Tag Archives: self worth

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Odd Trips Inward

Love and relationships have been on my mind a lot lately. I think it is mostly because of the time of year and that so many women I know are pregnant. I have been kicking things around in my head for awhile now, so, of course, I am going to over share about them here.

The most surprising realization I have had was: all you need to get love and acceptance is be willing to love and accept. Simple. Not everyone will love you, and not everyone will accept you, but people will care about you and want to be in your life.

Every living human being wants love and acceptance. It gets all mucked up in how we handle that desire, but once you realize you are worthy of love and acceptance and you decide you will love people in your life, flaws and all, then you will find it.

Some people will never accept you or love you, but you can’t help that. I used to try so hard to change myself to be more acceptable to people in my life, but I always came up short, and I was never going to be good enough. Somewhere, I don’t know where, I found people who I didn’t need to pretend with.

This is who I am. I am deeply flawed, weird, crazy, fat, socially awkward, and I will almost always, without fail, say the wrong thing at the wrong time. I am also funny, loyal, smart, honest, loving, and I find joy in making people I care about happy. If you love me and accept me, I will love you and accept you, almost without exception. (Okay, I do have an issue with people who are intentionally mean, hurtful, rude, or abusive. Aside from that, though, almost without exception.)

I am worthy of love and friendship.

I am also still deeply damaged and I am trying to figure it out how to fix me.

I don’t understand how I can see how worthy I am of friendship, but I still really don’t feel worthy of romantic love. Part of me cannot believe that someday someone fantastic will love me like I see in so many couples around me.

I believe in deep, lasting love. I have seen so much of it in my life. I believe some people are meant to be together for the rest of their lives, if they are willing to put the work into it.  I believe men can fall so madly in love with a woman that they form a pair bond so tight that are no longer whole without that other person. I just have a hard time believing that someone will fall for me like that.

Random interruption from a baby corgi

There is a reason I get into the relationships I do and why I let men I have romantic interest treat me the way I do. It is my self worth issues. I know this. I could blame it on a million things, from modern media, human nature, or being told at thirteen that I am not the type of person someone will want to sleep with because of my looks, but the truth is the reason isn’t important.

I need to look honestly at the broken parts. I need to poke at them and try to heal them. I need to admit things that people who care about me know. I have serious self-worth issues that I need to work on before I can be happy with someone else.  It would be fantastic if some man could swoop in and fix me, but I am done waiting for someone else. I have to figure out how to fix me, no one else can.

I have to finish my book for my own self worth. I need to realize all of those flaws I see are not greater than the good things about me. I have to  ask for what I want and to hold out for what I need.  I need to  learn that I could lose weight, publish books, become famous, learn social graces, but it will never be enough if I can’t accept that anyone would be lucky to have my love. I need to think I am good enough if I ever want a man to treat me like I am good enough. Otherwise, I will always need to be skinner, funnier, more successful, just different than what I am.

I need to make those crazy lady post it notes:

I am deeply flawed and broken, but I am beautiful.

I deserve to be loved like I love.

Anything else is a bunch of bullshit.

 
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Dreams

I had a dream last night that I found a review of my website in a book. It called my blog innovative, honest, funny, and a worthy read. I know there are no books that review blogs but it was a dream, several other things happened in it that weren’t real. In my dream, I was so elated.  I tried to explain to someone last night why blogging is more than pure narcissism and that it actually means something.  I know some people will never understand why this site means to me and why I am so willing to give up so much privacy to the mass world of the interwebz.

I spent so much of my early life trying to hide so much of myself. I was so closed off. I felt like I was too different to be anything of any worth. I was just too much and at the same time distinctly not enough. I always put too much pressure on myself to be something different or better than what I was. (I still do this.) I tried changing myself to fit everyone else and failed miserably. I couldn’t even fake being like other people, so I developed a coping mechanism in which I would find the part of my personality that was the most acceptable in that social situation and only show that side. I was completely myself with very few people because I felt I had to be careful what everyone saw of me. High school was a bitch and sometimes I feel like I actually started in college.

In college, I started to relax this but it took a long time. I faked it a lot at first. I decided before the first day of class I was going to talk to everyone and start over from who I was in high school and become who I wanted to be. Ironically, I met one of my best friends on that first day of college in front of our Art Survey class, we just didn’t know we were going to be best friends until a few years later. By the the last time I left college I think I was pretty good at being me. I still freak out about not doing enough or being good enough but I think that is just a core part of who I am.

