27-28082013
 |
| Artist: Gabriel Aceves Higareda |
Because an ego point surfaced a few
days ago I've now been opening up a certain point in my past: the
birth or the trigger for my self-hate when I was an adolescent. My
older sister was a beauty pageant and a model and she succeeded well
in her career, and because the world systems defined her as
“beautiful” and rewarded her for her “beauty”, she became my
definition of beauty. Thus when I did not look like her – I
compared my pre-teen body to her adult one – I thought that I must
be something that is “not beautiful”: I started to believe that I
was ugly because I didn't look like my beauty ideal. I did not
realize that I couldn't have looked like that no matter how hard I
tried simply because my body wasn't grown up yet. I hated various
parts of myself and didn't want to look in the mirror or at pictures
taken of me. The mental weight of my issues pulled me down and so I
became slouched, chubby and weak.
When I did start to mature physically
around the age 15-17 I became infatuated with myself. There is a
specific turning point that I remember around the age 14 where I was
sitting in a car and happened to look at myself in the mirror above
my head, and I saw myself and I thought that I looked pretty: my face
wasn't ugly in the way I remembered it to have been and it had become
closer to my ideal, especially when I looked at it from a certain
perspective and kept a certain kind of an expression. For the years
to come I became glued to the mirror and the camera to bathe in the
feelgood of finally looking good.
What I realized when writing a timeline
of these memories is that every time I
still these days make myself look “good” and admire my beauty –
be it by putting on make-up or making an appearance in an event or
putting nice pictures of myself on facebook – I do it to compensate
for the self-hate that I still harbor. As a child I thought that
looking like a child was bad and ugly and I wanted to be something
else; now I happen to look like my ideal because my ideal matches my
age, body type and gender; but the fear (and the knowledge) that this
20-something phase of my physical existence will pass is there,
waiting beneath the surface, ready to sneak into my actions with
small steps, “maybe I should apply moisturizer more often”, “it
won't do me any harm to use these anti-aging creams, right?”,
“maybe just a little bit of cosmetic surgery”, “I'll photoshop
these pictures just a little” - and that's where the paranoia takes
over and I become obsessed with holding on to what I once was instead
of allowing my body to change. Of course not all changes are
inevitable – I don't have to become fat with age, for instance –
but as I age some changes are bound to happen. So every time I
“soothe” myself by showing myself how good I look, getting that
energy high, I state to myself: “It's OK that I was once ugly” -
when in fact I have never been ugly. It's my definition of
beauty that is fucked up.
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself to believe and perceive that when my mother and
sister told me I should lose weight they wanted me to do it because I
was “ugly”, filtering the reality through my self-definition, not
realizing that they were more likely actually concerned about my
health – and even if they weren't, it would have been a valid point
for me to look at.
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself to look at my sister and create an ideal of what
visual “beauty” is using her as a mold – her body shape and
size, her posture, her clothing style – because the world told me
that she was “beautiful” and that her success was because of her
“beauty”, not realizing that she is also hard-working and
intelligent and created her success through consistency rather than
just being immediately awarded for an
external quality.
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself to believe and perceive that it's valid to measure
a person's worth by his/her “beauty” and that some people are
“more beautiful” and some are “less beautiful” because I saw
this done to people in the beauty pageants my sister took part in and
everyone being OK with this arrangement.
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself to believe and perceive it is OK for me to measure
my worth by my “beauty” as defined by the ideal I created
according to what the world showed me, and I forgive myself that as a
result I accepted and allowed myself to judge myself as “not
beautiful” and start resenting myself because I believed and
perceived that if I was not “beautiful” I could not succeed –
I'd be a loser.
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself to fear that I cannot succeed if I am not what I
defined as “beautiful” - that the world would punish me instead
of rewarding me – because this is what I saw being done in the
world: arbitrary external terms dictating how a person was treated by
others.
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself to become spiteful towards my sister for being
“the beautiful one”, asking the world in bitterness why she
became “beautiful” and I did not, blaming her for being the
comparison point next to which I appeared “less” - not realizing
that she was not responsible for me comparing myself to her as she
never encouraged me to do this.
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself to create a hidden spiteful conflict of comparison
between me and my sister where I tried to compensate for my “lesser
beauty” with the skills I possessed and she didn't - the skills I
had practiced and she hadn't.
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself to fear that because of how I looked I would be a
“loser” in this world and never find acceptance, and to thus feel
excluded from others whom I perceived to look OK (not “ugly” like
me) as I perceived and believed them to be unconditionally accepted
because they looked “normal”.
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself to believe and perceive that nobody else among my
friends, peers and age group felt isolated because of their looks
because from my perspective they all looked OK – never stopping to
realize that it would be quite the chance if I was truly The Only One
who was “ugly”, and that this, too, was a point of ego where I
separated myself from others to feel “special”.
