Tonight, I am stuck. Slightly ticked off because my phone won’t turn on, and I’m sick. And here I am, in my bed, and I feel like I am suspended between two worlds, two choices that I have to make.
Wednesday night, we went to church. I always wear long sleeves, or a jacket or something. But it was my turn to wash dishes, so I had to pull them up a bit. I didn’t think it was enough to show any scars. When I got home, I crawled in my bed. 20 minutes later, I heard a knock on the door. I didn’t want to talk to anyone, I was emotionally and physically drained. But I mumbled, “What.” and my mom came in and shut the door behind her. I knew immediately that something was wrong because when mom comes in and shuts the door behind her, there’s something she wants to talk about. Something big.
She came to my bed, crawled up, sat down, and our half-hour long conversation began with, “Let me see your arm.”
My oldest sister Jamee had noticed, weeks before. You remember in one of my old posts I said I had told my second oldest sister about it all? Well, Jamee called her, and it was confirmed, and she called my mom, and so on and so forth.
It wasn’t what I was expecting. I thought my mom would cry and yell at me or something. I thought she would grab my arms and cry, “Why? Why did you do it?” But… she didn’t. She took my wrist, pulled up my sleeves, looked my arm up and down. She set it on the bed. She sighed. And then she asked, “Do you need to see someone?” And our conversation continued, softly and with no yelling whatsoever. I was crying. I couldn’t see her face so I don’t know if she was, too. She asked me what made me do it. All I said was, “Some people just have problems.” She didn’t really respond to that. We continued for a few more minutes, we even talked about other stuff that didn’t even relate. Then she ended with, “Everyone has problems. We all have our issues. No one is normal, everyone is different. If you’re telling me that you had no reason to do this, and that nothing triggered it, that you just did it because your mind told you to, then yes, we might have a problem. But I want you to try to get better without going to see someone, or taking medicine. We can’t drug away our problems. We’ll talk more as time goes on.”
And I was just so satisfied with that. She left my room, and I broke down and sobbed in shame that I had done this to her. Yesterday and today, everytime I was in my room for any amount of time alone, I would hear her from across the house, “Aislynn?”
“Yeah mom.”
“…What are you doing?”
And then I would smile and be all, “Nothing. Just chilling.” Then she would come check, just to make sure.
I was lucky this time. I had two older sisters watching out for me who didn’t want to see me hurting, and so they took action to end it. I had been planning to tell my mom when I turned 18 in a year. But this… this was better. Now I can start to heal. Sure, they’re all tip-toeing around me now, and watching what they say to me. We talked about my anxiety attacks and controlling my self-stressing out and worrying about things that didn’t need to be worried about. I have a lot of problems. Anxiety, depression, cutting, and DPD. But now, they’re not a secret from my family. I don’t have to keep pretending. I am going to start healing.
Stay strong, loves. Don’t ever, ever give up hope.
-AC xxx
Freeing Myself 