Reintroduce Myself: From Courtney

There’s a note that I keep in my drawer at my parent’s house that I wrote almost six years ago.

In it, I talked about everything I couldn’t bring myself to say out loud– everything that made me, me. I talked about how I felt that I was living in a simulation and how nothing around me felt real. I talked about how messed up life felt and how if it was a simulation how even more horrific the stuff that happened to me was. I talked about how my life felt so out of control that the only way I was able to feel that control was by harming myself in different ways. I talked about how the feeling of being different, of being gay, was enough to hate myself down to my core. I talked about how I was taking unnecessary risks in life because I was too scared to end things myself. These thoughts consumed me at all hours of the day and made up my entire being.

This dark period of my life happened in such formative years. High school was supposed to be about beginning to find myself and realize what place I’ll have in the world. Instead, I was walking around like a zombie: unable to sleep or eat or get myself to go to school. I spent most of my junior and senior years of high school completely bedridden.

Even as I decided to take the leap to go to college, trying to find some part of myself that wasn’t my depression or anxiety, I didn’t know who I was. It’s a scary feeling to not know who you are besides what you’ve been diagnosed with.

Now, in my final year of college, six years after I dared to write down my feelings, things are finally beginning to change. The world is starting to seem a little brighter.

It’s a feeling that I’m not used to as it only started a month and a half ago after a change in how I was treated, but this feeling gives me a lot of hope. For the first time in years, I feel optimistic.

Now, thinking back to the note in my drawer at my parent’s house, I can see how far I’ve come. It’s scary to go back and see how horribly I was doing, but it shows me that despite it being a long road where I thought I would never feel better, there’s finally a light at the end of the tunnel. One that I thought would never come.

This note was entirely comprised of my fears and anxieties and every little thing I hated about myself. I thought that was all that I was. I wasn’t a person anymore.

I still don’t know who I am, not yet anyway, but I’m finally at a place where I’m excited to meet that person. It feels like it’s going to be soon and I can’t wait to replace that six-year-old note with a new one reintroducing myself.