True Self or Identity Crisis?

In the beginning, I was a good girl. I would not even resort to taking a Tylenol unless a major migraine had overpowered by frontal lobe. One year after “the big break up” and my “identity crisis”, I need Vicadin to make it through work. Today I find myself sniffing lines off cocaine in the bathroom at work. How did I get here?
         
I can find a million excuses for why this happened and just as many people to blame. But blame does not make it better. I find it easier to blame myself anyways. I was always good at blaming myself anyhow. Back in those days, I was not dependent of foreign substances to make it thought the day. I was dependent on another source of self-destruction and agony. I was addicted to my own guilt. I was raised on it.
         
Guilt is the feeling is in the pit of your stomach. I found myself constantly feeling responsible for all that went wrong. Constantly feeling like it was up to me to hold it all together. The world was dangling from my shoulders. It was up to me to make all that was wrong; better. I never took time to think of myself.  Never took time to think of my own happiness. I was obsessed with making excuses for why others were not there for me when I was there for them.

I was making excuses for other people and constantly giving them second, third and fourth chances they did not deserve. I woke each morning refusing to look in the mirror until I had my morning shower. I walked past the mirror and hated the reflection that looked back at me.

The reflection was slightly blurry. I need prescription glasses.
I enjoyed this blurry image more than the one with the glasses on.

Many people will tell you they sympathize with this feeling. It was, after all, my teenage years. Years when everyone feels awkward. Because I had acne. Because my face had not yet caught up with the size of my nose. Because I had little breasts that were pointy. Because I was a teenager. And although I was not ever heavy, I struggled with my weight. My body was gawky and skinny, like that of a boy. And I remember these feelings overwhelming my mind all day.

I remember looking at my pictures at that time and thinking each one looked ugly. I looked ugly. I found some of those pictures now. I am blown away by how beautiful I am. I am saddened that I could not see it then.

So I found myself a boyfriend who could tell that I needed him to make myself feel worthy. He saw that I felt like I was not worthy of being with him, and that being with him somehow made me feel special. It was all fucked up, and I knew it. But I stuck it out, because I like feeling needed. And he needed me. Needed me to tell him to wake up, to go to bed, to get a haircut.  Needed me to feed him, to pay his bills, to be his mother. I liked feeling wanted by him, despite always feeling underappreciated. I did this for five years.

I hated my life, but I convinced myself that I had made my bed and now I had to lay in it.

Then another man entered my life. It could have been any man. But he was at the right place at the right time. I had been feeling the winds of change knocking on the door of my soul, and it was time for me to answer.

I wanted to be appreciated. I wanted to feel sexy with a man. And this man was going to do it for me.

He entered my life with a finesse of most Latino men. Self assured in his abilities to bed me. A part of me wanted to prove him right, a part of me wanted to prove him wrong. And when he got me, it was like fireworks exploding in the sky when our lips first met. He handled me as no man had ever handled me before. And with a single kiss, he woke up the woman in me. My world came crashing. I heard the earth split in half. The rose-colored glasses lifted of my face.


Five years of my life had been solely dedicated to another man. I was only 21 years old at this point. That is such a big fraction of someone’s life when he or she is so young. With every passing birthday, I realized that I had actually known very little about the world. I remember feeling quite certain about the direction my life was going at some point. I was probably eighteen years old, and I thought I knew everything. I thought I had everything figured out.  However, somewhere in those years that were blurred together, I realized I did not know very much about My goals, My dreams, and myself. I had not taken the time to get to know myself.

I had been unhappy for years. But I promised to marry him. I wore his ring on my left hand, and my desk at work was overflowing with Wedding Catalogs. A white dress hung in the closet, alongside a pair of white shoes.

It was June. The wedding was set for September.

And I knew I did not want to marry him, but the dress was there. The invites were in the mail. What if people already took time off work? What if they purchased their airline tickets?

Again, I was always thinking of others rather than myself. But then I realized, this was my life I was about to give to someone, it was my soul I was about to sign off on the dotted line.

Not realizing how much I had grown from being the timid teenager he met five years ago, my future husband fed into the vulnerability of my opinion of myself.
He stopped wanting to have sex with me. And we were not even married yet.

We slept in the bed together, but mostly went to bed at separate times. It was like sleeping next to my brother. This was not right. He was only twenty-three years old. Every other 23 year old I had ever met was willing to fuck anything that would give him the time of day, and here I was getting the old “I got a headache” excuse. He made me feel so ugly, so unattractive. Readers, I realize you only have my word to go on, but I am a decently attractive woman, and anyone I would discuss this problem with would be confused on why he would choose to be this way.

When I would threaten to leave him, he would assure me that no one would ever love me as he loved me. And in comparison, no one would ever treat me as good as he did. He was not the easiest person to live with. He as grumpy in the morning, lazy in the afternoon, and hungry, bitchy, and lazy in the evening. With him, everything was like walking on eggshells. I would rather take the garbage out myself than hear his whining about it. Worse yet, having to tell him to do it at least 20 times before it was done was not worth the effort either.

I know each story has two sides. Each of us has this impression that we were the innocent, that we were the victim. In many ways, I know I was the victim. But I was the victim because I choose to be. I did not have to allow him to speak to me that way; I did not have to let him control me. Nevertheless, I did.

I was lonely, scared, and confused. And I was certainly not ready to marry this man. I found myself scrambling to find a way in which I was going to get myself out of this. The clock was ticking to September, and I heard every second tick by in my head.

I tried leaving him several times, but I was weak and I took him back each time. I was secretly hoping that the promises he made about how things were going to be different were going to happen. I knew they were empty promises. But I wanted to believe. I wanted to believe so badly that it would actually happen.

I had to find a way for him leave me and not come back. That way, it was not up to me to have the willpower to say “no” when he came begging at my feet with promises. If I deceived him, it would be him who wouldn’t come back to me.

I had to do the one thing that was unforgivable to him.

I cheated.