A point about myself that I've always taken pride in is that I'm abnormal. Not the sort of abnormal that would have gotten me shut away in an insane asylum 100 years ago, but I have my own way of doing things.
When I was about six years old, I distinctly remember someone from my class say that I was 'weird', and I thanked them. Not only were they confused, but I was pleased by it. My parents will tell you it's because I've always been a contrary person, but even if that's the reason, I've reveled in being an oddity as long as I can remember. And though I possess this self-assured part of my nature, I've had a long, hard road to learn to love myself. Just like every person in the world (I know I make that disclaimer at least once every post, but I feel it's important to remind myself that I'm not alone in my challenges).
Until I hit college, I didn't find my passions or the people who shared them. Heck, I've still got a billion passions to find - but now I know that there are people out there who share them. It's been an amazing formative journey to discover that even though I'm offbeat, I'm not all alone out there. Dragon*Con and RenFest are a couple of those places that are stuffed full of people that make me feel normal, oddly. I have several friends who've visited those environments and said that it was too freaky for them - but those are the places that are just chock-full of people who make my life a home.
So imagine my shock and surprise when, today, I was named a 'weird' by a good friend of mine, and it actually stung! I'm relatively sure that I actually recoiled at the term being flung at me, and it's been bothering me all day.
I still can't pin down what exactly it was that bothered me so about the incident. Maybe it was the venom with which it was spat, as this is someone that I truly hold dear to me. Maybe it was a moment of vulnerability (clearly, I've been having too many the past few days). Or maybe, I'm just trying to find my footing, as I'm preparing to no longer be living in an environment where nerdiness and geekdom are celebrated. Regardless, it was one of those moments that make everything slip a little out of focus, and make you view your entire life differently.
And the reset that has occurred within my brain today is telling me that clearly, me liking being called 'weird' was just me being cheeky all these years - which means that I *am* weird, it's not something to be proud of, and I should fix it. *sigh* I know it's not right, but that's what came out of it.
Learning to love yourself takes time and effort - probably just as much, or more, effort than a relationship with someone you know *really* well. And every time you screw-up, you realize that the person that most has to forgive the mess-up is yourself. I'm not good at that. While I love aspects of my personality, the self-guilting is something I really need to attack and defeat within myself. I dwell on the negative that I find inside of me, rather than approaching it as a learning and growing opportunity.
Admitting that you have a problem is the first step towards solving it. We'll find out, won't we?
Thursday, April 26, 2012
Monday, April 23, 2012
On Relationships, Self-Worth, and Transitions - Part II
Self-Worth.
Super fun time topic!
This has come up a lot in the past weeks, and after a conversation last night, I feel like I want to write about it to kind of get some of my ideas down and out for my mind to sort itself.
Amidst being around Georgia Tech, trying to graduate, self-growth and change, relationships developing and ending, and learning about myself, I've had a lot of people question my self-worth and self-care over the past months. So this may be a little befuddled, but here are my thoughts.
One thing that has come up a lot is people reflecting on my weight - I've lost a lot of weight over the past two years, through tremendous effort (and to some degree just through stress), and am proud of myself for being healthier and feeling better.
That being said, I've had more people than I can count comment that I'm 'skinny', 'thin', or just 'going down an unhealthy road'. Allow me to be crude for a moment - seriously people, what the fuck are you saying?
I have not gone to the doctor recently for a BMI/BFA recently, but I am not lacking in body fat. My mother, lord love her, is chief among these offenders - it may just be cultural propensity to fatten your children up, but I've felt hugely antagonized about my weight for the past several months. While I'm smaller than I was - while I have a waistline and more defined bone structure in my face now - I am not too skinny.
PLEASE, understand this - I am not saying that I'm fat. I'm not saying I need to lose weight. I am saying that I have curves - I still have 'problem areas' and bits of myself that have a significant amount of fat on them.
I am, however, ok with that.
