This is a bare bones blog look for now, until I can find the time to make it pretty. But it kind of works because what I'm needing to talk about isn't really that pretty at all.
Why do we hate ourselves?
More specifically, why, when I look in the mirror, am I so fixated on negative things that I cannot move forward and move on with my day? Why do I feel trapped in a less than ideal body? Especially when I have friends and family tell me day in and day out that I'm beautiful. Why can't I own that? Where is the confidence? Why is it okay for us as women, or more specifically, myself, to be so wrapped up in what's on the outside that it doesn't matter who I am inside?
I used to think that eating correctly and exercising was the only way that I could ever feel comfortable with myself, but I'm beginning to realize it goes even deeper than that. I have been eating clean (well, primarily, with a few slip ups here and there) for over a year. I recently went a lot more strict simply for health reasons....but I find myself falling into the same old habits. I stopped intermittent fasting because I felt so good when I was starving I wanted to keep going. I wake up every morning and weigh myself. I weigh myself when I come home from work. These are not healthy habits. I am still obsessed with my weight, even though I lost 40 pounds last year, even though half of my jeans now fall off of me, it is never enough. I still am not beautiful. And I'm beginning to think that even if I lose this last twenty pounds, I will still obsessively return to the scale. I will still think of myself in my 200 pound state. I will still hate myself.
If this is exhausting for me, I can't imagine how exhausting it is for the people who love and care about me. To constantly have to build me up and remind me that I'm not a horrendous creature from the black lagoon, I am beautiful. To constantly have to affirm me and reassure me of things that I should already know. And it's the same way with strangers, or people who could love me. In the past year of my singleness, the common denominator in my failed attempts at romance hasn't been that I'm too fat (though my ex boyfriend did use those words once) or that I'm not pretty enough, it's that I have zero sense of self worth. I can see this becoming a pattern in my life and it terrifies me. After all, who wants to spend their life with someone who is so uncomfortable in their own skin? Who wants that type of woman to be an example for their children, especially if they are little girls? If I had a daughter and she grew up with this opinion of herself, I would feel like a failure as a parent. Furthermore, who wants to be with someone who obsesses over every tiny piece of food they put in their mouth and is besieged with guilt for the rest of the day over something as innocent as fruit (because sugar content, of course).
I think that my mind is beautiful. I know that I am intelligent and creative and a queen at trivia. I know that I have a good voice and am a good writer. I am confident in my quirkiness and feel no shame for my obsession with Lord of the Rings, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and X-Men. I know who I am, and I like my insides. But in boiling my worth down to the way I look on the outside, I am effectively saying that the way I look is infinitely more important than who I am as a person, regardless of how awesome that person is.
And the scariest part is I don't know how to calm down. I don't know how to look at a candid picture of myself and be happy with what I see. I want to, desperately. I want to see in me what others see in me. But I don't know where to begin. And that terrifies me, because I can see myself losing the people I care about. So now the question becomes, how do I change my perception of myself? How can I look in the mirror and be in love?
Why do we hate ourselves?
