I am a sucker for punishment

My OCD was triggered again this evening, and like a moth to the flame, I reached for That Letter because I knew it would match my mood. And we are always searching for fire-fodder, eh?

This letter makes me feel so many emotions.

The first one is shame, because there are one or two incorrect words (your for you're) and a grotesque over-use of dashes (even though it does accurately reflect my voice, with its perpetual 'asides'). And then of course the shame over my awkward vulnerability and violent self-hate.

The letter is a plea to myself. The letter shows not only my pain, but how I learned to cope with it. The letter is archaeological evidence for the Birth of both the Control Freak and the Inner Bully -- the splitting, domination, and repression of my Authentic Self.

The letter is very, very hard to read.

The second feeling is sadness, because side-by-side with the self-hatred is hope. They live in such different places now, but back then they were together.

Her name is JJ. I started writing to her when my Aunt gave me my first journal, age 12. The first J was taken from my BestestFriendEver from Supercity. One J wasn't enough, so I gave her two.

My journal was supposed to be hidden. I was supposed to write my thoughts. But in reality, I thought nowhere was safe, so I wrote precisely what I thought my thoughts should be. And so the Modern Me was born. I was desperate for direction. No surprise, considering I was actively dissociating my real thoughts and feelings. Thoughts and feelings I have access to now, by the way, which makes it that much more painful to read.

Eventually the facade begins to break down. Words are crossed out. Tirades are appended. The main theme is indecision and confusion: a schizophrenic switching between Delusional Confidence and Crippling Insecurity. Otherwise known as adolescence.

In the midst of crises, a few admissions:

"Where do I belong? No one will accept me. Cornelia's group thinks I'm a snob. Penelope's group thinks I'm a geek. In my old school we could be ourselves and still be popular. Everything's changed. I changed and I don't want it to change. ... How come I changed? Why did I ruin everything and how?"

Sometimes JJ wrote. Sometimes I wrote. Sometimes we wrote on each other's writing. By the time I went to camp, we had been writing for just over 18 months. The letter is more complete (showing all the different parts of me) than anything in my journal.

Speaking of the journal, I need to stop reading it. Like most of my blog entries, it makes me woozy and flashback. Memories shouldn't be so vivid. When I read an entry, I don't just read the entry. I remember writing it. I remember everything I didn't write. I remember how I felt. I return there, exactly where I never wanted to be.

I felt sick. I felt terrified. I felt like I was the only one in the world to feel so apart from everything. I felt like I was missing some important ingredient that made the world make sense.

I felt positively insane. Straight-up crazy. So crazy, I did anything and everything to prove how normal I could be. I built a Person from scratch. My defenses: dissociation, denial, distortion, splitting, fantasy, idealisation, passive aggression, projection, displacement, isolation, reaction formation, undoing... yes, practically every single one in the book. I had a lot to defend against.

So perhaps the last decade of my life wasn't so wasted, since I've managed to overcome most of those. These journals are worth 10000x their weight in pain, but they also show my growth. My individual battle to be more than I was.

Everything else in my life might have been filled with ambivalence, confusion, and insecurity, but the emptiness only made it easier to see how much I desired to Beat This Thing.

Hope.

JJ: "Yes, I am a Changer, a Wanderer, willing and wanting change. Changers don't want love. No, we don't. We prefer experiencing every single feeling we can get our paws on. We force ourselves to hurt, to live, to cry, to love, to be broken-hearted, to experience relief, but also happiness. Just so we are the toughest creatures on Earth. Hell, practice makes perfect. And yes we are rare. But not valuable. In fact, we are worthless. We are worth nothing. And we don't care."

Eliza: "Or maybe we do."

Doesn't that just say it all?

I just turned 13.