Help

I've been keeping most of this inside because I've been a bit embarressed and a little unready to tell everyone my big emotional flaws. But, when I broke down today and told my mom the truth, I decided that I better let the cat out of the bag and break it to the world. Because, really, I shouldn't be ashamed.

I'm getting therapy.

I am one messed up "young adult," if you can't already tell. I'm not quite sure who reads this besides my grandparents and maybe an uncle or aunt, but I really am one messed up person. Because when I was a teen, my dad began his tirade of emotional abuse. Because when I was a teen, I figured out that the only way I could solve things (due to my father) was to get angry. Because when I was a teen, I jumped in the middle of countless arguments, received endless griping about how horrible my mother and sister were, and cried in the corner of my bedroom, hoping that no one would find me there. Because when I was a teen, I discovered that the only way to relieve stress, anger, or any sort of emotion was to cry.

I know this sounds weird and, if you know me in person, you might think I'm a really strong personality and that I have it all together. However, that's my game face. That's what I want to be, what I spend every second trying to be.

The truth is that I am on big ball of salty wet tears. And I can't seem to turn off the hose whatever I do or try. I don't just cry when I'm sad or angry. I cry when I'm scared. I cry when I'm nervous. I cry when there is a situation that I can't control. I cry when I can't figure out my statistics homework the first time. I cry when any sort of emotion beyond happiness gets beyond the level of basic function. And, like I said, I can't turn it off. So imagine being me, going in to my boss' office to ask for a raise, and crying because I'm a little nervous about asking him...

Yea. Pretty pathetic.

But, of course, that's not the reason why I'm going into therapy. The crying is the relief, the break in the dam that helps the pressure to subside. What creates the pressure is the hatred, the pure black blinding hatred for my father and myself that I have built up inside of me that leaks through little cracks, without the crying, effecting my every day life. Making me angry in situations where I shouldn't be angry. Making me depressed when nothing is wrong. The hatred that I have for my father that I can control, which only causes me to hate myself more because I feel like I'm turning into him. The hatred that I have for myself when I look in the mirror and see something different that the person other people tell me that they see.

People tell me not to think badly of myself. They tell me just to take a deep breath and to just calm down. But that's what they don't understand. I don't know how to calm down. And since I don't know how to calm down (except to cry), I can only see myself as this angry, pitiful creature. And it makes me suffer, it makes me depressed. It makes me miserable.

So I'm going to therapy.