I’m not even sure how to begin this as I have never been a writer or read a lot of blogs but I thought what the hell what’s the harm in giving this blogging thing a go. This I mainly for my mental health as I have become aware over the last few years that I have developed issues with overeating and binging. I haven’t gotten to the point of purging but the amount of times I have been in the bathroom and been so angry and frustrated that I couldn’t make myself vomit is too many to count. I have thought about how great life would be if I could eat and eat and never put on weight which inevitably leads to thoughts of purging to avoid this weight gain.

Anyway, I guess I should give some background to my story in case anyone can pick up things could help in my pursuit of happiness and self-love.

I do not have any life scaring stories or issues with my family which surprisingly has still been the  cause many moments of guilt and loathing a I would beat myself up about being so selfish that I hated my life when there was absolutely nothing wrong with it. I have a beautiful mother and father who have been nothing but supporting of all my decisions and who have provided so many opportunities and have taken me and my two brothers from Zimbabwe to Hawaii and finally settling in Australia. I have not had to endure any family tragedies or had to face any hardships which again lead me to despise my depression as I feel like I have no right to be depressed.  I also have two older brothers who I have loved and hated throughout my growing up period as most siblings experience but they have always been there to look after me. I didn’t realise how much they protected me and loved me until we grew up.

I remember living in Hawaii but we moved to Australia when I was 7 years old so my main memories started here. I don’t remember being that way in Hawaii but I was a shy quiet kid when we moved to Australia, I dunno whether it was because I was an American moving to this small town and was the centre attention which I baulked at completely. It’s strange because looking at videos of when I was young in Hawaii I was so carefree and wanted to dance and sing in front of people but then something happened and I became very self-aware of what I was doing and how that effected other people. It wasn’t so bad in primary school but I think over time it has grown and became quite debilitating at certain stages in my life.

Life went on I grew up in my world where looking back I was quite sheltered. My peers began to drink and smoke and dating boys before me because I thought I had decided that I didn’t want to follow the crowd however looking back, my early friends were very strong minded and opinionated and I just tended to do whatever they did because I didn’t  and don’t like making decisions. I think I have always just wanted to fit in but I have always been drawn to people that don’t quite fit in. In high school, I felt like I didn’t fit in with my primary school friends anymore or at least they didn’t think I fitted in. It seems so petty (well it probably was in hindsight) and I couldn’t actually tell you what happened because I have since learned that I have had pretty warped views on reality. All I know is I went back into hating myself and thinking nobody would notice if I was gone. Scarily I remember having these thoughts all through primary school as well which I’m still looking back and trying to figure out why I started thinking and feeling like that. I know I’m jumping all through my childhood but my mum has told me a story about when I was really young like 4 or 5 something happened and I threw a tantrum and went into my room and was crying and whenever I saw myself in the mirror I would cry even harder. When my family was telling me this story it was in jest at the fact that everyone thought it was quite funny because in some ways I can imagine I was practicing crying but I look back and I’m curious as to whether it was because I didn’t like myself.  Anyway fast forwarding a few years when we had moved to Australia and I was in primary school I think I was quiet at school and then a drama queen at home because deep down I wanted attention but I didn’t want it for being loud and outrageous I just wanted to be noticed and be loved just because. I think I had seen too many girl next door movies where the quiet nerdy person becomes beautiful and noticed naturally. I then began to be spiteful of other people when they didn’t notice me even though I didn’t do anything to be noticeable. I remember crying for hours and thinking about hurting myself by suffocating myself or going to sleep really close to the edge of my bed in hope that  would fall off and hit my head on the corner of  my bed side table so that people would finally notice me and realise what they’d been missing all those years. See quite a drama queen in my thoughts just to so much in the follow through. I would always stop because I was worried that people would realise that I was just doing it for attention and the thought of being known like that horrified me. Numerous times I also ran away and hid for an afternoon in hope that someone would look for me. I don’t know, I think I just really wanted some sort of fairy tale life.

