Recently, a friend chastised me for being on a “self help kick” for the past two years. I couldn’t, for the life of me, figure out how this was a bad thing. Its funny, really. I probably would never have began down this path if I hadn’t been for this friend.
Let me recap:
This time period being referred to, as with most things, I can’t pinpoint exactly when it began. But I do know it was needed and more than overdue. I had just fled the South, putting distance between myself and a man to avoid making the same ridiculous, hurtful mistakes over and over again. Even though I had been able to get a good job relatively quickly, be closer to family and friends, I struggled. I could feel depression grasping at my ankles waiting for the moment that I plunged headlong right back into that abyss.
Then the fall came and went. Emerging, I found my longest sustained friendship was currently hanging on by a thread and I was heartbroken. At that point, I stopped fighting it and let the depression creep up and overwhelm me. I allowed myself to wallow in it for quite some time. One of my biggest fears has always been that I would fall so deeply, so thickly into it that suicide would once again become a viable option. I think this fear and not wanting to burden my friends and family with my problems is what finally spurred me to seek professional help, something I had wanted to do the years before but never followed through.
I found a therapist, a social worker with her own private practice. She was young, direct, and real. She validated my feelings. I was finally able to tell someone my entire story, from abuse that happened as a kid to heartache never felt before to suicidal ideations to social anxiety. I spilled and spilled, always surprised that my hour had been used up so quickly. But it was cathartic. And I began to look at myself differently – I was a survivor. All the shit that had happened and I was still here. I could’ve pitched myself into traffic and believe me there were times I wondered if that would be better. But for some reason, I held on.
That’s not where the “self help” ended. One day, a friend of mine sent me a link to this program – Femsex. “I think you’d like this,” she said. It came at a timely moment. My therapist and I had been working on me overcoming social anxiety and interacting with others without wanting to cry and dissolve into a puddle. So I took a deep breath and submitted an application to a “16- week workshop that uses peer-to-peer learning, readings, discussions, and self exploration to engage people in an honest and open dialogue about female identity.” I joined a group of fifteen strangers for about 3 hours a week, talking about various topics and my thoughts and feelings in regards to them I laughed, I cried with this group. I shared fears, had epiphanies, challenged my view points, and challenged others. I was doing it. I was being a “normal” human being – interacting with others, speaking my mind, being funny. But the cherry on top came in the middle of the course.
We were tasked with an assignment to develop a way of talking about our body image and how it was/has developed. I put a lot of thought into this project. I saw this as a pivotal moment where I could not only be honest with myself but share my story as well. So I went for it, I dove headfirst. I talked about my sexual abuse for the first time publicly, depicting the path of a negative body image that emerged from this event. And you know what happened? The world DIDN’T open up to swallow me whole. Imagine that. If I could do the one thing that for too long I had been terrified to talk about,then what else could I do?? That day, I shaved my head to celebrate my… rebirth of a sort. Its like I shed this enormous weight that had been weighing me down for over 20 years.
So when this friend chastised me for the “self help kick”, I can say it didn’t hurt. I’m beyond proud of the progress that has been made in the past 2 years. I’m elated at the growth. I’ve worked very hard to challenge and change my negative thoughts and I haven’t disparaged or disrespected anyone in the process. In fact, during this time I’ve gone about trying to mend and put to rest past relationships. And I won’t apologize for it.
A Tiny Voice 