I hated myself. Plain and simple.
I hated how I looked, how I spoke, my hair, my skin, my eyes, the way I thought, the way I didn’t fit into the required size of anything even remotely related to perfection and nothing I did was good enough for anyone but most especially myself. I just didn’t like me.
And it wasn’t until I started college that I began to question that hatred. Why does the very glance of myself in the mirror or in pictures make me flinch? Why do I criticize myself so harshly to the point that I can’t function?
The answers weren’t pretty. Neither was the fact that I wasn’t the only one.
From the minute we’re born, women around the world are expected to be the perfect machine to the human race. We must be beautiful but not vain, smart but not arrogant, never too ambitious because remember, ladies, we have a reproduction system for a reason: to produce babies! Yes, we live, but always under the following conditions given to us by society so we don’t bring shame to ourselves or the people around us. We must be a certain height, build, weight, skin color, hair color, hairstyle, to please the eyes. If you’re pretty enough, don’t bother with the make-up, you’re so lovely! But if you’re not, add an extra layer of that powder to hide those flaws.
(Photo by Lydia Lynne)
We’re expected to educate ourselves but only for a certain period of time. Don’t bother making plans for that PhD! You have to have a child before you’re thirty and before those ovaries dry up! But be married. With a man, too! And be rich. As for those certain urges you feel, better keep it behind closed doors or bottled up, you wouldn’t want to be classified as anything even related to promiscuous. Think of the reputation! And don’t bother making friends with other women. They’re all your enemies. Hate them for what they have and for what you don’t. They’ll be doing the same thing to you. And this isn’t to say that men have it easy, either. So much pressure to inject just enough testosterone into your system is enough to make anyone go insane. They have to be manly and not too emotional, else they’ll be downgraded to the same level as women.
Oh, the horror.
Now, given these facts, I’m not too sure that I like not liking myself.
Because this world is so immersed in the illusion that is perfection, we, both men and women, have resorted to destroying ourselves to achieve even an inch of that artificial glow. We’ve created these monsters in our heads–an evil doppelgänger who looks and acts like us, only better, and whose very purpose is to destroy us, taunting us with the promise of perfection and happiness that can be achieved just as soon as you lose those extra five pounds.
And we allow it to happen.
And it’s hard to make it go away. It’s hard to talk about it with anyone without being afraid of being minimized or insulted because “things seem like they’re going so well, how could you be so self-absorbed and worrisome?” This only makes it worse. We shut ourselves away from families and friends, and drown in the social media, where everyone’s well-dressed and smiling and having the best time ever. Who can love this creature that is myself?
But in all of this chaos, the nightmare can end. We can break the addiction to hatred and stop turning ourselves into our own worst enemy.
We must learn to be kind to ourselves. To turn off the TV and close the laptop when the bomb of self-destruction is about to explode. When the anger and anguish of “why can’t I be good enough?!” brings you to tears, allow yourself to shed them and not to destroy everything else around you. To tame that monster that is you, me, all of us, we must be gentle, compassionate, and heal the scars we inflicted upon and onto ourselves. Listen to good music and dance in your underwear; make food you like and that makes your body feel good, too; go out and drive or walk for miles and miles; Write, draw, paint, scream, act, run, use what you have and create something that will make you smile, even cry.
It’s not easy. There will always be days when your reflection makes you want to bury yourself in dirt and vanish from the world. But it’s in that moment that you have to try to find the good things–those small quirks that you like and know that no one else has, and that without those quirks, this world wouldn’t be the same. Be forgiving to your flaws, and accept the mistakes as lessons. There’s a Zen proverb that always helped me when I begin to obsess over the smallest things: “Let go or be dragged.” And it’s universal, you can relate it to problems as well as people.
If there’s something you don’t like, change it, but do it for you. Not because some magazine or relative or friend told you. It’s your body, you were born with it. If you want to get a tattoo, shave your head, dye it blue, get contacts, glasses, have a baby, not have a baby, get married, stay single, get piercings, have sex, not have sex, change, as long as you are happy with who you are, what others think will be the last thing on your mind.
Surround yourself with goodness. It can be your family, or your friends, or just you. Cut the strands of poison others latched on to you, and don’t feel guilty for it. Don’t feel ashamed to seek professional help, either. It’s a slow process, and every step is a great achievement.
And, as the wise saying goes, treat others the way you want to be treated. No one is your enemy so don’t treat them that way.
To this day, maybe always, you will wake up in the morning and think, why bother? Nothing will change. There’s nothing worth seeing or experiencing in this world that isn’t related to hurting. But if you get out of bed, shower, dress, and step out of that door, you are that thing that’s worthwhile in the world.
Please, don’t forget that.
**All images and GIFs were found in Google.