My acquaintance with Eating Disorders and Self-Destruction used to make me feel superior. How teenagerly naive and wrong to tears. My case wasn't more desperate than that of other crazy kids. It didn't land me the first place in The Toughest Millennial competition.
I venerated myself as a survivor who learned the saying "age is just a number" the hard way — by overcoming misery my peers saw in nightmares.
Once back home from college, I examined our family albums that contain vintage-looking pictures of mom and dad in their early thirties, and of turquoise-eyed me (today, my eyes are grayish blue), my belly covered in infant fat rolls. And I wondered if it had been fair of me to put that angel through all they had to endure over a 20-year period.
Our teenage years are saturated in what we later refer to as youthful mistakes. Some of them we reminisce about with nostalgia, others we regret. The chemical reactions happening in our brain during puberty make it the worst timing for undertaking positive lifestyle changes.
Point to the person who escaped teenage crisis, and I will cobble up a Nobel prize out of origami paper especially for them. The thing is, no matter how many different keyword combinations you type into the search bar, you won't find that person. They are non-existent. We have all felt incomplete and worthless at least once in a lifetime, haven't we?
The Christian doctrine that claims we were put on this earth to suffer might not be far removed from the truth. Life isn't meant to be all plain sailing, and self-induced destructive behaviors are the least of bad things that can happen to us. At least, they are the harm we chose to inflict upon ourselves.
This thought is liberating, albeit dark.
There has been an alternative — what a relief. No one to blame but yourself.
That evening spent in rediscovery of old memories, I pitied the child looking back at me: "If only you knew...". They didn't deserve turning into who I was a few years back. Neither did I respect my body nor my soul. I wasted my life on people who didn't care about my well-being and relied on bad habits for moral support.
Okay, but… Who didn't? Nothing can exempt you from downfalls, not even money.
Moving on is a totally different story. As great as acknowledging the impact of our past on who we are today is, it becomes detrimental once it pulls us into a vicious circle of self-pity.
I now realize this method of self-consolation is counterproductive. It numbs our determination, preventing us from moving forward. Good reputations are built from what we achieve, not endure, and therefore we shouldn't dwell on our dark past — unless it's nevertheless brighter than our hypothetical future, maybe.
If you spit out a bubble gum that has lost its taste, why would you keep chewing on bland old memories?
