I've been having a lot of thoughts on this. These days society has moved toward telling everyone 'you're beautiful! everything about you is beautiful so just love yourself! you don't actually have flaws!' and it's not that that's a bad thing, I think that it's a step in the right direction. But I know that it has made it hard for me in some ways. I know that there are parts of me that aren't nice to look at or beautiful or pretty. But everyone is stuck insisting that these are beautiful.
I'm being vulnerable, opening myself up and sharing that there are things I don't like about myself, and someone is just shouting over me, saying 'you're wrong! Your feelings are invalid because I see things differently and you should feel the same way as I should even though we are strange and complex and we can't choose how we feel!' And yeah, that kind of hurts. If I could easily change the way I saw myself, wouldn't I? But not only does it make me feel like I should pretend these things don't exist, it also means that I am ill-equipped to work through these problems I'm having. I don't know how to deal with the fact that I don't like parts about myself because everyone is saying there are no parts to change. And if I can't focus my dislike on any particular part, sometimes it just becomes all-encompassing and I just hate hate hate myself. I hate my appearance. I hate my personality. I hate that I can't change this. Everything about me. I'm the worst version of myself that I can be.
And yet I still find myself fixated on parts that I don't like and maybe that particular part might not be attractive, but that doesn't make me as a whole unattractive and I want to learn to accept and believe that. But here's the thing. Me being unattractive really shouldn't bother me. I wish it didn't. But it does. And now the question I have to think about is how can I respond to this? Where does this comes from?
Maybe my face isn't great. Maybe my cheeks are too round or my smile isn't symmetrical or I'm just not that nice to look at in general. But this doesn't make me any less lovable, intelligent, worthy, or capable and that's something I have to constantly remind myself.
I often wonder why I find myself caring so much. And I always return to the same thing. I think it comes down to an underlying fear that I'm not enough. That nothing I can do is enough. And that's really scary. To be constantly judging myself and always always always coming up lacking.
There's a small part of me that likes this though. Likes hating myself. Cringes away from the times that I look in the mirror and don't mind what I see. And so even though I read tips on improving body confidence and even though I know steps that I can do to get to a place where my mental health is better, I don't. I don't want to. And I don't know why.
This past summer, I heard a girl say something to her friend that really resonated with me. "You don't need to be perfect. You just need to find someone who will take you as you are."
There's no winning in this internal game that I'm fighting against myself. But at least now I'm trying.
This was a bit of a mess, but I'll let it go for now. Merry Christmas!
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