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself to hate my physical body because of it's visual
aspects that didn't fit a collection of traits (the beauty ideal) I
had compiled arbitrarily.
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself to not realize that what the world told me to be
“beautiful” was based on the admiration and idolization of youth
and an arbitrarily chosen specific kind of a body type and even
ethnicity, and that the reason these traits were advertised
was to uphold the sex system, the racial hierarchy, the gender inequality, the competition and the entertainment/distraction system – and that the beauty ideal had nothing to do with actual
beauty – health of body and soul - but only seeked to pull specific
reactions and responses from people to keep the circus running.
--
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself to seek for that energetic high I get when I
perceive myself to “look good” because it supports my self-image
(“I am pretty”).
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself to define myself as “pretty” when my looks
started to remind myself of my beauty ideal so that I would no longer
“have to” be “ugly” and would “get to” be “pretty” -
I would be a winner instead of a loser in the world system of
competition.
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself to react with fear every time I perceive my
“beauty” to be “decreasing” or to have gone “missing”,
reacting to the threat to my self-image which is my comfort in a
world system of competition (“I am pretty”, thus “I am
winning”).
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself to desire to keep my physical appearance such that
reminds me of my beauty ideal as I fear that without it I will lose
my dominant position in the world system.
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself to not realize that my body is here to practically
serve me as a vessel in this physical reality, and that the only
thing that undoubtedly matters is the practical function of my body
and its different parts – the muscles, bones, fat, tissue, organs –
and that my body will adjust to my life according to its
requirements, which may be different at different times of my life,
meaning that my body is most likely going to change and morph.
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself to not realize that my body is in constant change
as there are cells dying and being born every moment, and that it is
thus not possible for me to “stay the same” without this
stagnation having serious consequences to my body.
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself to resent the changes in my physical body because
they have broken the self-image in which I am “beautiful” (a
definition I created as an adolescent based on my sister), not
realizing that the changes in my physical body are a direct result of
how I live and that they can be taken as an indication of a
malfunction, which can then be directed.
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself to not realize that the longer I use my body the
more it wears out, and that no matter how well I maintain my body it
is one day going to be so worn out that it stops functioning.
--
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself, when and as I went to appear in the children's singing contest, to want to dress up and make myself look as pretty
as possible because I saw this to be a good chance to draw positive
reactions from others with my pretty appearance and thus get
validation through their reactions.
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself to manipulate the audience into admiring me by
making myself appear just about flashy, confident and bold enough to
appear “dominant” in a slightly intimidating way, for which I
compensated with my soft and pleasant behavior. (I'm not sure how
intentional this was, but this is what happened, and this is the
response I usually get from people.)
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself to mold my appearance to attract a certain kind of
an outcome or a specific reaction from others, not realizing that
this is manipulation in which I not only trick others but also limit
myself extensively by having already decided what I want to
experience, not allowing myself to live one breath at a time.
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself to fear appearing in public because there is a
chance of public embarrassment and to thus
try and prepare myself as well as possible by i.e. dressing up to
minimize the risk of embarrassment/failure.
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself to not admit that without something to boost my
confidence – be it a role, a costume or a script – I am nervous
to appear in public, because I don't believe that I am good enough to
pass the eye of the public without being judged.
Old definition of “beauty” (in a
person/woman):
Skinny, nice curves, big eyes, full
lips, tall, small feet, narrow face, long neck, shiny hair, white
teeth; mysteriousness, confidence, seriousness, elegance.
New definition of “beauty” (in a
person):
Whatever is healthy, practical and in
accordance with all Life.
I commit myself to search for beauty in
myself and others according to my new definition of beauty.
I commit myself to stop assessing
people according to their looks unless there is a practical reason
for it.
I commit myself to flag the moments
when I assess/judge another person by their appearance and to open
them in writing.
When and as I see myself assessing my
appearance, I commit myself to stop, breathe and ask myself whether
it has a practical reason or not. I will accept and allow no
bullshit, excuses or justifications, and I will dig around myself for
as long as it takes to find the truth. If there is no practical
reason, I ask myself what I fear and what I'm trying to cover up
under my appearance. I release the point in self-forgiveness and
breathing.
When and as I react to my looks with
fear of aging, I stop, I breathe and I realize that the condition of
my body is a result of how I live. I breathe through the reaction and
remind myself that I am still HERE, that I am the same no matter what
my body looks like. I investigate the trigger of my reaction (i.e. a
wrinkle on my face) to see what has happened in my body for it to
become like this – what have I done so that my body changed? I
search for a solution accordingly.
I commit myself to stop trying to
dominate and manipulate others with my appearance.
I commit myself to stop seeking for
acceptance, approval and attention from others by using my appearance
as a tool.
I commit myself to challenge myself to
appear in public without a role, a mask, a script, a costume or
anything else to “back me up”, and I commit myself to investigate
what kind of “back-ups” I use to boost my confidence.
Ei kommentteja:
Lähetä kommentti