Was I really so stupid that I would choose to hurt myself?

I wasn’t born into a perfect reality and growing up in a dysfunctional family forced me to live with unnecessary suffering.

I longed for love, but my parents weren’t there for me. I was invisible to my father who was a busy businessman, and I was too visible for my mother; I could feel her breath on my neck as if I were being chased by a hunting dog.

Control, obsession, imposition these are the three words that pop into my head when I think of her. Once, she yelled at me “You were only three years old when you began to do things your own way!” I already knew, even then, that I couldn’t count on her at all.

At the age of twelve I began to hate myself. I craved food, and the more I ate, the more I wanted. Food filled a void inside my heart, the void left by the lack of love from my parents as I grew up.

Soon I became fat and ugly and was the target of bullies. To anesthetize the pain of the mocking, the looks, and the judgment that made me feel as if I were a horrible mistake, I ate even more.

It was as if I was hooked up to a cattle fence with not enough voltage to kill but sufficient to keep me uncomfortable.

Was I really so stupid that I would choose to hurt myself?

Of course not!
Nobody is.

My behavior was driven by my family’s toxic script, and I had no control over that toxic inheritance – no one has – until I woke up and began to see things as they really are. My father’s death, when I was nineteen, marked that turning point. Only then could I identify the real reasons for my suffering and act to free myself from them. It took me 33 years to break that toxic cycle, to free myself from my family’s toxic emotional inheritance.

I coached myself through those terrifying experiences, through domestic violence, crawling forward when I didn’t have any strength left, and crossing unknown paths inside myself in search of the truth. Along the way I faced despair. I confronted failure. I saw ugliness. I experienced loneliness. I felt a disgust for life. I married rage. I was humiliated. I looked death in the eyes. I stood at the edge of a ravine time and time again, but I never gave up on myself.

Listening to myself, understanding the real reasons for those troubled experiences, helped me to dissolve what wasn’t mine and transcend the path of sorrow.
I moved toward the light, toward my freedom, to become who I really am.

Eventually there came a balance. I forgave myself for having allowed others to hurt me. A deep quietness was restored and I now go through life with the certainty that I am living my own experience, a genuine present, and not a repetition of my family’s toxic script.

You are not alone and how you feel is normal, when you are in a difficult phase of your life.

Don’t be ashamed of yourself and don’t give up.