Forever Knowing Nothing

And also Valentine’s Day.

I started off my day by waking up late to commute to UCSC from Brentwood, normally a 1 hour, 40 minute commute, and spent 3 complete hours from turning on my car at 7:00 to finally sitting in my desk on campus, in class, on time, at 10:00. 

As I collected my thoughts and felt my phone vibrate all lecture with Happy Birthday texts, I started to think about my birthday.

I am always shocked to be the age I am.  Always.  I tell myself that the reason is because I had a suicide attempt via Ibuprofen on Christmas Eve when I was 15.  I had no friends at school, but enemies.  People who didn’t want to talk to me, who openly made fun of me, but took no shame in taking advantage of me academically.  What made things worse is that what I had back at each of my parents house wasn’t support, but a father who wouldn’t communicate about feelings and a mother who critically despised my existence because I was too much like my father.  So given that my coping mechanisms were far outweighed by all of pressure on my emotionally fragile psyche, my Christmas Eve involved silent crying, desperate clinging to a toilet, and the vomiting of blood.  

When the pain reached its maximum, and I felt like there was no way to feel pain beyond that measure, I made a promise to myself that, if I lived, I would never want to die by my own hands again.  I vowed that I would take what happened to me in my own hands and would place myself responsible for anything that would ever happen to me again, good or bad.  Soon after, the lines between conscious pain and dull sleep began to blur.

I awoke on the bathroom floor Christmas Day 2005, noting the blood that I must have expelled in my sleep on the floor and cleaned up the mess I had made the night before.  Soon after this event, I took my parenting situation into my own hands and ran away to stay with my father permanently, where at least living conditions didn’t involve being despised.

Growing up, I was the loser who no one would get valentines for and when it was realized that it was my birthday, I was provided pity candy from neighboring students.  I was in high school now, so it’s not like we had that little child thing anymore.  But what I could do is make sure that I had valentines thereafter, so on my 16th birthday, I bought myself a load of chocolates from the store with the money I had earned from the job I just got and carried them around with me at school and gleefully enjoyed the power of providing for yourself.  

Since then, I have accomplished much by operating to an incredibly independent degree.  But still, as I stated in the beginning, I am always surprised by my own age.  Surprised and grateful.  

This is the 7th birthday that I am able to be alive for that I almost lost the chance of having when I passed out on that bathroom floor and my body fought for me even though I had given up on it.  

And that’s what I have to be grateful for each birthday, life, my life.  And even though I still can’t even picture being 23, or 24, or 25, I can assure myself that I will accomplish great things in the meantime, solely because it will be me doing it.  

And that belief in myself is gift enough for me and, hopefully, should be enough for you.  I know it’s Valentine’s Day, and we’re all not with a lover of some kind tonight, but take today to show yourself some love for once.  I guarantee you that you deserve it.