Saturday, March 12, 2011

Love starts with You!

So, it's been awhile since I posted on my blog, but luckily we only have one test this week, which means blog time! Yay!!! This is great because this past week I have been thinking about something that I think is blog worthy....and I hope it doesn't seem like just a bunch of psycho babble...but it may....we'll see.

The thing that I want to say is this...we all need to start liking who we are, even when we make mistakes. We need to start acknowledging to ourselves that we are interesting, likable individuals. We need to take all the psychological mishmash in our brains, all those nasty comments from classmates, or those insulting, hurtful comments from our families, and chuck them. We need to set old prejudices aside, deal with our jealousy and anger, and be free. Because the more we give in to the things that hurt us, even the little things, the more we drag ourselves down. Let me illustrate with my own life.

I have a great family. Growing up I had a lot of support, and love. I was also pretty lucky that I never got made fun of in school. So you would think I would have turned out a happy, confident individual....mmm...not so much. I really don't know why my self esteem has been so horrible through the years, but I can definitely pinpoint some things that led up to it, and the day I started sabotaging myself.

I went to a Christian school, so we talked about God every day, we even had chapel on Fridays. However, the one thing I learned from my school was that I should be terrified of God. The first chapel that terrified me, was the one where our speaker decided the best way to educate elementary school students on Jesus, was to teach us all about the horrific way he died. The man went in depth describing the crucifixion, pain, blood, nails, thorns, spears....everything. He told us about the cat o'nine tails, that had shards of glass and pottery in it, and how the cross was full of splinters so that the person being crucified would be flayed as they lifted themselves up to breathe. Yeah. I was like 8 years old. Add to this the fact that movies Hocus Pocus terrified me (We had to leave the theater because I started sobbing in horror....my LITTLE brother was so mad we had to leave.) so you can see how I might have been a bit scarred (and scared). I spent the whole chapel with my ears covered. Every so often I would uncover them, listen in horror for a minute or so and then go back to blocking it out. I began to be a little afraid of God. The second horror came when a man told us a story about accepting God as our savior before it was too late. He told us the story of a man who was dieing of cancer that he went to visit. As the man lay there gasping for his last breath he started screaming, "Please get my feet out of the fire!!! Please get my feet out of the fire!!!" Thus, the man obviously went to hell, and we were taught that you should be a Christian if you wanted to avoid pain and torment. Once again...God seemed pretty scary. Add to these all the other fire and brimstone stories and you can see how I began to be absolutely terrified of God. So when I was getting older and getting concerned with my appearance I began to worry that if I liked myself, or thought I was pretty, or had nice hair, or anything like that...I would be smote by the wrathful hand of God. Every time I looked at myself in the mirror I told myself that I was ugly, or fat. If I got a good grade on a test I told myself I was stupid, and it didn't matter. So eventually, I believed everything I told myself. I began hating myself, and thinking I was stupid, I thought I would never amount to anything, and I assumed everybody else thought the same as I did.

I don't think it was entirely due to those things. When I was younger I had some family problems too. My parents got divorced. I also always felt like I didn't physically fit in with the females in my family. While my mom, aunt and grandma, were all thin, delicate, brown haired women, I was the chubby, red head with rounded features. So many of these things came from my own mind, and just built up over the years, until now.

For 16 years or so, I haven't been able to accept myself fully. I say fully because I am half way in between. Honestly, I am really proud of being me. I like my soul. I like what I have done so far with my life (well except for all these psychological things, eating disorders, my strange fear of talking in high school, and my tendency to lapse into awkward silences.), and I like the plans I have for the future. True there are some things I could change about myself, change is important as we grow after all, but I need to accept that I am fine just the way I am now. I don't have to feel guilty for being human. I can make mistakes, I can be happy when I do things well, mediocre, or even poorly! I don't have to be perfect to be a worthy individual. I don't have to disagree every time someone compliments me, or point out my flaws if someone says I am pretty. I've been making a conscious effort these past couple of days to accept myself, and the happy things people say to me. It's been difficult to smother the voice in my head that pops up to criticize me, but it's interesting how quickly it has been fading. I'm hoping I can keep working toward being happy. Luckily I have great friends and a wonderful boyfriend to help me get through.

So, if you're like me, and have problems accepting yourself, break free!!! Life is too short and there is already too much pain in the world. Begin to love yourself for who you are, and everything will get much better.

Finally, here are some interesting links I found that pertain to this post:

http://www.viruscomix.com/page540.html

http://pja64x.com/2009/11/the-parable-of-two-wolves/

1 comment:

  1. I forgot about those chapels, it cracks me up now remembering them. Lakeview was so manipulative. Love you Katie!

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