I still had the tendency to be very controlling about how I showed myself. I know this part of the grown up world. I know everyone worries about appearance and presentation. I hate it. Sometimes I can manipulate parts of my personality to fit what the situation needs but I really hate it. I hate the feeling that I am going to stumble and my real personality is going to burst through. I am no good at containing what I naturally am, as a matter of fact, it makes me miserable. People tell me that not being careful about what I show or write will make my life more difficult. Trust me I know. I spent many years of my life trying to be more normal, more quiet, less reading and more sports, more make-up and high heels and less flip-flops and stupid skirts. I tried. I can’t do it. This is what  I am and trying to be anything different leads to failure.

This does relate to the the beginning, I promise. Why this blog is so important to me is because it is so very part of me. This is my place to get over those last bits of not good enough or too freaking weird. This is my place to test myself against my fear of vulnerability. This is were I learned that I am strange but I am so a like so many people. This is the one place I get to write straight out.

I have been sluggish on my book. I wrote the first twenty-five pages like I had demons in  my fingers. Lately, I have been using every excuse in the book not to write or when I do write it is forced and uncomfortable.  I think it is because I have been writing with my brain so much lately. I have been writing my blog with my brain and the book is all about the brain. I think I needed to write straight out. I needed to write something that wasn’t so controlled by my brain. I need to write on occasion without thinking about the purpose or the structure or the readability. I think I get like a balloon full of pudding. I get so strained from thinking and trying to produce and be and say and do the right thing that I feel like if I hit a corner too hard I am going to pop.

This place means so much to me and my friends who read this mean more to me because they provide me with a place to be everything I am unrestrained and uncensored. Rarely when I write here do I feel not enough or that I need to be different. Here I feel the most like I am the me that my closest friends see. I think every once in awhile the balloon needs to pop. Sometimes my heart needs to take over so I can get back to reveling in the joy of pure creativity and writing with my brain.

My life is a constant struggle for balance, like everyone one else, but I even have to do that different.

 
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What the Hell is Wrong with You?

One of my Facebook friends linked this article by Lisa Bloom on her page and it really got my blood boiling.

I need to look at the actual survey and methodology and blah blah blah but what Ms. Bloom mentions blew my little mind.

Twenty-five percent of young American women would rather win America’s Next Top Model than the Nobel Peace Prize. Twenty-three percent would rather lose their ability to read than their figures.

I stole these fact directly from her thus the indent.

Seriously. What the hell is wrong with women and society in general that almost one quarter of our women would rather not be able to read than be fat? What did we do to ourselves?

Let get this out of the way, I know it is dangerous and costly to be overweight. I know it is a serious national health problem and I know I need to fix myself. I got that, okay. Don’t be that douche that points it out. First, we all know that it bad for you to be fat. It is like telling a smoker that smoking is bad for them. Saying something does not inform people, it just makes you seem like a self-righteous, pretentious ass. The women who would rather be illiterate than fat are not concerned about their health, in fact they probably tan, they are being shallow.

I am ashamed for us women. What are we allowing? What are we teaching our daughters? What are we teaching our sons? I think women all over the country should be outraged that so many of us consider our only real asset is our looks. How can anyone be okay with that?

Its okay that you are dumb sweetie as long as you stay hot as long as you can and make sure that when you start to “lose your looks” your husband is willing to pay you good alimony.

Are you freaking kidding me?

When I think of all of the women that have struggled in the generations before us so we could be more then just beings made for our reproductive organs and the ego boost our owners get from having us. This article makes me so sad for those women’s rights crusaders who have to see it.

This is no longer the man keeping us down. This is us. We are allowing ourselves to be judged purely on our looks and we are refusing to stand up for ourselves. We buy into the mindset that a women cannot do well in corporate America unless she looks a certain way. (It is just the way of the world…. BULLSHIT! Stand up and rage against it.) Feminist has become a dirty word. We think it means some crazy woman who hates men and wants to destroy our femininity. I felt the same way. This article changed this for me.

Screw it.

My name is Selina Scott and I am a feminist. I believe I have the right to breed as much or as little as I want. I have the right to be paid as much as an equal male counterpart. I believe that I am not the weaker sex, I believe I just have different strengths than men. I believe that my value is not in my looks but in my brains and my heart. I believe women have a responsibility to their world to make it judge them on their actual value. I believe we have a responsibility to think. I believe we have to stand up in big and small ways and shake our fists at injustices. I believe we should stop shunning and judging and start caring and supporting. I believe we need to love ourselves for ourselves and surround ourselves with people that love us for who we are and not what our jacked up society thinks we should be.

Stand up. Get mad. Tell your daughters, nieces, younger female friends to have self-respect and to demand respect in return.

My name is Selina Scott and I am a feminist. I am fat. I am smart and funny and caring and loyal and hopeful and when I smile the world smiles back at me. I believe my value has nothing to do with my looks. If you cannot get past the outside, then I cannot help you.

 
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