“I HATE HOW I LOOK. That is the mantra we repeat over and over again. Sometimes we whisper it quietly and other times we shout it out loud in front of a mirror. I hate how I look. I hate how my face looks my body looks I am too fat or too skinny or too tall or too wide or my legs are too stupid and my face is too smiley or my teeth are dumb and my nose is serious and my stomach is being so lame.
That voice that talks badly to you is a demon voice. This very patient and determined demon shows up in your bedroom one day and refuses to leave. You are six or twelve or fifteen and you look in the mirror and you hear a voice so awful and mean that it takes your breath away. It tells you that you are fat and ugly and you don’t deserve love. And the scary part is the demon is your own voice.
Hopefully as you get older, you start to learn how to live with your demon. It’s hard at first. Some people give their demon so much room that there is no space in their head or bed for love. They feed their demon and it gets really strong and then it makes them stay in abusive relationships or starve their beautiful bodies. But sometimes, you get a little older and get a little bored of the demon. Through good therapy and friends and self-love you can practice treating the demon like a hacky, annoying cousin. Maybe a day even comes when you are getting dressed for a fancy event and it whispers, “You aren’t pretty,” and you go, “I know, I know, now let me find my earrings.” Sometimes you say, “Demon, I promise you I will let you remind me of my ugliness, but right now I am having hot sex so I will check in later.
Other times I take a more direct approach. When the demon starts to slither my way and say bad shit about me I turn around and say, “Hey. Cool it. Amy is my friend. Don’t talk about her like that.“ Sticking up for ourselves in the same way we would one of our friends is a hard but satisfying thing to do. Sometimes it works.
Even demons gotta sleep.”
I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It’s when you know your licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do.
Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
(via books-n-quotes)
How do you make change happen when there is so much that you want to change? How can you take it step by step when all of it seems so crucial? How do you know if you should just accept certain things the way they are, or if you should pursue the change?
I feel as if I failed to achieve certain pyschosocial developmental milestones from since the time I was a young adolescent. As I progress in my life without addressing these missteps I fall further and further behind making it harder and harder to fix. It’s very overwhelming. Sometimes it feels like changing is improbable, impossible. I feel a little bit like I’m in crisis.
I can’t play the “fake it til you make it,” card anymore. It’s unrealistic. And I am just tired of hiding who I am and what I am struggling with. I am beyond ready to just be real, the imperfections and all. I think I need to be very honest about where I am, speak my truth, and just put my best effort forward. Every moment I am in I am consciously trying to make the right decisions that reflect my desires to change and to improve.
It’s embarrassing to me how much I try to hide because I am scared of what people will think. Why am I so caught up in this notion, still? I am just ready for the world to see this soul of mine without a care about what you/they/anyone thinks.
Part of this journey for me is letting go of my ego. God, for so god-damn long I’ve been trying to let this go. I have very low-self esteem and zero self-worth, but for some reason I feel like I am very attached my ego. Having an ego doesn’t necessarily mean you like yourself. But I do think I’m “full of myself,” that I am self-absorbed. It just happens to be all negative stuff, but it’s still all very selfish.
I want to be engaged with the world!!! This totally fucked up world! I want to help make the world a better place! I can not do that without healing myself a little bit first.
I’ve gotta change. I gotta focus on the moment, practice mindfulness, open my awareness to my surroundings, my peers, my loved ones. Stop wasting my time harming myself with negative self-thoughts and anxiety. I have to find a way out of this darkness. I’m staring by putting it all out there.
I am motivated because I feel sick, but I am also motivated because I want to be a good role model for my kids. I don’t need to be perfect for them, but I do need to be honest and real about who I am because I want them to feel like they can be that way.
In lieu of having a therapist (my latest one was a complete disaster a-hole), I want to write about my weight and body image because it’s something that’s on my mind all. the. time. This is just for my health and well-being, please don’t feel obliged to read it.
I just got back from getting my picture taken for a badge for my new job. I did my hair and put on mascara so that I could take a picture I’d be proud of wearing on my uniform every day. Spending 20 mins+ on self-care is always a very special occasion for me as I am a mother of 10 month-old twins. In fact, this was only my 2nd shower since Monday morning.
I was feeling very confident. I was wearing an outfit I feel good about. Well, the first picture she took was terrible. My smile was lethargic, I looked depressed, not to mention completely bloated. My hair was a disaster. I asked her to take a second one and it didn’t come out any better except for the fact that I tried harder to make my smile look genuine. I look like a puffer-fish and I’m completely mortified. This picture will be attached to every e-mail I send and hung from my shirt every day as part of my uniform.
It sucks to put so much effort in and have it fall flat. And there’s really nothing I can do because well this is what I look like right now!
I’m still about 20 lbs heavier than my pre-pregnancy weight. Even then, I felt like I was about 10-15 lbs over what I wanted to be.
