Okay, let me give you some background, so you cats can understand were this is all spinning from. Kathleen turned me on to two things: the documentary I Am and the book Women Food and God by Geneen Roth. These two things kind of help solidify somethings that have been, and continue to, bounce around in my head.
I don’t really know where to begin.
Well, I guess I kind of do.
I hate myself. Not all of myself, but I do hate parts of myself. I think everyone does. I don’t know a single woman who doesn’t grit their teeth and break into a sweat when they think of something they have done/thought/wished. I don’t know a single woman who isn’t terrified that someone will find out something about them and hate them or fears that if they don’t do something right then everything around them will crumble.
I try to fix me. I have been constantly trying to fix me since as far as I can remember.
I look at me from the outside and I realize me is pretty damn outstanding, but when I look at the me from the inside I see the bits that I hate myself for.
First order of business; no more feeling guilty and cringing when I say something like “I look at me from the outside and I realize me is pretty damn outstanding.” I have spent my life humbling myself to the point I have no idea who I am or what I am worth. I cringe at the idea of accepting that I might be amazing or even just good because it feels arrogant and arrogant is not okay, or I fear that someone will come along and point out how unamazing I am, and I will be crushed. So, I deal with it by not believing it and not even opening myself up to that chance. If someone feels the need to point out my flaws in an unkind way, and many people have, it is their shit not my shit.
Second order of business: Learning to look at people and saying, “that is your shit, not my shit, I have enough shit of my own, so please keep your shit to yourself thankyouverymuch.”
The 13 year-old me who was told, “Selina, we aren’t the type of people that people want to have sex with just because of the way we look” would have greatly benefited from “your shit, not my shit.”
Third order of business: Stop trying to fix myself until I give myself enough room to learn what is really wrong. I live in this constant fear that if I am not constantly working for some goal or trying to achieve something then I am a waste.
In my head, there are two huge sins: being unkind and being a waste.
I commit unkindness every day, but mostly to myself. I never feel like I am enough. That is some stupid bullshit. I will never be kind to myself until I get over this idea that I will finally be enough when I have done more things.
I need to be able to look at those things that hurt. I need to poke them until I feel them and deal with them and then be okay with them.
I get so annoyed with myself because I feel like I am so flawed that I am unlovable. It drives me batshit that bits of me still cling to the fear that if I let people see everything in my soul that they will run away screaming.
This idea hurts so bad that when I look at in the face I almost can’t breath.
I think if I magically fix myself then I will find the love of my life and if I only show them the good bits then they will love me forever.
Saying it out loud makes me see how silly it is. Maybe instead of trying to fix it, I should just see it, poke it, and accept it. Maybe if I accept that I feel this way, I can start to believe that nothing I do will make someone love me more. They either love me or they don’t, I can’t control it.
I feel guilty that I get to do this thing in my life right now. I feel like good people who do things well and right don’t stop worrying about money and trying to survive to do something that might never turn into something. I feel guilty that I have stepped away from responsibility and decided to do what I want. I feel guilty that my dad shoulders that responsibility for me. If I fail, I effect no one. If I don’t write or publish, I am the only one effected. I feel guilty about that. I don’t know what to make of that yet.
The only moments of my life when I feel like I am enough is sometimes when I write. Right now, I feel enough. Right now, I feel like sitting here pushing and poking the things that hurt trying to understand them is good enough. I feel like I mean something right now.
I don’t understand. I don’t really know what any of this means, or if it means anything at all. I do think I need to stop putting value judgements on everything I do. I need to start treating myself like I treat the people I love.
Maybe I should learn to be okay with just being. That just doesn’t sound right.
Okay, I’m going to bed now. At 6:11 am. I am going to attempt to not pout a value judgement on it.
sonofabitch. I just did
2 comments
I <3 you Miss Selina.
I love this post, because so much of it I can relate to. The whole “Your shit, not my shit”? Spot on. My mother was a very abusive drug addict who spent a couple of vacations in a mental hospital. I remember her once screaming at me when I was about 14 asking was I trying to drive her crazy and put her back in the hospital again? Somehow implying it was my fault she’d gone there to begin with. I didn’t find out until I was 16 that her last stint there had been for cocaine rehab. Her shit, not my shit, but that was the kind of thing she did and I grew up with major self esteem issues because of it.