It's taken me (literally) YEARS to come to terms with my body and my self-image. Just like with every human on this planet, I don't find my physical self perfect - but I do like myself. I know how blessed I am in terms of being pretty and relatively able to control my body weight if I put my mind to it. I am coming from the direction of being someone who used to hate herself, though, and am trying to look at myself realistically now.
Another factor that affects the way I address myself is my complicated relationship with humility. When I was little, I took the biblical lessons of humility and pride to heart. It has always been an effort for me to control my pride and to keep myself humble. And when I compliment myself, when I address things I've done right, I always have a quiet voice in the back of my mind reminding me that I need to stay humble. So sometimes, I can't take a compliment well.
EXAMPLE: I know in the past that I was *terrible* about receiving compliments about my good actions or about my figure. I was horrible about it. I didn't believe it sometimes, I didn't think I deserved it sometimes. Whatever the reasons, I have a hard time accepting compliments, even after years of learning to mentally understand how to. It's a struggle that I see with a lot of young men and women my age, and after all of these years of trying to learn, I feel an incredible amount of empathy towards them, as they face the same challenges.
So, to sum up - while I disagree on some compliment thrown my way, while I have a hard time seeing specifically what others are seeing, physically, I don't hate myself. Please don't think I do. And mentally, I'll beat up on myself a lot - in my previous post, I mentioned disliking myself. It's a mental battle every day. The way we see ourselves is incalculably different than others see us - I see myself inside and just see all the things that I think should be worked on and fixed, and oftentimes, I see the aspects of myself that I don't like. So do we all.
I however know that I've been formed to be a complex, unique individual, and God wouldn't want me to be anything different than I am. I can take solace in that. And so should you.
Super fun time topic!
This has come up a lot in the past weeks, and after a conversation last night, I feel like I want to write about it to kind of get some of my ideas down and out for my mind to sort itself.
Amidst being around Georgia Tech, trying to graduate, self-growth and change, relationships developing and ending, and learning about myself, I've had a lot of people question my self-worth and self-care over the past months. So this may be a little befuddled, but here are my thoughts.
One thing that has come up a lot is people reflecting on my weight - I've lost a lot of weight over the past two years, through tremendous effort (and to some degree just through stress), and am proud of myself for being healthier and feeling better.
That being said, I've had more people than I can count comment that I'm 'skinny', 'thin', or just 'going down an unhealthy road'. Allow me to be crude for a moment - seriously people, what the fuck are you saying?
I have not gone to the doctor recently for a BMI/BFA recently, but I am not lacking in body fat. My mother, lord love her, is chief among these offenders - it may just be cultural propensity to fatten your children up, but I've felt hugely antagonized about my weight for the past several months. While I'm smaller than I was - while I have a waistline and more defined bone structure in my face now - I am not too skinny.
PLEASE, understand this - I am not saying that I'm fat. I'm not saying I need to lose weight. I am saying that I have curves - I still have 'problem areas' and bits of myself that have a significant amount of fat on them.
I am, however, ok with that.
It's taken me (literally) YEARS to come to terms with my body and my self-image. Just like with every human on this planet, I don't find my physical self perfect - but I do like myself. I know how blessed I am in terms of being pretty and relatively able to control my body weight if I put my mind to it. I am coming from the direction of being someone who used to hate herself, though, and am trying to look at myself realistically now.
Another factor that affects the way I address myself is my complicated relationship with humility. When I was little, I took the biblical lessons of humility and pride to heart. It has always been an effort for me to control my pride and to keep myself humble. And when I compliment myself, when I address things I've done right, I always have a quiet voice in the back of my mind reminding me that I need to stay humble. So sometimes, I can't take a compliment well.
EXAMPLE: I know in the past that I was *terrible* about receiving compliments about my good actions or about my figure. I was horrible about it. I didn't believe it sometimes, I didn't think I deserved it sometimes. Whatever the reasons, I have a hard time accepting compliments, even after years of learning to mentally understand how to. It's a struggle that I see with a lot of young men and women my age, and after all of these years of trying to learn, I feel an incredible amount of empathy towards them, as they face the same challenges.
