Saving Self

A Story by Scriblegraph

A little life journey.

As a kid I enjoyed going to the library, and I’d spend my school breaks and free time there. I would read about mythical monsters, superheroes, and aliens from space. In my childhood I suffered a great deal of ridicule and criticism. I remembered being called “fat,” “dumb,” and “ugly” by others. My parents worked all day and so it was just me alone at home most of the time. I didn’t have anyone I could talk to about these things, and I always thought of my father as a tough man, so talking to him was not an option, so I just kept these things to myself. At one point in time, I remember, I felt convinced, “yeah maybe I am ugly, maybe I am dumb, I am fat.” And so I began to develop this hate for self. There’s a difference when someone else hates you, that issue only works if you give it attention, but to have this hate for yourself, well that is somewhat of a disease. I hated me because the world hated me. So I began to go through this journey of killing my childhood innocence. I changed everything about me, I no longer spent time reading, I stopped caring, I lost myself in this hate for everything I was because I felt everything about me was wrong. Eventually I became lost, I didn’t know who I was. I was almost like a soulless body looking for his soul. When I eventually ended up in the juvenile detention center, I thought that that place was meant for an outsider like me. “I deserve to be here,” I thought to myself. I didn’t feel like I had a special skill, I wasn’t popular, i wasn’t an athlete, I couldn’t see anything that I could say “I’m really good at this.” The sense of self worth had been demolished, my self esteem had pummeled. I had given up on myself at a very young age, and all I wished for was to just be average if I couldn’t be more. It’s weird, there was a day that I just felt like letting go of the last bit of hope that I had for myself. On a dark, cold, rainy night that I stood awake in that cell room I was in, I was staring outside the barred window thinking about everything that I had experienced in life up to that time. As I watched the rain outside, lost in thought, I came to this idea that I was looking, not outside, but within myself. My soul was that cell room, the windows were my eyes, and outside was everything that had consumed me; coldness, darkness, loneliness. A flash of lightning flickered and I caught a reflection of myself on the window. I could see myself, sad, alone, and pathetic. I had seen the face of someone that needed someone, but there was no superhero to save me, no god to grant me powers, no alien to take me away, but I did have me. I had spent a great deal of trying to rid myself of who I once was when this whole time that kid who loved eating his ham and cheese sandwich in the library was still there, somewhere inside me, waiting for someone to come to his rescue. I walked out of detention center, ironically, with a new view of the world. Life is funny that way I think. Up until now, I can say that the most precious thing in that I possess is myself.