I hate her, I love her

"Are you willing to let go in order to liberate yourself?" - Michael A. Singer

Somewhere along the line I started to believe that you should never tell someone your insecurities because they will eventually, and inevitably, use them against you.  I was all about self preservation, protecting myself from the hurt, rejection, and pain that the opinions of others can cause me.

I am learning now that it is not my job to protect myself from others' opinions, criticisms, and assessments of me. My job is to be so in love with who I am and who I am becoming that I am impervious to the outside world's opinions, either high or low, of me. In order for me to do that I need to silence and re-inspire the voice inside of me. Notice I am not saying this in the past tense. Just because I know this now, does not mean I have mastered it. I am constantly working on this, and I am still alive, therefore I am still a work in progress.

About silencing and re-inspiring this voice inside, first of all, I should introduce her. The voice inside my head is that of the girl/woman who has been here all along. She has grown up with me and seen it all. She was there for my first kiss, relationship, college, all the good and bad decisions I've made. If you have read the previous blogs you may realize the extent of the things she has gone through with me, and that may be the root of her opinions of me. You might think she were my best friend because we have been inseparable, but thats not the case. She is brutal, and cruel, and relentless. 

Her voice inside my head has influenced choices I have made and decisions that shape my life in a million small ways. She is the voice inside that says,"No, do not wear that, you can literally see the cellulite through your pants. You look like a whore, I know other girls wear leggings, but you can't! Did you see that girl? Her hair is amazing!" To which I reply (inside my head of course), " I wish I had hair like that, my hair never looks that good, maybe I should cut it off." Again the voice inside says, "No, don't do that because you know your face is not good enough to have all the focus, you need to cover up your fat chin and that bump on your neck with your hair. No one will think you're beautiful without your hair." I concede and say, "You're right, Im not thin enough, beautiful enough, or good enough" and so the story goes.

This voice inside is mine, but the experience of this inner self is not unique to me. We all have that voice, I would say nagging, that seems to have an opinion about everything. Now in order to make a difference in my life I am trying to separate myself from the things this voice says to me, and not believe them or give them value. 

I planned to start this blog with two short poems that I had written in the last few months, plans change obviously, but one of them was titled, "I hate her" and it was a list that went on and on about all the things I hate about myself as if I were talking about another person. I wanted to see what it felt like to be that hateful to someone else. I remember tearing up a bit as I wrote out all of the things I hate. I couldn't imagine being so wretched to another human being as I was to myself everyday. I wrote about how much I hated my appearance, my face, and pretty much everything about my body. I even laid out the occasional jab about how I am deceitful in letting others believe I'm not as horrible as I know that I am.  I will share an excerpt of this with you, but I am sure you already understand what its like to self deprecate and destroy everything about your body without even realizing you're doing it.

I Hate Her

I hate her from far away 

and from way up close,

I hate how she looks in the morning;

tired, asymmetrical, and imperfect.

I hate how she appears slender

but underneath she is hiding her fat, her stretch marks, and her shame.

Who is she to hide this?

I hate how her teeth are imperfect, never white enough, and crooked a little, 

but enough to get away with it to the untrained eye.

I hate her nose, I always have,

its too pointy, uneven and its all I can see.

I hate her scars, 

the ones on her chin, her breasts, or even her knees,

they disgust me.

I hate the way her arms get bigger when relaxed against her body, 

they look like the belly of a wale laid out on a beach,

I hate how her abdomen sticks out,

I hate her stomach for being soft and not even having an excuse,

I hate her for hiding it and making people think it doesn't exist,

I hate the way she thinks she is important 

and pretends to have it all together,

I hate that she's not as good as the next girl

and she'll never be better

A short time after I wrote the hate poem, I wrote a second. I would say this was more of a letter than poem, but how do I know? Im not a poet. I made a conscious effort to undo and compensate for the words of hatred that spilled out of my mind and onto paper about myself. I thought, if I can reframe these thoughts into something to appreciate then maybe I will learn to do so more often. I wrote what felt like a love letter, to myself, about myself. As strange as that sounds, it felt even stranger.

I Love Her

I love how her eyes remind me of her mother,

I love how strong her hair is and how it tells stories of the years, the places she has been and where she will go.

I love that her thighs remind her of her childhood bike-wreck and gymnastics no matter their size.

I love her almost invisible birth mark that spans the length from her buttocks to her knee.

I love how happy she gets when she can trace its edge with her fingers in the sunlight.

I love how she tells the stories of her scars,

one by one recounting the people she was with, the feelings, the sounds, and the times

as if she were proud to carry them with her to remind you, and herself who she is.

I love how her fingernails grow when left alone, 

without interruption they grow beautifully and strong

hardly painted or decorated, just as they are.

I love the sparsely found moles on her body,

they are among my favorite things about her,

they are her hidden little secrets.

There's one on her neck that you can only see when she has her hair pulled up,

its small and unassuming, but always there,

she has a few more but believes no one will ever know them like she does,

but I do, and I love them.

For a long time this voice inside my head served a purpose, to protect me from fear. The fear of judgement and the ensuing feelings of loneliness, embarrassment, rejection, and a plethora of other emotions I would undoubtedly feel if anyone saw the real me. 

Deep down I have been afraid of feeling these things. So I thought I needed to look a certain way, act a particular way and portray all of the things I had convinced myself I would need to, in order to avoid these feelings. What I am realizing now is that if I am impervious to my own judgments, then I am impervious to the judgements of others. I can feel more free than I ever thought possible, not by changing myself and being perfect all of a sudden but by changing my dialogue and letting go.

You remember that quote at the beginning? When I recently read that quote, about letting go in order to liberate yourself, that is what inspired me to share my stories and grow through this blog. I then had to ask myself if I was willing to let go of the insecurities I have, to let go of the secrecy of the stories of my life, and to let go of the constant need for calculation and judgment of myself and consideration of the opinions of others. 

I am ready and willing to let go and doing my best to grow and learn. I am finding everyday to be more and more liberating as I share stories of my past with you. Each day I am trying to learn something about myself and the world we live in, show more compassion to all beings, including myself, and grow in the direction of the person I am becoming. I am not perfect by any means, nor will I ever claim to be. I have come to believe that freedom from the the fear of what other people think, whether it is good or bad,  and freedom from my own judgments can be empowering and achieved. I am beginning the stages of active rebellion. 

"The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion" - Albert Camus