So, to sum up - while I disagree on some compliment thrown my way, while I have a hard time seeing specifically what others are seeing, physically, I don't hate myself. Please don't think I do. And mentally, I'll beat up on myself a lot - in my previous post, I mentioned disliking myself. It's a mental battle every day. The way we see ourselves is incalculably different than others see us - I see myself inside and just see all the things that I think should be worked on and fixed, and oftentimes, I see the aspects of myself that I don't like. So do we all.
I however know that I've been formed to be a complex, unique individual, and God wouldn't want me to be anything different than I am. I can take solace in that. And so should you.
On Relationships, Self-Worth, and Transitions - Part I
OK, so maybe this won't encapsulate everything in the title, or at least the full potential therein, but it'll touch on each. I guess I just need some time to rant and write out my feelings so that I can just see them, and maybe grasp at what my thought processes over the past few days actually are. It's hard to keep track of everything when you keep it all in your head.
Anyway, as people will slowly start to find out, I went ahead and broke up with the boy last night. And as they will also discover, I made the world's relationship faux pas - I called, and didn't do it face-to-face. A billion things factored into this, including not wanting it to happen in the middle of the work day, not wanting it to occur during a school day, not having time in the evening, and not wanting to postpone it any longer. Dating someone who works at the theatre, who is around all day, and is friends with your friends? Probably not the best choice. Thanks Ms.Angie for trying to warn me about that - we make our own mistakes in life. Regardless, I think that (even though right now I wish I'd never had anything to do with a relationship) it was a good experience, and taught me more about myself - even if that means that there are more/different questions that I need to answer about what I want in life now.
My primary regret coming from all of this is that I failed at this relationship - I was the one who lost the affection - who asked for a break - who detached and in so doing, by not addressing the problems immediately, made it certain that I wanted to leave. I don't know why this is or why I just lost my affection for him, but I did. I can hear the excuses ringing through my head of 'stress' and 'too busy' and 'life transitions' and so on, but none of those should really be an excuse. They happen at any time, and if I can't make a casual relationship last through those, then how the hell will I ever be able to approach anything like marriage?
Cue personal insecurities.
This is as close as I've come to having a functional, real, 'grown up' relationship EVER, and failure came galloping in again. Upon setting out on this journey and getting to know him, I swear he was just MADE for me - we were well matched in almost every respect. And it still didn't work.
Let's just pile on a few more of those insecurities, shall we?
I refuse to say what so many people have said post-relationship - that I want to give up on them. I sort of *do* want to become a hermit and never speak to boys again, but I know that I won't and shouldn't. But I appreciate why my friends say it, when they hit these situations.
I failed him as a girlfriend, but more importantly, just as a friend. He wanted to work for this, he really asked me to, but I didn't have the umf to do it - for weeks I stepped back to work on me to see if that would sort out the problems I was having with detachment, and it didn't. So I ended it. If I have no more, or less, desire to be around him than other people, I don't think that's a good sign. I tried and tried to reconcile myself to that and to alter those thoughts, but it never happened.
When we were first discussing this a week ago, I told him I hadn't really spent any time thinking about the relationship - not accurate. I spent a great deal of time thinking about how much I wasn't in it. I spent a LOT of time wondering why I wasn't wanting to be emotionally engaged in it, and even more time figuring out how to explain that to him. And no matter how long I spent on it, I acted like a coward in the end. I called and didn't take time to go see him. Now, as a disclaimer, I don't think that me being face-to-face would have done anything except make me put it off longer, but he wishes that I had. And I feel like a coward for not having done so.
Coming at this from a different direction, when discussing the whole 'breaking up' thing, he kept reminding me and himself that he doesn't hate me for it. It may be him just convincing himself, or just letting me know, but it has a very odd effect on me. I *want* him to be mad at me - I wish he would hate me for this. Because the less he hates me, the more I hate myself about this. I guess it's the whole yin-and-yang of the relationship - the way I picture it, there is a given amount of displeasure/anger that will be present in a breakup. If one party doesn't engage, it all flows into the other person - in this case, all of the anger and blame goes towards me, even if it's me aiming it. I hate that I failed at this, I hate that I wasn't strong enough for this, I hate that I failed him. And I blame myself and am having incredibly complex and annoying self-loathing episodes the past few days. It's a situation where I can see why I'm feeling the way I am, but I can't prevent the feelings that are destructive to my own psyche. In the fullest sarcasm, what fun.