When I got through the initial shock of losing primary school friends and feeling quite lost and alone in high school I started embracing this and getting into punk music because I was angry at the world for not noticing me and not liking me so I started thinking fuck everyone and everything. I also got into a lot of emo music probably because of my want of some story book life and a lot of the music was about heart break and I felt like I related completely. Again it sounds so childish getting into the teenage angst scene but its part of my life so I just have to suck it up rather than being embarrassed or regretful. It was my way of dealing with the feeling like nobody liked me; I turned around and was like, “No, you know what you don’t get to not like me; I don’t like you and I don’t care what you think about me.” My group of girl friends at the time were basically a group of very different people all that didn’t quite feel like they fitted in with the other groups or something. We all had someone to sit with at lunch even if they weren’t exactly the kind of group we wanted to be with. I became quite close with 2 of the girls just through us all growing to like punk, emo music whereas the other girls in the group didn’t like music as much as us. We kind of had 2 mini groups that all sat together which worked out fine. Anyway I became friends with Amy who is probably the most similar of the girls to me even though we came from very different backgrounds. We both were just quiet and had the same sick sense of humour and we just clicked however we were terrible because like me she wasn’t big on making decisions. I think because she reminded me of me except worse because she didn’t have a good family life I had to protect her. So I began to find it easy to make decisions when Amy was around because I knew she really didn’t mind what we did and I just hated the indecisiveness. We went through high school together practically sharing a brain. We weren’t big talkers at all about our feelings but we were just content being together. Which is beautiful looking back and I took her and probably still do take her for granted. My other close friend was the loud one that I loved because she would take the attention off me because in this stage of my life  I just wanted to be ignore I didn’t want people to think anything about me because I was convinced it would only be bad things. I don’t think I was using her completely but I just could relax around her because she does have this vibe where she really doesn’t care what anyone else is really doing, not in a selfish way but like she wouldn’t judge me. And then on top of that no matter what I did I could probably guarantee that Jen would be louder and more outrageous so she encouraged me to come out of my shell quite a bit. Now that I’ve started talking about high school friends I really have to tell you about the other two that I’m still friends with because they probably will find this one day. J But seriously, Brooke is my oldest friend. She was the only primary school friend I stayed good friends with. We are completely different in so many ways but I just know she has so much love to give I couldn’t ever not like her. Sure I’ve been annoyed with her so many times because she seems so oblivious to some things she does and how it affects people. I believe that this is just because I’m so self-aware (probably to a fault) and her being not self-aware just doesn’t sit well because I can’t be like that. Overall she is a beautiful lady with the best intention who I know I will always be able to catch up with even if we lose contact for a long period of time. Lastly, there is Dan. I was talking before how there were like mini groups in my group in high school. Well Dan was a bit of an outsider because she was always hanging out with people older than us but obviously they finished school first so Dan hung out with us. I didn’t really know her too well in high school. We had some fun times together but I didn’t really get to know what a beautiful gentle soul she was until we left school. I moved to Brisbane to do Uni and she moved down after the first year and we hung out a lot.  I still look back and she only lived in Brisbane for 6 months but we just became really close. She’s a person I can tell anything and she won’t judge me and has so much compassion and love.

Well back to my high school life, due to feeling so alone at the beginning of high school I was very self-conscious of myself and had an extremely low confidence and self-image. I was never obsessed with food in high school but I did not tend to eat very much in front of people but when I’d come home I’d eat quite a bit. But thankfully I had a really nice metabolism that meant once I had my growth spurt at puberty I stayed quite slim for the last few years of high school. If you had asked me at the time though I would have told you I was fat considering I was comparing myself to Amy who has always been tiny like size 6 and everyone else in the world who I considered to be prettier and better than me.  I look back at photos of me back then now and it just blows my mind how twisted myself image was back then. I still have quite a negative view on myself now but I recognise that I generally am judging myself harsher than anyone else and that what I see is not necessarily what everyone else sees. 

I guess that's the start of my life, fucks me why I'm posting this but I don't think it can hurt...  

I have a couple of more years between where this blog and where I'm at now but it's a start. I gotta finish this story so I can feel like I can write about my current point in my life, so I"ll try and get back to this sooner rather than later. 

Anywho, if you have read this, thanks for your time!