Story #56

I guess I've been depressed for a long time. I'm 16 and I've been diagnosed with clinical depression and a borderline personality. When you have something that not everyone else has it makes it hard for you to believe that you could ever be loved and accepted.

When I was in junior high I was over weight. Kids teased me pretty badly and I would go home every day feeling awful. I wasn't asking anyone to call me beautiful, nor was I expecting one of the most popular guys to take an interest in me, but I didn't want anyone to tease me. It crumpled my self esteem every time someone uttered something negative about my weight. Even within the realm of my own family I was criticized about my body. My aunt who is 300 pounds and obese was constantly telling me that I needed to go on a diet, or she would do things like compare me to the nearest skinny girl. Despite the fact that she had no room to talk, she made me feel terrible.

Finally, from both a combination of being made fun of in school and  from my aunt I decided to lose weight. At first it was a normal diet, then it spun out of control and for almost four years now I've been  bulimic. I've lost 30 pounds since junior high and have managed to be at my "suggested" weight according to doctors and weight charts since my freshman year of high school. But I have not maintained that  weight because I'm a normal person and eat 3 meals a day with regular exercise. I maintain that weight by throwing up my food after each meal, exercising sometimes and taking tons of diet pills.

I don't want to continue on throwing up and taking diet pills until it kills me, I want to get better. It's just a battle that I fight every day. No matter how much I want to shed it and leave it behind it is always with me. There is always a voice inside my head telling me that I'm this 'fat blob' even though people are saying the exact opposite on the outside now. I have guys at my finger tips fawning over me; telling me how beautiful I am. I've been getting this constant attention for over a year now. None of it matters to me, it never did. No matter how good looking the guy or how much he buttered me up, I never bought it until a guy named John came into my life. He single handedly probably brought me more happiness than anyone could have and at the same time caused me so much pain. 

I don't know what it was about him that pulled me in. Maybe it's was the whole "We always want what we can't have" saying. John had a girlfriend, but I didn't care. Why should I have cared when he didn't seem to care? From the very first day that he met me, he had this overwhelming affect on me. Consequently, I found out that he was a player, but he knew just what to say to me and he played the game well. 

We flirted, we kissed, our ''relationship" progressed. I opened up to him. I told him about all of my problems. He never thought less of me for them and he always knew just what to say to make me feel better. If I was having a bad day, just to see or hear from him made it all go away and the day felt fresh again like it had just begun. 

I instilled every bit of love that I had in my heart inside of him. He seemed to hold and posses everything that I had ever wanted. 

John and his girlfriend had a very unhealthy relationship so I was convinced that I was the one that he really loved. He claimed that he couldn't break up with her because she was suicidal and a bunch of other stuff that he piled on to his wagon of lies, but I believed every bit of it, I believed that I was special and that he was an honest person and that I was different and that he had never cheated before and that he would never cheat. I believed that I was the exception because I was so "Wonderful and beautiful and not like anyone else" as he told me.

Well, push finally came to shove and I realized that those 'things' he said were all lines. I showed him that I was interested, I focused all of my attention on him and he knew he could feed me lines and I would bite because I was vulnerable when it came to him.

It didn't click until I saw him do the exact same thing to another girl who wasn't his girlfriend. I guess I wasn't so special. My friends had warned me for months but I just didn't think they understood the situation.

I felt like someone cared about me. John was gorgeous and he appealed to me in every possible way. I'm a picky person so it is hard to do that. I guess when you go through a lifetime of problems and you finally find something that makes you happy you cling really tight to it so it doesn't slip away like everything else. With John I got some "innocence" back, something that had been taken from me at a very young age. John is four years older than me, so a 16 year old and a 20 year old are on somewhat different levels and it's obvious that I would portray "a young demeanor." 

I needed to feel my age. A 16 year old girl chasing a 20 year old guy was normal. My whole life I was forced to grow up so quickly and for the 7 months that John was in my life I got a break. At 5 years old I was exposed to my first "sexual experience." I wasn't raped but I was touched inappropriately by a teenage boy that was 14. I didn't tell my Mom until 6 months ago. I've been in therapy for over a year for my many problems and not too long ago I just got around to telling my therapist.

To put it all in a nutshell my life has been one disappointment after another. From my weight struggles, my inner demons and just 'problems' in general I only had one escape, my grandparents. They were there for me to fall back on when I needed to get away, when my brothers and parents became annoying at times. By the time I had gotten to 8th grade, they were gone. My grandmom died at the end of my 7th grade year from pancreatic cancer, and that December my grandfather died in a car accident. I have no place to get away now, no escape, no outlet.

The things that I choose to do usually get me in trouble. My sexuality is out of control. I'm a nympho probably because my whole life has revolved around sex. When I was 5 I was sexually abused. Throughout my life I was always throwing myself at some guy. I didn't care about them, but I had hormones that were out of control. John was the only one that I ever cared about.

I've gone through periods where I am so out of control that I do things that later make me feel dirty and unhappy. At parties I will strip off some of my clothes and make myself look like a complete tramp just to get a rise out of guys, just so I get some attention, so even if it's for only 5 minutes I know that someone finds me attractive. It's the wrong way to get attention and I
know that but sometimes I feel that I'm not in control of what I do. This force over comes me and there is no stopping it. That same force has cause me on several different occasions to cut myself to release the inner pain I feel inside. It's caused me to burn myself with cigarettes, lighters, irons. Some days I actually fear that I'll end up strapped to my bed in the psych ward of a hospital screaming at the top of my lungs.

I would give up what people seem to think is "the perfect physical image" and trade it in for inner happiness, because that is what counts and the only time I ever experienced that was with John and that was not true happiness because he was feeding me lies and I was living in a fantasy world when I was with him.

I pray every day that I will be okay and that I will posses both physical and inner beauty but the chances of that happening seem slim to me. I can only hope to overcome my obstacles.