The next installment: Self-Worth.
Anyway, as people will slowly start to find out, I went ahead and broke up with the boy last night. And as they will also discover, I made the world's relationship faux pas - I called, and didn't do it face-to-face. A billion things factored into this, including not wanting it to happen in the middle of the work day, not wanting it to occur during a school day, not having time in the evening, and not wanting to postpone it any longer. Dating someone who works at the theatre, who is around all day, and is friends with your friends? Probably not the best choice. Thanks Ms.Angie for trying to warn me about that - we make our own mistakes in life. Regardless, I think that (even though right now I wish I'd never had anything to do with a relationship) it was a good experience, and taught me more about myself - even if that means that there are more/different questions that I need to answer about what I want in life now.
My primary regret coming from all of this is that I failed at this relationship - I was the one who lost the affection - who asked for a break - who detached and in so doing, by not addressing the problems immediately, made it certain that I wanted to leave. I don't know why this is or why I just lost my affection for him, but I did. I can hear the excuses ringing through my head of 'stress' and 'too busy' and 'life transitions' and so on, but none of those should really be an excuse. They happen at any time, and if I can't make a casual relationship last through those, then how the hell will I ever be able to approach anything like marriage?
Cue personal insecurities.
This is as close as I've come to having a functional, real, 'grown up' relationship EVER, and failure came galloping in again. Upon setting out on this journey and getting to know him, I swear he was just MADE for me - we were well matched in almost every respect. And it still didn't work.
Let's just pile on a few more of those insecurities, shall we?
I refuse to say what so many people have said post-relationship - that I want to give up on them. I sort of *do* want to become a hermit and never speak to boys again, but I know that I won't and shouldn't. But I appreciate why my friends say it, when they hit these situations.
I failed him as a girlfriend, but more importantly, just as a friend. He wanted to work for this, he really asked me to, but I didn't have the umf to do it - for weeks I stepped back to work on me to see if that would sort out the problems I was having with detachment, and it didn't. So I ended it. If I have no more, or less, desire to be around him than other people, I don't think that's a good sign. I tried and tried to reconcile myself to that and to alter those thoughts, but it never happened.
When we were first discussing this a week ago, I told him I hadn't really spent any time thinking about the relationship - not accurate. I spent a great deal of time thinking about how much I wasn't in it. I spent a LOT of time wondering why I wasn't wanting to be emotionally engaged in it, and even more time figuring out how to explain that to him. And no matter how long I spent on it, I acted like a coward in the end. I called and didn't take time to go see him. Now, as a disclaimer, I don't think that me being face-to-face would have done anything except make me put it off longer, but he wishes that I had. And I feel like a coward for not having done so.
Coming at this from a different direction, when discussing the whole 'breaking up' thing, he kept reminding me and himself that he doesn't hate me for it. It may be him just convincing himself, or just letting me know, but it has a very odd effect on me. I *want* him to be mad at me - I wish he would hate me for this. Because the less he hates me, the more I hate myself about this. I guess it's the whole yin-and-yang of the relationship - the way I picture it, there is a given amount of displeasure/anger that will be present in a breakup. If one party doesn't engage, it all flows into the other person - in this case, all of the anger and blame goes towards me, even if it's me aiming it. I hate that I failed at this, I hate that I wasn't strong enough for this, I hate that I failed him. And I blame myself and am having incredibly complex and annoying self-loathing episodes the past few days. It's a situation where I can see why I'm feeling the way I am, but I can't prevent the feelings that are destructive to my own psyche. In the fullest sarcasm, what fun.
The next installment: Self-Worth.
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