"Don't let your struggle become your identity."

This quote.. it doesn't matter how many times I see it, it always gets me thinking.

Right now, I'm being faced with the reality that feel like I don't know who I am without self-harm.  It's kind of hard to explain.  I mean, I know a lot about myself.  A lot.  But at the same time, there's this nagging feeling that I don't really know who I am as a whole.

It's like self-harm, that was how I identified myself, for nearly half of my life so far.  I identified myself as a self-harmer.  Not so much with other people.. with other people, I tended to not talk about my self-harming unless I absolutely had to.  But within myself.. I saw myself as a self-harmer with mental health issues, and that was about it.

I kind of failed to overlook a lot of other parts of myself that are way more important.  Like... I have a really big, vivid imagination.  I'm creative.  I love learning.. I'm full of love for the world around me.  And yet I fail to recognize all these positive pieces of the puzzle that is my life.

Today, I am three weeks free of self-harm.  It's been a struggle.  There's no denying that.

But here's the thing.  There's been a shift in the way I see myself.  I now see myself as a lot more than a mentally ill self-harmer.  I see it as a struggle that I have faced, and that I still am facing.. it's been a daily battle, and probably will be for a long time.  But even though it's been a struggle, it's not my whole life.

There is a lot more to my life than what I have done, or what difficulties I have faced.  And there are much bigger, brighter things to come in the future.   :)