Where did this expectation come from? Well, before I started nursing school I was an endurance athlete completing a half-marathon, marathon, and triathlon. I was in incredible shape and I felt great. Even the first 2 years living here in Columbus I was staying active and eating healthy. It all changed when my school work started to be so overwhelming.
I had to sit down, in my lonesome for the most part, and study almost every free chance I got. I stopped running and I stopped biking on a regular basis. I was basically donating $30 to the Y every month since I wasn’t ever going anymore. The only reason I wasn’t gaining a ton of weight is because of my job as PSA, which was very physical.
For the next 2 years I maintained a decent weight, but I was definitely not in shape anymore, and my eating habits were going down the tube. I was too stressed to cook on a regular basis, and the burden of that always falls on me. My husband was practically raised on fast food, so I can’t count on him to be strong on this front. It’s also a lot of work for him to eat healthy. It doesn’t come naturally to him.
Then I got pregnant. With twins. I was kind of lenient about what I ate, allowing myself to indulge. I figured if there was ever a time I could be kind to myself about my diet, now’s the time. It’s what I’ve always waited for!
My twins came early and spent a month in the hospital before we got to take them home. I ended up taking a semester off school and leaving my job so that I could take care of my little ones. They were too young and small for childcare, and my job paid me less than the cost of childcare, so it made most sense to be at home. I had to sit at home with them for the first 5-6 months of their life. Again, not engaging in a lot of physical activity. Once they were strong and healthy enough I felt confident to get out with them.
That kind of brings me to today. I’ve been walking with them on a regular basis for the most part, except for when my routine gets thrown off. This happens when my parents come to Ohio and stay with us for a few weeks. It also happened while I was completing my last semester of nursing school. And it’s kind of happening again now as I study to take the NCLEX, and the fact that we just bought a house and my husband spends the weekends there remodeling!
Basically, it’s been an enormous challenge to find ways to take care of myself. I’ve put myself at the bottom of the list because my children’s well-being means more to me. And I only have so much time and energy to get certain things accomplished. I’m their primary caregiver. I’m almost never away from them.
But I hate the way I look, and I hate the way my body feels right now. It’s adding to my depression in a major way. I hate that I can only so much right now to change that. I try to have a positive outlook on it: like this is my body right now because of all the love I’m giving my babies! I should be proud of these lumps. They’re the product of being a caring mom!
But, let’s be serious. I don’t feel sexy. I don’t feel confident. NONE of my clothes fit. I DREAD shopping for new ones. It’s all very disheartening and really bringing me down these days. I know I’m not alone, I know it’s normal, I know it’s not the worst thing in the universe....but being in the moment with all this shit really fucking sucks. It takes so much god damn effort for me to feel good, period. This is just one of the reasons why.
Do you ever think about the fact that the US has created and legitimized a system of institutionalized inequality by funding schools through property taxes? That basically a child’s education is only as good as the value of the property in their neighborhood. Funny how education is so often viewed as an equalizing factor when there is nothing equal about it.
I remember learning this for the first time as an adult. I had grown up thinking education was the great playing field leveler. So I was so furious to find out how very much it wasn’t anything of the kind.
This is a big part of why you’ll often see rich white people fussing about school district lines, because they hate the idea that their money is going towards the education of poor children.
Nothing quite chokes me up like that angry look a relative gives you, as if you’re the enemy, because of short staffing and not being able to give their loved one all the care they need. Having to balance many poorly patients, with not enough staff, means prioritising. I give patients absolutely everything on my shift, I work at over 100%, yet it’s not enough. To be looked at as if I don’t care, is too much.
I became a nurse because I wanted to help people. Being put in an environment where some days this is impossible, is beyond fucked up.
The current state of the NHS should not be ignored. It makes me so so sad that one of the most vulnerable groups in society are left in these conditions in hospital. Not being able to help someone to the toilet, not being able to help them get comfy in bed, not being able to tell their loved ones what is happening, not being able to change their incontinence pads, is completely unacceptable in the 21st century. We wouldn’t do this to children, why are the elderly left.
the phrase “curiosity killed the cat” is actually not the full phrase it actually is “curiosity killed the cat but satisfaction brought it back” so don’t let anyone tell you not to be a curious little baby okay go and be interested in the world uwu
Let’s not forget that “Jack of all trades, master of none” ends with “But better than a master of one.”
It means that being equally good/average at everything is much better than being perfect at one thing and sucking at everything else. So don’t worry if you’re not perfect at something you do! Being okay is better!
It goes to show that conformity isn’t always a good thing. And that just because more than one person has the same idea, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a good idea.
Funny how all the half-finished ones encourage uniformity and upholding the status-quo, while the complete proverbs encourage like…living exciting, eclectic lives driven by choice and personal passion.
