So I decided to retype my testimony. Truly God’s blessings have been more & more abundant everyday I choose to take up my cross & follow Him. It is a little confusing, because time has somewhat merged together for me, plus I believe that when you truly repent & ask God to make you whole again, He forgets your sins- & so do you. So I have forgotten much of what exactly happened, so the details are foggy, but I write them as best as I can. It is quite long as well so if you read the whole thing, thank you! <3
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You can call me Tashy. I’m 16 & I’m known as the girl who sings really well, who writes beautifully & too much, & whose photography gets better the more she works at it. I’m known as the outgoing, happy girl who’s always up for fun, who always wears a smile on her face, but I wasn’t always that girl.
My parents had always put pressure on me to perform well, & any failures were always enlarged & put down. They later on stopped emphasizing it so much, but I’d grown to work for perfection so much that I ended up putting a lot of that pressure onto myself. I was my own monster. I was a very anxious child. If a crayon was missing from the box, I’d panic looking for it & absolutely dread trying to tell someone about it. If I was put into a class or situation I didn’t want to be in, I would do anything & everything to avoid it. I can’t even begin to count how many times I’ve hidden out in the school restrooms or faked sick just to get out of things I didn’t want to face. I was anxious for so long that it became my default setting. I could be in the most perfect of circumstances around me & suddenly a wave of fear would hit me for no reason at all. When puberty kicked in, so did the weight. My metabolism was always good so I could eat anything I wanted & not gain weight, but now things were different. People started noticing the weight. I was bullied a lot before that, being of mixed race I was always laughed at. Now with the weight, it just got worse. The thing is, the weight wasn’t bad, I was still very underweight, but I saw myself as huge. I developed very bad acne, too- All over my face, my back & my chest. I would come home crying in my room everyday from what the bullies said, never telling anyone in fear that they’d just bully me again. I couldn’t tell anyone, in fear that my perfect image would shatter. I was struggling to keep my grades up, I was dying on the inside, & even though on the outside, I was the girl everyone wanted to be, I didn’t really have anyone close enough to me who I could confide in. I couldn’t tell my parents- They would just condemn me even more, so I was very much alone. I turned to the internet, spending hours & hours online, talking to strangers. Soon I found pornography, & discovered masturbation, & that was the only thing I could do to make me feel better about myself. My mirror showed me a fat, ugly girl who needed to change. So I stopped eating. I would turn down food & it got easier each time. I gained control, I lost the weight, I got my friends back. I got down to 36 kilos, or about 80 pounds. I was anemic & I woke up in the mornings too tired to even walk because I was so deprived of food. Fainting was normal. Anorexia was my lifeline- Or so I thought.
So I came up with new methods with dealing with depression. I’d take laxatives on an empty stomach & just purge & purge. Half the day at school I would spend in the restrooms withering in pain. I’d take painkillers, sometimes even when I didn’t need them. But it would only last for so long, after the high & after it was all over, the voices would come back.
I learned how to cut, too. At first I was scared of the blood but I forced it onto me, thinking it as punishment for binging or staying on the computer too long, but soon it became second breath to me. I would flay my skin open every chance I got, cuts lining every part of my body. Then when people started noticing, I started bruising myself- Punching my legs, my arms, every part of my body & waking up blue & black. But the power of addiction, & sin in general, is in its’ secrecy. I learnt this the hard way. One night I told someone about the cutting & anorexia. That first step was the hardest. But eventually, she (It was my youth leader) passed it on to the pastors, & they to my parents, & the night all of them came together to talk was one of the scariest nights in my life. My parents, even to this day, won’t admit that what I went through was a problem, instead just calling it a phase. At first I gave up on recovery, but I decided to do it not for everyone else, but myself. Because I deserved life & nothing less. Only through God could I have survived this. I attended a youth conference once & that changed me completely. There was this fire burning so vigorously inside of me that it just came to a point where I simply didn’t want to slip, where I woke up in the mornings just brushing it all off as not worth the struggle. Once you have God, nothing else really matters. So my first relapse, now that was terrible. I slipped away from everything I was holding on to, insisting that I couldn’t get any worse than before. But instead, this relapse was much worse than how I was. Doing all the same things, only much harder, plus with the added anxiety & guilt of breaking God’s heart. I never attempted suicide, but I knew how I would go if I wanted to, writing my notes down, ready. But God pulled on my heart everytime & I knew that there was more to life than standing & falling. But God’s mercy is so good. One night, I was sitting crying in my room when suddenly, I start seeing so many flashes of times where I was slipping, & how God was in each image, reaching His hands out to me, mourning & weeping alongside me as I hurt. That night was when I chose to stop the madness & get clean & I have been stable since then. I told my leaders everything- Before this, they only knew about the anorexia & cutting, but now I told them about the ugly times I did what I did. I thank God for people like them; they have been through a lot of what I did & they helped a lot. Even until now, they are always keeping a special eye on me, & I know I have people keeping me accountable for my actions. Slowly, I am coming to a point where I can say I don’t need to do what I used to do because it isn’t my identity, & I am not bound to those prisons. I am a child of God, dearly beloved & saved only by His grace. I am healing, & even if the world doesn’t like what I’m becoming, I know I have God on my side, & nothing can belittle that fact. But I’m a fighter. I’m loving myself the way I am.The price of recovery is high -I got rid of ALL my triggers, the smallest ones, & let go of some friends I really loved- but I know that it’s all for the better. Recently, I set fire to all my journals, the only thing I had that could remind me of my past, & as I watched the words of pain & hurt & agony burn away, I felt freedom. I called myself ugly, fat, worthless- But God calls me beautiful & perfect in every way! I know II can do this, I will choose to believe that I’m beautiful, & I will keep going.
Truly, I am blessed.
