My Story (or at least the beginning)

Today, I'm going to talking about my story. One of the reasons why I'm a little nervous is because I haven't been living under a rock. My story doesn't just include me. There were a lot of other people in my life. I know that some of those people might be reading this. If so, I really hope that you understand that I'm not writing this to show why I'm mad at everyone else. I'm not doing this as a personal attack on anyone. If you do have any concerns, feel free to comment. Comments are sent to my email first, so if you have confidential information, I won't show it to anyone else.

Okay, now that that's out of the way, here we go.

So here’s the thing. Mid 2011 and all the way through 2012 was hell. I’ve even used far worse words to describe it. And it’s not like I’ve never had bad things happen before. I watched my parents have really nasty arguments. I’ve felt like the whole world was going to end as I cried myself to sleep. I’ve had huge blow ups with my parents.  And I got thrown a major curveball when I hit puberty before anyone else. A lot of my other friends didn’t even know what the word puberty meant. Seriously, I was ten when my period made an unwelcome appearance on January 1, 2008.

January 1sts haven’t really been great for me—family fights, periods, etc. But I digress.

When I was eleven and twelve I had the usual stupid girl problems. I think those problems hit me a bit differently than some of my other friends because I was way more advanced in the whole puberty thing. I remember thinking that my world was horrible. To be honest, I was not the most attractive tween. I had frizzy hair and a face full of acne. Not fun. I think a lot of people underestimate the problems tweens have. The thing is, those friend problems carried on over into my teen years. Where hell begins.

Grade 9 finds me playing volleyball on the junior team. And totally hating it. The girl drama was big, and I couldn’t wait for the season to be done. So, season ends and the year gets worse. All of this really escalated during the last three months of school.

All the girls (I went to a small school. Literally 10 girls in my grade, the grade above me, and the grade below me-- combined) were avoiding me. I’d walk up to them, and their conversations would get quiet, and some would walk away. That always makes a girl feel really good. I was also feeling stuck in my relationship with God. I’m a perfectionist and incredibly serious about everything I do, so my relationship with God and my morals were—and still are—a big deal to me. I felt like everyone else around me was more interested in talking about how our youth group “sucks like crap” and why our teachers are just stupid.

So, all this stuff was going on, and it’s now that I can look back and be so thankful for my parents and best friend. They were there for me, but I still felt like I was isolated from the whole world.

Things were getting a lot worse. It was becoming harder and harder for me to get out of bed, and when I did, I really regretted it. I was a good student, but school was misery. I dreaded gym, as I knew I was going to be picked last—after the people who barely knew a football from a basketball. I didn’t want to go to lunch because I knew that when I sat down, everyone else would sit at a table at the other end of the lunch room. One Friday, I listened as all the girls talked about the birthday party they were going to—a party I was not invited to. That did it. I went home crying, and I begged my mom to homeschool me. I told her that I didn’t want to go back.  I repeatedly told my parents that next school year, I was not going back to that school.

Pain started to feel good. Getting a paper cut. Pulling a hangnail until it bled. Accidently cutting myself when I was cooking. It all felt good. I played with the idea of cutting, but when I tried, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I was too scared, but the temptation was still there. I can look back now, and I realize that in those moments when I wanted so bad to hurt myself, that is when God was right there, helping me not to do it.

I'll end with that for now. I don't really like writing really long blog posts, and I really don't like reading them. Please feel free to comment. I'd love to hear your stories!

Love,

Jyllenna