5 after midnight (Autobiography of 17 years)

It's July and my existence has been seventeen years of feeling inadequate and telling lies to everyone including me. I've spent too many winter's nights bleeding myself dry for others because I couldn't face the fact I was bleeding for myself. I disappear from people's lives too often without explanation. I'm in the middle of writing 10 different books and watching 14 different television shows, because I have trouble finishing what I start.
I forget to wash my face most days, or I'll forget to rinse the soap off before toweling dry. I most often forget the largest parts of people like whether they had braces or what their eye color is. I write clever little one liners I never do anything with. I fall in and out of infatuation so quickly I still don't know how to handle any affections, especially my own. I still can't accept a compliment gracefully, and I don't know what to say when people say "I love you." When people like me, I spend too much time convincing myself they hate me instead.
I'm seventeen and don't you believe for a second I didn't spend a majority of my time fearing living a lonely unfulfilled life, and don't you dare think I believe I'm beautiful.
I am seventeen year old and I spent 4 years crying far too often over too many small things and opening my wrists and starving myself because I didn't deserve to eat. Or exist. I spent 4 years convincing myself I wasn't worth it, while also teaching myself everyone else was. I'm seventeen and I spent my senior year of high school, the last 11 months, learning that I was sad, but death and starvation were not problem solvers, they were destruction and I didn't need to destroy myself to escape the me that I hated.
I spent time figuring this out, and more time living in the eye of the storm, where it was calm, but I was confused at the tranquility. And then I dove into the other side of the hurricane headfirst, and got helped along that side by those friends I didn't know I had, until I was out. I kicked and screamed and fought, and finally found my way out.
Look ahead 2 months, I will be turning 18; I will stop apologizing for how I feel, and I will try to be more honest with myself and those around me because honesty is something everyone deserves. I'll be eighteen and I will have to finally say, I deserve to exist and I belong here.
Because the thing no one ever really mentions is that, after the hurricane, people start picking themselves back up immediately. And everything, in time, bounces back. No one told me that, until I heard from Sarah Kay all about the flowers at Hiroshima. But everything, in time, will bounce back. Resilience is coded into everything living.