How do we love ourselves?
ForeverFighting
Registrant
There’s a very good thread that describes how we sometimes feel about our bodies. My wife gives me a compliment, says I’m sweet (know I’m not), handsome (HA!)--whatever, and the emotions bubble up under the surface. It’s this feeling that, Oh you have no idea. I am a horrible piece of meat. I will never look good. I am a bad person inside. How many posts have used the phrase, a rag to be used and thrown away. It’s this deep feeling to the core. I am trash. I have bad feelings. I think bad things. I am unworthy to be in your presence.
Another good thread talks about how nothing could be about "me". Everything in the universe orbited my parents and their families. Nothing was ever good enough. Oh, you play music? Play this: plop down book of impossible classical music to sight read or fail. Yeah, that’s what we thought. You’re not as good as you think you are.
There’s also the narcissistic sperm donor who used my mother and became my "father". He gets done eating and looks at my plate to see what else he can take. He lives for his own approval, and if his child actually brings him commendation from someone, then he’ll use it. Otherwise the child doesn’t exist or is annoying. Nothing else in the universe matters except "Father". (I gag on the word.) That’s my male role model. I despise everything about him. He strikes out and takes and is jealous of his own child. Any spine I might show is a challenge to him. I cannot win or I will pay a price, so I must lose. Lose the card game, lose the race, be worse on purpose or see his face change. I had to be nothing. I had to be less. Which was easy, because inside I felt I was. And if I crept slightly up, "Let him who is standing beware that he does not fall." Self worth was a sin.
So there’s this endless striving to prove, not only that I can please someone, but that I am not a slimy, used piece of despicable meat that is only pleasing to one kind of person. Or maybe I pretend I am the kind of person who actually wants to be used as a piece of meat so I can be what someone wants. I pretend I am free and open and strong because my existence is already a sin, and I feel power and acceptance briefly, but then it’s over and I’m just this.
It seems the solution to all of it is to begin to love me, to allow others to be responsible for themselves and still be OK with myself. How? How does a man rebuild everything inside that was not just forbidden, but extinguished? How does one actually feel inside, "Maybe my wife does have a reason to think I’m OK?" How does one balance the desire to feel OK with the dread of becoming like my father? How does one scrape off the layers and layers of slime and pretending and abuse and neglect to feel like I’m a good person, that I’m not somehow tainted, damaged and beyond acceptance, much less love?
This sounds horribly bleak, but it’s an honest question. How do you build the ability to care for you--not for someone else or some else’s benefit--but just because you’re you? How do we love ourselves despite everything and change the automatic ways we have been trained to see ourselves? How do I love me, believe it, and not feel like that makes me a bad person?
Michael
Another good thread talks about how nothing could be about "me". Everything in the universe orbited my parents and their families. Nothing was ever good enough. Oh, you play music? Play this: plop down book of impossible classical music to sight read or fail. Yeah, that’s what we thought. You’re not as good as you think you are.
There’s also the narcissistic sperm donor who used my mother and became my "father". He gets done eating and looks at my plate to see what else he can take. He lives for his own approval, and if his child actually brings him commendation from someone, then he’ll use it. Otherwise the child doesn’t exist or is annoying. Nothing else in the universe matters except "Father". (I gag on the word.) That’s my male role model. I despise everything about him. He strikes out and takes and is jealous of his own child. Any spine I might show is a challenge to him. I cannot win or I will pay a price, so I must lose. Lose the card game, lose the race, be worse on purpose or see his face change. I had to be nothing. I had to be less. Which was easy, because inside I felt I was. And if I crept slightly up, "Let him who is standing beware that he does not fall." Self worth was a sin.
So there’s this endless striving to prove, not only that I can please someone, but that I am not a slimy, used piece of despicable meat that is only pleasing to one kind of person. Or maybe I pretend I am the kind of person who actually wants to be used as a piece of meat so I can be what someone wants. I pretend I am free and open and strong because my existence is already a sin, and I feel power and acceptance briefly, but then it’s over and I’m just this.
It seems the solution to all of it is to begin to love me, to allow others to be responsible for themselves and still be OK with myself. How? How does a man rebuild everything inside that was not just forbidden, but extinguished? How does one actually feel inside, "Maybe my wife does have a reason to think I’m OK?" How does one balance the desire to feel OK with the dread of becoming like my father? How does one scrape off the layers and layers of slime and pretending and abuse and neglect to feel like I’m a good person, that I’m not somehow tainted, damaged and beyond acceptance, much less love?
This sounds horribly bleak, but it’s an honest question. How do you build the ability to care for you--not for someone else or some else’s benefit--but just because you’re you? How do we love ourselves despite everything and change the automatic ways we have been trained to see ourselves? How do I love me, believe it, and not feel like that makes me a bad person?
Michael
