Why am I doing this?
I hate being given attention. Given how I dress and the fact this is on social media, I know that may be surprising or not make sense, but it’s true. I hate being perceived in general. But I don’t want to feel that way. So why do I dress like this?
I was bullied pretty badly in Elementary school and it left an impression on me. I’ll leave out the details but it got to the point my mother was considering pressing SA charges on another student for what he did to me in front of the rest of the grade.
When I was in high school, I was severely depressed and socially anxious. I was paranoid about how people perceived me and was afraid of being given any kind of attention. I hated myself, and genuinely believed everyone else hated me too, and that I deserved it.
I became so worried about standing out that I dressed in what I thought was normal or unnoticeable. Hollister jeans and boring shirts. It was so bad, I was afraid to wear certain things. For example, I had a Snoopy shirt that said “Wake me when it’s Friday,” and I was scared to wear it any day other than Thursday because I thought it would make people think I was lazy. I wore makeup because I needed to fit in, but not too much makeup because I didn’t want people to see me as floozy. I would never think that of another person, but I believed other people thought that of me.
The voice of disordered thought in one’s head is very illogical. I knew logically that nobody was looking at me, but I heard every bit of laughter and assumed it was people laughing at me to the point I was in tears.
Then, when something happened. I was hospitalized. Something inside me snapped. I was at the bottom of a pit of my mental health and saw no way out.
I had always been interested in the dark and scary, while I was still scared, I began to test the waters of dressing alt. Black jeans, Spencer’s skeleton shirts, combat boots, a leather jacket. I got fishnets and clothes with coffins on them, even if I was too scared to wear them at school.
The pandemic happened after that and I began freely dressing up at home because I knew nobody would see. I slowly grew more and more comfortable, and discovered I was better off this way because I felt sort of like I could control why people stared at me.
It gave me confidence. I was dressing how I wanted and I felt happy with myself for once. I’ve been slowly getting better and less anxious.
I still struggle with it, of course, but I like how I look and I can try not to care what other people think. That’s why I dress like this.
As for social media, I’m trying to make a sort of diary. I’m trying to put myself out there because I want to work on how I respond to attention. I don’t really like being praised, I don’t know how to take it and it makes me uncomfortable. Oddly, I feel more comfortable with negative attention, but maybe that’s residue left from childhood bullying. Who knows?
But I don’t want to be like that anymore. I want to share things with people and I want to interact with the world. So I’m purposely putting myself out there. I’m stepping out of my comfort zone to try to make myself more confident in myself.
That’s why I’m here.
