I've been on a tight schedule lately, to help me situate myself and ease my anxiety. I wake up at five exactly, stretch, and then head to school. I then leave school at three, eat a healthy snack at 3:30(ish), start homework at 4 and finish it at 5-6 (although since I'm a junior in highschool I've gotten almost 6 and a half hours of homework in one night, that was last week. That's what I called torture) and then I eat dinner. Afterwards I head to my dance studio where I work out from 7-8. And then I dance from 9-2 or 3. Then I head home and sleep and repeat. Somedays where I don't have homework my schedule is earlier making my life easier. This has helped keep me grounded and from falling into the depths of hell that I call depression. Especially the exercising (not saying that's 100% worked I went through a depression spurt recently I'll get to that later) so this schedule has helped me a lot.

Now we get to the other shite. My depression. He came to me in the night and showed me my rape, and then my physical assault at school. He decided to clutch onto my shoulders until I couldn't bear. He brought me to the highway. He controlled my thoughts. It was Saturday, my mom was at work and my dog sleeping, a peaceful early morning. I exited my apartment and climbed the fence which protected where I live. Between my fence and highway was a field of grass. Keep that in mind, it's important later. I stood at the edge of the highway ready to leave, I wasn't in control, but I was smiling and crying. I don't remember who but a man on a motorcycle stopped and pushed me away from the road. He cradled me (a complete stranger) as I cried. We sat like that for an hour. I eventually calmed down and he asked me what was wrong. I broke again and cried as I told him in vivid details of my rape and my assault at school. He helped me up and assisted me to my apartment. Where we continued to talk (keep in mind this man was old enough to be my father and he acted like a real true father, something I never got) eventually he left when he knew I was in a stable mindset. He told me before he left that he understood where I was coming from. He has PTSD from Iraq. He lost his best friend in front of him. It was sad but he understood where I was coming from. So another attempt gone. Thankfully. I'm safe now and stable.

I haven't been completely happy with my body. I did gain a bit of weight recently from all the bing eating. And a lot of it accumulated in the tummy area. It made me feel bad about myself (I went from 140 to almost 180 in the span of a week) I was talking to my friend and she said she's been looking for her own happiness with her body. She's finding hers quickly, but she also doesn't have all the past trauma I've had, so I told myself I needed to get my shit together and get back to 140. With the excessive exercise I can say I'm now at 145. And that's helped. But it doesn't help that I don't know me. Which brings me to my next point.

Because of what happened to me (I'm talking about my rape) I had to remake myself as everything I was, was ripped away from me. I never got to know my child self. My child self was a girl who grew up to fast and realised how dark this place is. So I'm having to dig deep to find that little girl and I guess release her so I can find the new me, so I can forgive myself for letting my brother rape me. So starting anew starting this Saturday with a new hair colour!!! (It's gonna be a silver blue I think) 

Continuing with the body topic, I'm androgynous (meaning I don't perceive myself to a specific gender or I look both genders) it's frustrating because, well *ahem* (excuse me for this next part lol) boobs exist!! *Ahem* I'm not a big fan of them. I'm not a big fan of my physical body because it's very feminine. So I struggle with feeling comfortable. My friend gave me the best advice. She said "try new things. Go out on a limb and buy a slutty bra just because you want itm same goes for boxers. You have to experiment to see what your comfortable with. Then you can start to appreciate the body under the clothes." Which helped me a lot. She also said "learn a slutty song. Use your body to your advantage to get to know it." So I'm doing just that. This weekend I'm buying myself boxers and a fancy bra and look at clothes that I might be more comfortable in. 

This is more about my assault, so TW!!! In elementary and middle school I had a lot of bullies. They'd verbally abused me and eventually physically. For example one of their favourite things to do was pin me against the wall and choke me or slam my head against the wall. And if I was walking, they'd slap their hands on my shoulder. So very rough. Now flash forward to the other day. My friends can get kinda aggressive (in a loving way, I know they love me and would never want to hurt me) I'll use two of my closer friends as an example. So I was messing around with my friend kat. We pretend flirt with eachother. So she grabs my neck where those kids would choke me. She was of course gentle but my immediate reaction was to close my eyes and let my head fall forward. She let me go and of course I smiled afterwards. So we continued to mess around and this time she pulls my hair. We're sitting side by side. My legs are to my chest. I immediately put my head to my knees. My other friend Sean grabbed Kat's hand and yanked it away. And again I smile and fix my hair. They don't know about my bullies, it's not important, but they do know my signs of anxiety. And hair pulling was one that day. It was an observation that a teacher (one of my favourites questioned me about later on in her class) so know two teachers know about my PTSD and anxiety. 

Finally me and my friends like to mess around when we hang out (i.e go to random strangers and strike up a conversation.) Let me rephrase that, my friends like to do that, I'll watch. I have major social anxiety, so keep that in mind. My friend was like "Loey, you should totally see if you can get a strangers number" of course I took the challenge. And of course it went south. When my social anxiety kicks up I start to cry if something doesn't go well. So a guy I was talking to just straight up said no. My friends were laughing. One of them came to my rescue and helped me try to flirt. So I tried and it almost resulted in me getting slapped. My friends met up with me and I started to cry. They of course comforted me. Telling me it's okay. They bought me boba tea (like the stereotypical Asian people they are. I mean no offense to that we joke about how often they buy boba tea and say it's an Asian thing, so don't get offended) and we walked home afterwards. Because after an anxiety attack I'm very disoriented and exhausted we went back to my friends house where we just cuddled all 5 of us and sipped boba while watching a Korean murder movie. I know that's not important but they're important to me. Anyway,

Anyway, I don't know what I was trying to say here. I guess just to vent, it's been hectic recently. I guess a question I have is does anyone have any other ideas to help me feel more confident in my skin?

Thanks and sorry for the long ass thing,

Shu-