Who I am
AN EXPLORATION OF WHAT IT MEANS TO RECOVER FROM AN EMOTIONALLY ABUSIVE RELATIONSHIP
By Adèle McLees
(Taylor Deas Melesh / Unsplash)
I matched with a guy on Hinge a couple weeks ago, someone I kind of knew. He was in a class I TAed last semester, when everything was online and you talked to people face-to-face but through a screen. He’s cute, and I had hopes, even though he was younger than I’d prefer.
But every time something like this starts, every time my hopes rise, so does the anxiety. The pit in my stomach, the checking to see if he’s opened my text even though Hinge doesn’t have read receipts so I have no way of knowing, the voice in the back of my head telling me he’s not going to respond. He seemed happy to chat last time but maybe he matched with someone else more interesting, prettier, better, or maybe my response wasn’t quite right, and what if he’s gone now.
Gone.
And it’s my fault.
The anxiety eats away at my brain and at my intestines and I hate it. I hate that I’ve done so much work, more therapy appointments than I can count, weeks and weeks of outpatient sessions, but the anxiety is still there, seeped into my bones.
I had anxiety before, too. I didn’t know it at the time, but when I would gasp for air in the car before walking into my ballet classes in middle and high school, those were anxiety attacks. The stress of going into class not knowing what mood my teacher would be in or if I would be able to get my body to make the right shapes, the stress of comparing my body and my abilities to ten other girls for the next three hours was too much.
I would wait in the car until I could catch my breath, until my eyes were less red and my lips were less puffy, until I could pretend to walk in there with confidence so nobody else would know.
But this boy stuff, this was a new worry, a new struggle, a renewed sense of doubt — this time, not only in my body, but also in me.
—
The other day, I wrote a list of things I want to forgive myself for. For all the times I’ve spoken ill of myself. For all the times I sliced my skin with a razor blade and waited for the scars to appear. For all the times I believed words that should never have been said, and for internalizing them until they were me.
For defining myself as the reflection in his eyes.
If I could rewrite the story of me and him, I would’ve stopped talking to him the moment I realized his words — not mine — were writing my story and writing it as something I didn’t want it to be. I would have recognized that his eyes glimmered for me sometimes — he told me as much — and I would have known that I deserve more than sometimes. I would have valued myself, would have known his truths were my lies. I wouldn’t have let his guilt convince me to keep him in my life. I wouldn’t have set myself up to carry this anxiety in my bones, to think that I’ve worked through it only to feel it resurface every time I have a new crush, because what if this new crush thinks the same things he did.
What if I’m not enough.
But I can’t rewrite the past. I can only write the present.
I can only fight my thoughts when my heart begins to pound and my stomach clenches. I can only remind myself that I am me, not him. I can only remind myself that I don’t define myself as the reflection in his eyes. Not anymore.
I define myself in the breaths of beach air I take when I visit my mom back home, and in the love I have for lying in the sun on summer days. I define myself in the unconditional love my dog gives me and in the poems I had forgotten I’d written but that still resonate with me three years later. I define myself in the tattoo based on a drawing my dad completed before a brain tumor stole him away, a tattoo that will forever cover the spot I had planned to slice open so my life could seep out.
I define myself in the glimmer of my own eye.
—
I got coffee with that guy I matched with, and it was a good enough conversation. Probably not the love of my life.
I know I’ll match with another guy, and I know I’ll be able to tell how I feel about him based on how anxious I get, whether the fear floods my limbs when he takes more than a few hours to respond.
But I also know that I can define myself — that I do define myself. And it’s not by the reflection in his eye.
This piece was written and shared during the IDONTMIND Writing Workshop. Learn more about our free, nine-week course and be the first to know about the next workshop here. Visit Mental Health Connecticut’s YouTube channel for a video version of Adèle’s story.
Adèle McLees is a current senior at Macalester College and lifelong lover of writing of every kind.
