words can create scars that never heal

No one is born with negative thoughts in their head.  Those thoughts are taught, they are learned.  It doesn't happen in one day, or one week, or even one year.  There is always that small hope that maybe the person is wrong, the questions about if they are right or wrong.  But something happens and it happens slowly.  You begin to believe that what is being said is true.  You believe that you are worthless, a loser, stupid, not good enough. You hear it so much that it pushes all the other thoughts out of your head and you believe that they are true.  You grow up believing all of these things about yourself that is not true.  No one is worthless, no one is stupid or a loser or not good enough.  It is hard when you are an adult and you still have to battle the thoughts and beliefs that were put in your head by someone who did not have your best interest at heart. It is wrong to hurt another person physically, mentally, emotionally or spiritually.  It is hard having to relearn that you are an important person, that you are special and loved and cared for.  The negative thoughts that you learned as a child are there, they are always there.  When you are asked to look at them, acknowledge the thoughts, talk about them. it is not an easy task to have someone else poking around in your head, asking questions about what you think, how you think, what you believe. What did make perfect sense to you, no longer makes any sense at all when trying to explain it to someone else.

For me I grew up being told that I was worthless, that i was never good enough.  I believed it, I felt it was true, it was my existence and no one could make me believe any different.  Why would my own mom tell me things that were not true?  Why would she make me believe so many awful things about myself? Why would I not beleive that what my mother was telling me was the truth?  She taught me to hate myself, to doubt myself,  she took away my confidence in myself and in the world.  Maybe that wasnt her goal, but that is what happeend all the same.  I took what i learned from her and just ran with it. In my mind I am worse than she could ever be to me.  I am my own worst enemy.  I know what it takes it hurt myself either with words or physical pain.  I dont need anyone to tell me anything different.  I am nothing, worthless, a waste of space. It was my fault that I was hurt and abused because I didnt know how to stand up for myself in any way at all.  I did know how to listen and do what i was told without questioning.

I grew up thinking the worst about myself, I slipped through school, I somehow made it through college, lack of confidence or not.  Some how I manage to hold down a job even when I feel so awful and so hateful to myself.  Some how I manage to get out of bed when all i want to do is lay down and hide and ignore the world.  I still dont have much self confidence or self esteem and some days I have to really push myself to understand that the negative things i think and believe are not true. 

It is much easier to deal with the physical pain, I think I actually preferred the physical pain because at some point that had to stop.  The hurtful words could go on every day with nothing to stop it.  There was no way to escape it. It was life, and I just stopped fighting against what i believed to be true. That i was bad, stupid, crazy, worthless.  I wondered what was wrong with me.  I wondered what had happened that caused me to be in trouble so very much.  I wondered why I was singled out and hurt repeatedly.  I believed I deserved it, that it was really truly my fault.  That there was something just so wrong with me and that my mother was right in that she was pointing it out to me before someone else did.  The problem with that is that pointing out my falws so often only taught me to hate myself more, it taught me that it was ok to hurt myself because other people did it.  I learned that I could pretend just as much as i wanted to becasue then it hid how much I was hurting, and how scared I was.  How do you explain to a child that things werent their fault?  When they have years and years to take in all the hurt, all the words, all the negativeness and make it there own?  It is like having a protective shield in place that no one can break through it.

Except that is not completely true either.  There are people who can poke holes in this protective shield.  As much as you try to hang on to it, the more broken and brittle it becomes.  Its the people who listen and care, the people who hear your fears and your secrets and dont run away from you.

No I am not there yet, i still have a lot of pain that needs to heal to be able to move on and 'grow up'.  But i am not where I was last year, or the year before that, or the year before that.  Somehow I keep going, I keep growing, whether I really want to or not.  Life happens, experiences happen, and you have to learn from it and go on or it will crush you.

I am very careful with my words.  Maybe to careful, because I am afraid that I will say something that will hurt someone else.  I dont ever want another person to hurt the way I was hurt.  I dont want an innocent child to wonder about their self worth because of me.  Its not okay. Its not fair. Its not right.

Maybe that is why I look at the picture at the top and it makes me want to cry. I want to cry for myself, for all the children who have been hurt, for all the adults that are now trying to piece their lives back together and move on from the past. It is not easy by any means, and some days things feel utterly hopeless and depressing. There are the days when I cant seem to let go of the negative thoughts, and I believe again that I am just worthless. I guess the important thing is that now I am able to remember that I am okay more often than not.