (shocker). So much so that it again affected my mood when he was unable to meet with me. I am incredibly grateful for everything that Reyez has done to help me, and I know that he'll never turn me away in time of need, but if I'm being completely honest with myself, this cycle of losing the only people that help me is making me afraid of letting anybody else in on that level. I'm too susceptible to attachment where it isn't appropriate. I'm learning how I tend to grasp desperately onto my authority figures for the support that I crave. In all of the situations that I narrated, I came across some well-meaning people that wanted to help me in my obvious struggling. They didn’t realize how highly I was thinking of them at the time, and that is part of the bitter irony of my bad habits when it comes to forming these relationships. I latch onto those that show me even a small amount of support, and I start to imagine. I imagine this person there, cheering me on, at my graduation, at my wedding, and on darker days I imagine them speaking at my funeral. I substitute them into my memories to replace my father, and I start to value them and their opinion as if they were my father. Because all of this happens in my head in a matter of a couple hours after a good interaction with someone, I begin to form expectations of what I think my adopted father should say to me or how he should react to the things that I tell him. I'm forming these expectations off of imagined and romanticized memories that I've spent an unhealthy amount of time replaying endlessly in my head. Inevitably, these poor victims of my psyche's vision of a step-father will "betray" me. It’s not usually something they do or say, but rather something that they didn’t do or say. Once I value someone very highly, as well as their opinion, it’s very easy to break my heart.

As I make the transition into early-adulthood, I realize that I am entering into the next stage of healing. I've had these patterned experiences, I've analyzed and reanalyzed my bad habits and tendencies and admitted to their chokehold grip on my life. But I've learned that after arming myself with this knowledge and understanding of my bad habits and where they come from, I need to have the breakthrough. The breakthrough where I start to put what I've learned into action and start living consciously in order to create new, healthy habits. I have realizations that I'm wasting this important time in my young life by being idle and not improving, but none of these realizations mean much until I start holding myself accountable for what I say that I want. I need to put in the hours that it takes to do any job right, and taking care of your mental health can feel like a full-time job with unpaid overtime. As I continue to navigate this new life of mine, I must continue to reference my mistakes in the past while always keeping a present mind that is determined to make better decisions and make the life that I think is worth living.