In 4 days, I take my first finals exam of secondary education. The truth is, knowledge and subject wise, I’m 90% ready. I know all the content, I’ve done many practice papers and done many revision sessions at school planning essay responses. But that isn’t my problem. My problem is that I’ve forgotten what it’s like to feel okay.
Despite the unnecessary stress to get the grades I need for my first choice university, and the pressure I like to put on myself to do well. I didn’t realise till recently that I haven’t been myself for a while. But I think I know the catalyst.
As I stated in my previous blog post, I broke up with my boyfriend. We had been dating for about 9 months or so, but he had started going out with someone else, and had started spreading rumours, as well as a few other issues. Now it hasn’t been getting over him that has been the hardest part, but dealing with the train wreck of emotions that I was left behind with.
To find out that someone you really cared about has cheated on you, with a girl 4 years older, who he bad known for 3 weeks, is bad enough. But the amount of confidence he took away from me, that is the scar that I try to hide. Confidence is like glass, it is fragile, and a lot of the time, the damage caused to that glass is irreversible. I don’t think my confidence in myself has ever been as low as the past 3 months. I have second guessed myself in every decision I have made. I have stopped celebrating things that go well because I don’t believe I’m good enough anymore. I know that I can get my confidence back, and I have got a little bit back already. But I am no longer proud of myself for any things that I achieve. I just look at all my failings, and how to make them better.
The weight of guilt is something that no one ever really understands, until you carry it on your back wherever you go. When you see all the couples in your year, you realise how much you took that feeling of safety for granted. Even though I am better off without him, I still can’t help but ask myself what I did wrong, I obsess over my mistakes to the point where I count my achievements as flunks. I don’t believe I deserve to be happy yet, and that thought is suffocating.
I didn’t realise how I’d been feeling until last week. It was the second to last day of the year, before study leave started. I have been friends with this boy, lets call him J, since I was 12. He had asked me if I wanted to go to our leavers dance with him. I said yes, because I was honoured to be asked. But I spent the next 10 minutes sobbing. That feeling of being wanted, and appreciated, had escaped me for so long that now someone showed how much they cared I had no idea what to do with it. He had asked me what was wrong and I said that I didn’t want to embarrass him. He hugged me for about 5 minutes, trying to tell me that I was just as good as the other people in my year. I knew I could believe him. But I realised, My boyfriend had torn apart my self esteem, and I had grown apart from my real self. My friend said he knew. People had noticed, but none of them thought I felt this bad. And to be honest, neither had I
If there is one thing I have learnt from all this, is that it is ok not to be okay. Sometimes things happen and they can take a long time to fix. Although I am not completely broken, I have a way to go before I am mended. Let’s just hope that I can be myself again, and love myself for being who I am. Everyone deserves to be happy, including all of you.
From Violetkatie xx
violetkatie 