Sometimes it’s good to look back and reflect on how people get to be who they are. This is my back story.

I grew up in a Christian home. My dad was a pastor, and still is. I was homeschooled with my sisters. I went to class once a week with about 7 other students and did my home work at home. I did foot ball for year and a half and boy scouts for almost two. I graduated high school almost two years ago and I am 19 years old.

I do not know where it came from, but when I was 8 or 9 I hung up a cover on the bars of my bunk bed, wrapped them around my neck and let my body go limp off of the bed. This was the first time I felt empty inside. If I was trying to kill myself, failed horrendously. I hated myself as a kid. I thought I was ugly and fat. I do not know where these thoughts came from, but I’ve thought them all my life. This was the easiest way to hurt myself at this age. When I was 9 going on 10 we happened to move; in the new house came a few new habits.

The house on Storch Drive was the first house I remember hitting myself in. I would hit my head, punch my stomach, usually trying to hit where my wind pipe was, and smack my head against things. I did this when ever I reminded myself of my ugliness or stupidity. getting in trouble or getting math problems wrong triggered this habit also. The Storch Drive house is the first house that I deeply contemplated suicide. I was a mess. I was crying myself to sleep and suffering from deep sadness and self-pity. This was the time of hormones and puberty, and for an 11 year with low confidence this was a time of deep self loathing. Everyone liked someone, and everyone was liked by someone, except for me. I had a crush on one girl after the other, but no one ever had a crush on me, that was a tough one to try to rationalize, but whatever the reason, I knew the problem was with me. I loathed myself for that. I liked one girl for two years asked her out got denied mopped about it for two years, it was around the recovery time that we moved again. .

This time we moved to Venton Place. This house is noted for cutting my arm with slashes and more self hate. We got here when I was 14ish. I fell for a girl, but this time it was different, this time she cared for me, not in any romantic way, but she was a good friend. After cowardly going after her, I got rejected, I started to hit myself again, but that was the last time. later that year I started not being able to control myself, I was angry, my pain stopped being sadness and turned to anger. After one instance, I took one of my knives and went across my arm. the faded scars tell me it was nine times. this one was not an attempt at suicide, it was self-mutilation. Years later, early 2017, I finally got over my love of that one girl. fast forward two months, and we move again.

This time we moved to Hyattsville, my current place of residency. It has been 5 months since we moved here. I have cried more in this house, than any other house thus far. I feel empty and hollow, I keep trying to move forward and excel. I am doing well, in school and in my social life, but in side I am nothing.  I still feel that hole that I felt 10 years ago. I do not know why, but I am failing miserably