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Stories of Hope

Picking and Choosing

 

bulletAuthor:    Lorraine
bulletAge:        41

 

After two suicide attempts and gouging my body from top to bottom for most of my young adult life I realized I had to choose to stick with self-destruction and no future or find some more constructive obsessions that would lead me out of the pit.  I started walking to running to swimming to dancing to pull my body back into some kind of presentable shape.  Then I stopped living through the safe veil of books and television and started trying out relating to real people.  My first real relationship helped me gain self-confidence, then finishing my degree and teaching helped me to start concentrating on others instead of always zeroing in on myself and my faults.  I got involved in theatre which I'd always enjoyed.  Playing other people gave me a chance to get away from being me.  I got pretty good at it, and made new friends, and learned more and more how to relate to my negative emotions in ways that were more mainstream than destructive.  I practiced confronting issues and people who made me angry, learned to be more assertive and articulate my emotions.  The better I got at constructively expressing myself the less I needed to demolish my body whenever a crisis, or what I thought was a crisis, arose.  I used and still use a lot of humour in my confrontations and for self-defense.  Sometimes that's good and sometimes it's a smoke-screen.  Anyhow, I'm still here.  I got married, and it lasted 10 years.  I have 2 great kids and think of myself as a good mother.

I think they think so too, at least so far.  Sometimes I still loose it, but less and less.  I hope that some day I'll stop picking completely.  Maybe when I'm 70?