The Cracks in my Soul (My Testimony)

Enter Me: Stage Left

I grew up believing that love was for other people, not for me.

They said I was the sweetest girl they knew. I was the one who smiled and got teased at church for not being able to stop laughing. The one eager to help and work hard. The one who always put others first even if it meant she missed out.

That person was a lie.

I was saved when I was five. "Saved"

Because long before that I was a sinner. Yes, I grew up in a Christian home, but my parents were just starting to try to figure out this stuff themselves. Yes, I knew all the Bible verses and could cough up all the Christian phrases they wanted.

But saying a prayer isn't what saves you.

I was saved when I was five, and by the age of five I hated myself completely. Full out hatred that burned in my chest and pulled bitterness up into my throat.

I was saved when I was five, I hated myself, and since I could remember I was struggling with addiction to a kind of sex. I knew what I was doing was wrong, though I didn't know what it was, and my guilt turned into hatred for myself.

I grew up telling myself that I was despicable, that I was a disgusting monster, that no one loved me including God. I pounded it into my head day and night until I knew it was true. I used to look in the mirror in the bathroom and tell myself, "I hate you. I hate you," just to make sure I understood how much I did hate myself.

I know, I'm totally related to Gollum.

There was the side of me that hated myself and there was the side that was hurting. And I told myself that I hated me every day, looking deep into my eyes and saying it until I started to cry. I accused myself of messing up our life and ruining everything. It was always that, "you ruin everything." I don't know how much I said it every day, but it's taken forever get out of that habit.

Every time I got into trouble with my parents or didn't get a good grade, if I bumped into someone, if someone frowned at me or ignored at me, I immediately fell back on ripping myself apart. And that's literally what it felt like.

It felt like digging my nails into my heart and ripping it out over and over.

I was too afraid to hurt myself physically, but I would have if I wasn't afraid that I wouldn't be able to keep it hidden. I did hit myself occasionally, and wasn't careful with my safety when I was feeling particularly angry. But since I couldn't do more than that, I fantasized about torturing myself and killing myself. The fantasies were rather elaborate and gory and I would lie in bed for hours imagining these things until I broke into tears for the rest of the night.

I wanted to die, to torture my sin out of myself, more than anything.

When I looked at myself I saw less than dirt. I saw dirt that God couldn't love, though I wanted his love more than anything.

When I was thirteen, my family moved from my home town (an itty bitty town in Idaho) to Denver. I was not only smacked in the face by a completely different culture, but I lost all my friends.

So I retreated into my shell and shut the doors and collapsed into bitterness and anger that started to leak out onto the people around me. I wasn't a nice person, I was constantly crying and got yelled at for it, and I was so lonely that it felt like my chest splitting open.

I didn't make any friends because people are hard for me. When someone talks to me, my brain goes blank (but it's always blank, let's just be honest) and I blush a lot. I was afraid they would find out about my secrets if I opened up. When they looked at me, I thought they saw what I saw when I looked at myself. And so I withdrew further.

It was at this time that my perfectionism kicked in full swing, and everything I did had to be perfect. I wanted to prove to my parents that I could earn their love, to God that I could earn his love.

But I was never good enough, even when I worked until I couldn't stand, even when I studied until my eyes crossed. I was never good enough for myself.

I started looking for distractions:

Reading, writing, music, choir, violin, orchestra, another orchestra, piano, voice lessons, and of course, perfect grades. My addiction grew worse and so did my hatred.

This entire time, I was still going to church, especially since I had joined the choir. Now I was at church all the time and it was fun, but whenever the pastor said, (and he said it a lot for some reason *cough* God *cough*) "I know you're thinking, God can't love me, but he does. He loves you, and he is longing for you" I would shake my head slightly and go home and remind myself why it wasn't true.

I was taking orchestra at the local high school, and I doubt anyone there knew what my voice sounded like. It was there my loneliness grew to the point of not being able to stand it. It made me cry just seeing two people laughing together.

I wanted someone to hold my hand, to hug me, to care if I showed up. I wanted someone to tell me they loved me, even if it was just something frivolous and in the moment. I wanted someone to complain to about stupid stuff.

There were a few times I wanted to stand up in the middle of the class and scream. My conductor would have had a ball with that. I wanted to scream that I was lonely and depressed and suicidal, that I was alone.

I was convinced that God couldn't stand to look at me because I couldn't stand to look at myself.