Every time I cry, a little piece of my sanity drips away with each tear.
I have cried so many tears. It's amazing. There's anything left.
I hate myself.
I hate the rage.
I hate the darkness.
I hate that I hate myself.
I hate that I feel things so deeply that I get overwhelmed and I just can't go on and I curl up in a little ball and I just cry.
I hate that I know what the feeling of razorblades across my skin feels like. And I think that I hate the fact that I can tell to the second, when that first bead of blood is going to poke through.
I hate the fact that I've graduated to knowing that if I claw at myself with my own fingernails in the shower I will have welts that look like I've been whipped and beaten. Because, that's exactly how I feel - as if I have been whipped and beaten by my own mind.
I hate the fact that when I close my eyes, I see a monster and the monster looking back is me.
I hate that the voices in my head tell me I'm useless. Tell me I'm a failure. Tell me I'm a no good mother. Tell me I'm a lousy employee, I'm lazy and I'm taking advantage of sick days.
I hate the fact that I know exactly what it feels like to rail at the sky and scream and beg for death and to want that release to not want to go on to just want everything to stop.
I hate myself when I look in the mirror.
I hate myself when I'm driving down the road.
I hate myself every single day.
So what do I do?
When all around me are moments and reasons for me to leave?
How do I stay?
What do I need?
What do I do?
What can I give myself?
Because nobody else can give it to me.
I have to do it for myself.
So I find one reason every single day.
Just one.
It doesn't even have to be a big one –
yesterday it was a chocolate covered almond.
I hate the fact that there is nothing on this earth that made me want to actually be here tonight. And I hate the fact that I needed to be here and I wanted to be here.
And it is very important that I am here, but yet I still didn't want to be here.
I hate the fact that nobody knows the truth about what I go through every single day, the pain that I live in the pain in my mind and how much I hate myself.
I've never told anyone the truth.
No one could handle the truth. That's what I've told myself. No one could handle it.
No one would be there. They would run screaming the way that I want to run screaming from the room right now, the way that I want to run screaming from the world every single day, because I hate myself.
So what do I do? Just that one thing every day.
When the voice in your head is telling you that you're failing while you're actually succeeding, it can be a very confusing existence.
I was on my black belt test four years ago. I had waited 10 years to take this test.
I had taken the test injured. I had Achilles Tendinosis in both ankles.
I could barely walk, but I was going to do a 16 hour black or sorry, an 18 hour Black Belt Test.
We went hard for six hours we rested for six, and then we went hard for six more.
I did not sleep.
I barely ate.
I consumed very little water during this test. I have no idea why.
The whole time I'm doing this test. The voice in my head is telling me that I'm going to fail. I'm not going to get my black belt. I am not good enough.
On day two, my muscle cramped in my leg, and it pulled on my Achilles tendon and I screamed and had to sit down.
My sensei comes over to me and he tells me you've done enough.
You have done enough.
This is the man who has taken me from white belt all the way through to my black belt and he is telling me I have done enough and I did not need to get back up.
I got back up and I went back out on that floor and I finished that test and I limped up and I got my black belt tied on that day.
I had accomplished the goal.
To this day I do not feel that I deserve that belt because I don't believe I did enough because I did not do the entire test because I sat there for an hour with an ice pack on my ankle.
I know I did enough.
I worked my butt off to get that belt, but I don't believe that I deserve it even though I have been told repeatedly that I did enough.
Over the years, I've learned little tips and tricks things to help me cope things, to help me get by things to help me get through.
You'll notice this thing dangling from my wrist.
It is a counter. I quite literally stole the idea from a meme.
As I go throughout my day. I'm training myself to recognize and acknowledge the good moments.
Click there's one. There's my chocolate covered almond.
At the end of the day, I sit down with my journal, my gratitude journal, and I write down one thing, just one thing that day that I am grateful for - a week ago it was that my husband bought me the sweatshirt for orange shirt day because I so desperately wanted that sweatshirt; even though I already had two of the t-shirts, I really wanted the sweatshirt, but I couldn't pull it off with my budget.
He squeezed his so that I could get this sweatshirt.
That was my gratitude statement for the day, the reason that I stayed.
It's all about just teaching myself to acknowledge that in amidst all the darkness that my mind keeps telling me is there.
That there is light and there is a reason for me to stay and that I am not a failure.
I am not a bad mother.
I am not my mental illness.
I am not my depression.
I am not my anxiety.
I am not my PTSD.
I'm not whatever label the doctors want to put on me.
I am a good mother.
I am a good wife.
I am a CBK black belt.
My name is Elizabeth Hall.
Thank you.
