How my inner world was shattered and how I rebuilt it

I’m not going to go into too much detail about this, so I’ll just say it.

I was molested.

It happened when I was around 15 years old.

I’m not going to say who did it or where it happened, it just happened and it’s in the past. But what it did to me affected me in such a way that I spent the last 18 years trying to repair the damage that was done to my inner world. No kid should go through this, but that’s the reality that we all live in right now.

During that time, I felt violated, ashamed and disgusted with my own body. There were even times where I just wanted to rip or peel off my own skin, just so that I wouldn’t feel “dirty” anymore. Of course, I knew that wasn’t possible and also not the best way of thinking for a teenager. Everything that I once believed in now meant nothing to me. My inner world was shattered and only a void of negative thoughts and emotions filled my mind.

To ruin the inner world of someone so young is a sin to me.

I didn’t stop living my life though after what happened to me. I didn’t get into drugs or become rebellious and angry. I just kept going. But I did however develop this sort of blind determination to try to make something of myself. I thought if I made something of myself then I would final stop feeling so ashamed and disgusted of my own body. I thought that I needed to prove something to finally feel like I was worthy to be loved the way I wanted to be loved.

That’s messed up, right? When someone feels like they don’t deserve to be loved. Or afraid to try to love someone else, always thinking that they might violate you too. It was a constant struggle within my own mind. But then there came a point where that way of thinking was hurting me so much mentally that it led to depression and anxiety.

I always had this deeper understanding of things, an intuition, I knew I had to do something before my depression and anxiety consumed my mind and my life. It was from that point that I started to rebuild my inner world. I didn’t know how to or even knew how to start. The only thing I knew was that I suddenly had the urge to start buying random things.

That’s when the online store, Etsy, came into play for me.

I was able to by all sort of random and unique things on there. I kept looking through it just to see what else I could buy. I went through a sort of rainbow phase and bought anything that had some kind of rainbow design on it. This was also the time where I thought that I might be a lesbian because I had stayed single for so long and never tried to go on dates.

I bought one of those zippered bohemian jackets with a hoodie with rainbow colors.

I bought an old school kaleidoscope that had rainbows printed all over it.

I bought rainbow gloves that almost covered my entire arm.

I bought a rainbow scarf that had patterns made of velvet on it.

I didn’t know why I bought these things; all I knew that when I did get them, I would eventually give them away. I liked the things I bought, and they did make me happy in a sense, but I didn’t feel the need to own them. I had my fun with them and would just give it to someone else who also might have fun with it too. I only started to give away things when I felt like I had too much stuff.

Also, I should mention that I once bought a long leather coat, a lantern, a pair of motorcycle goggles and a replica sword from the movie “The Last Samurai”.

Even though I gave these things away, they did however start to help rebuild my inner world. Being able to touch and look at the details of each item helped me have new thoughts and ideas that would become fuel to my imagination. So, I would keep buying more random things and when I had no need of them anymore, I would just give them away.

Goodwill got a lot of neat things from me.

Although as I got older I knew that I couldn’t afford to keep buying random things. It cost too much and I didn’t want to end up broke. After covid, I bought so much fancy jewlery, only to just not want to wear it anymore. It was from there on that I needed to change my approach on how to keep building my inner world.

Thought of a Scribbling Moth