Behind My Eyes.

list of dates.

tw: self-harm.

tonight i found old notes and poems from 2016 tucked away in my laptop.

i wish i had found more of them.

in the mess of notes i found something that immediately brought tears to my eyes,

it was a list of dates and next to each date stood "x days clean".

it was a list i had made my junior year,

one of the first times my depression almost became too much to handle,

and the first few weeks i didn't make it more than three days without c*tting myself.

as the list got longer the days got farther apart,

twenty days since i last cracked,

forty-eight,

back to zero, what a failure i am.

then back to thirty,

hey now i'm at fifty-six and it seems like it's taken me a lifetime to get here.

you never realize how addicting hurting yourself is until you're trying to stop.

the days seemed to drag by so slowly when i was trying to stop and every day was such a battle.

and then when i failed and hit zero i didn't see the point in trying to stop because i always seemed to end up back there.

i made it all the way to ninety days. 

i never recorded my hundredth day.

i don't think i've ever made it a full year.

a little over a year ago, i fell into that insane depression again and was right back where i started.

i couldn't stop,

i used to sit on my floor for hours and just tear myself apart until the tears in my eyes made it impossible to "safely" do it anymore.

then jacksonville happened, and i couldn't go more than an hour without hurting myself because i felt so disgusting and i wanted nothing more than to be dead.

nobody knows just how bad that was but i guess now everyone does because here we are.

there were so many nights i sat on my floor after jacksonville and almost just ended my pathetic life but i couldn't ever follow-through with that.

i'm glad that i didn't because a little over a year later i feel better than i ever have.

it's been a few months i think since the last time that cold metal blade has touched my skin and i no longer crave that burn.

things are finally starting to look up for me and it's crazy to think about.

every day seems to be a new adventure.

if you told me a year ago that i'd be here,

i never would have believed you. 

i never thought that i could be happy in a million years and i truly believed that.

all that matters now is how far i've brought myself and how proud i am that despite it all i'm still here and kicking.

it's been such an uphill battle but i've reached the top and i think i'll stay a while.