maanantai 21. tammikuuta 2013

Days 121-122: Believing the bullies


20-21012013

This post is a continuation to: Day 116: Fear of my past self as a motivator


  • the remarks I received from other kids about my body that led me to comparing my body to those of others
I remember as a child around 8-9 years old receiving remarks about the shape of my head and I was given a nickname based on it. I became ashamed of the shape of my head and every time I looked at my face in the mirror I would be dissatisfied with the shape of my head and think I was ugly because of it. Every feature on my face was wrong: my chin, my cheeks, my skin, my nose, my moles, my hairline, every single detail was somehow “distorted” and “just wrong”. I learned to shape my face with my hair, meaning I would use my hair to frame my face in such a way that complimented my facial features and hid the shape which I considered ugly. I learned to hide behind my hair. This continued on and on until just a few months ago when I started to wear my hair differently, out of my face and revealing my head and face in its actual shape, size and formation.

I can't remember if I was ever actually called fat. This is very interesting because I have somehow always thought that I was – it might be that I have, but right now I cannot recall such a moment. If I didn't form the self-definition of being fat from the remarks of others, where then? I guess I could've done it all by myself simply through comparison: as I learned from my society (media, family, friends) that looks were important and that there were such things as “ugliness” and “beauty” and that one would either win or lose based on these attributes, I created a fear of being ugly / losing and constantly checked myself and others to see if I was winning or losing. Mostly I was losing, and this led to depression, anxiety and a round 15 years of self-suppression, self-limitation and self-abuse.

So it's no wonder I find it so difficult now to stand within myself, as I have learned to constantly hide myself and think less of myself. It's been more than a fucking decade of belittling myself.

  • my mother and sister encouraging me to lose weight
I know they were concerned about my health, at least mostly. I guess hey might have also been afraid that I would not “make it” in this world if I became ugly – they knew how the system works as cruelty towards the petty and rewards for the pretty. I'm guessing it has been genuine worry for my well-being, and so I shall not ruminate on it no more. They meant it as advice, as a wake-up, but I took it personally, as though they were making a statement that I am not okay as I am and that I need to become an ideal (like my sister, who was an ideal to me) to be good enough. So the issue here is that I had created a bitter ideal based on my sister: she had faced success and admiration because she was beautiful. To me she represented ultimate winning, whereas I saw myself to be the ultimate loser. Thus I wanted to be like her and was constantly jealous of her, even though I simultaneously admired her and was happy for her success. She became a weapon to me with which I could smack those who bullied me: “I have a beautiful successful sister watching my back, don't you mess with me!” Lol, I'm not sure what the logic here is. As I couldn't/wouldn't become her, I would take advantage of her like a sidekick attaching myself to her so that I could bask in her glow. “I can't shine – she can shine for me – I don't have to learn how to do it myself.”

So as she literally embodied my ideals, her telling me to lose weight or to watch what I eat made me resent her words. I would not take them seriously from her. I would take them as an attack and defend myself with excuses and justifications. Even though she was an “ally” I saw her as an enemy, because she was winning and I was losing, and I thought I would always lose to her – that there is no way I could climb that ladder as I thought I was born ugly and she beautiful. It was like being friends with your worst enemy.

I guess I didn't also properly understand the health issues they were trying to discuss with me, as in what sugar and fat do to my body and what the actual consequences are. Also, I was way hooked into eating/snacking/sweets by then and was unwilling to face my addictions, and so I evaded all attempts to turn me around.

  • the pudgy kid who was despised by all, bullied by all, ignored by all
I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear being despised, bullied and/or ignored by others if I become the way I was when I experienced these things as a child.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to associate being despised, bullied and ignored with the way I look because as a child I came to understand that that was the reason I was mistreated.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that the way I look / the way my body is shaped was not the actual reason for others to start despising, bullying and/or ignoring me, but that it only served as a trigger to whatever issues they were facing themselves.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to blame myself for the reactions of others.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not question the validity of the actions of others, believing myself to be the reason for their behavior because I did not understand what was happening and drew conclusions from their words which were the only explanation I was offered.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to start to doubt myself based on the words of another, for example starting to ask myself “am I ugly” when another says “you're ugly”, not actually looking at the facts to determine whether this was true or at all relevant but only looking at an image of myself through a filter of expectations and fears, and not looking at my reaction (of fear) to these remarks which made me want to check the claim.

  • I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to react with fear to a demeaning statement from another because I have learned that if I am what the statement implies (“less than”) I will lose / am losing / have lost in “everything” (social games, life, all competition – a general sense of being a loser in everything even though I had not defined what I was actually losing in). *
  • I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself, when and as I react with fear to a demeaning statement of another, to instantly check myself to see if I'm “safe” or not – to determine whether the claim has any evidence to support it.
  • I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that as I am making this assessment I am making it from the starting point of fear as my initial reaction was that of the fear of losing.
  • I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to assess my external qualities driven by fear energy without me stopping myself to realize these external factors and the assessment thereof is not relevant at all.
  • I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to perceive and believe another to have power over me as I saw the opinions of one's surroundings to affect the quality of one's social life, which to me as a child was most of my life as I spent most of my time in school and became attached and dependent on the social environment of school.
  • I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that all the effects of the opinions of others are accepted and allowed into existence by each and every individual involved, and that by not accepting and allowing the effects of the opinions of others to come into existence through me I carry my responsibility of not buying any of this bullshit and not allowing our fuck-ups to keep on existing unnoticed.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that others were exerting their self-accepted and -allowed issues on me based on whatever justifications they could come up with, for example the way my body was shaped, and that how they treated me had thus nothing to do with me but was them showing who they actually were – them showing their “true skin”.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear those who despised, bullied and/or ignored me, not realizing they too are acting out of fear and that we're all just afraid and really fucking confused.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize all of us (especially us kids) were just as equally fucked up, frightened and confused and that instead of buying into the coping mechanisms / defense mechanisms of others and reacting accordingly (with fear) I could've seen their reactions and actions for what they were (fear) and realized I do not need to defend myself, nor do I need to counter-attack, as these actions would only validate the existence of fear.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear the attacks of others because I have not understood why others have been behaving this way and create a fear towards that which I cannot predict and thus control.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to create a fear of human interaction because I fear I will be attacked for no other explainable reason than me not being good enough.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to see all attacks towards me as personal because as a child I have learned to interpret the attacks of others this way.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that the attack of another is not my “fault” if my intention has not been to provoke such a response.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to shut down in the middle of conversation/conflict/interaction if I perceive myself to have been attacked as I take the perceived attack personally and sink into the feeling of “not being good enough”. *



I commit myself to realize there is no such a thing as an “insult” as everything that I perceive to be “personal” is actually self-created, self-accepted and self-allowed as interpretation, imagination, projection and guesswork.

When and as I react to something another says with emotional pain, saying to myself “that hurt”, and thinking it was the intent of another to cause me pain - I stop, I breathe and I realize that no matter the intentions of another I am the one who accepted and allowed the reaction to occur within myself and that the words of another were simply a trigger to a point in me that I have not dealt with. I then investigate the point at hand through writing, self-forgiveness and self-correction.

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