Sticks and Stones...

 

....will break your bones, but names will never hurt you. 

 

Oh but names do hurt.  Words can hurt and leave holes in the soul just as a nail will leave holes in a board.  Here’s an experiment, throw a couple nails into a big flat board.  Hard  and fast.  But wait, you didn't mean to nail that board so go ahead and take them out.  Damn.  the holes are still there!  You may not have meant to nail that board and you took the nails back....but the holes they made are still there.  It’s the same thing with words.  Take the mean, hateful words back but the holes they made will still be there.  You can't see them, but they are there just the same.  Today I wonder, do words said, not to another person but to yourself....in your head...leave just as many holes?  Today I feel so full of holes that if I took a big drink of water I fear it would all leak out.  Today I am remembering and healing from verbal abuse,   not by a stranger...or a well meaning friend or the wrath of a loved one whom I had wronged, but by the woman who lives inside my head.  I hate her, she is so mean, she makes me cry.  Because of her I can't trust what I see or feel.  Sometimes she is so loud that she drowns out everything and everyone else out.  Her mean and hateful words are all I hear. 

 

"You are so fat and ugly"

"You will never succeed"

"Why bother?  It will never work"

"You will never fit in"

"No one likes you at all"

"You are a joke"

"You will always be fat"

"You will never be sexy"

"No one will ever love you, really love you"

"you don't deserve to be thin"

"You don't deserve to be happy"

"You just don't deserve...."

"Just quit"

"Give up"

 

Each word makes a new and very permanent, there forever, hole.  Some are big holes, some are little holes...but after a while there are just so many holes…and each one invisible to the naked eye.  This is what I am doing to myself.  I know I don’t deserve it and I would never do it to someone else.  I know that the one person who I should always be able to rely on, who will always be in my “corner” is me.  The only problem is, as it turns out, I am my own worst enemy.  Why?

 

Yesterday I had a bad day.  Yesterday when I looked in the mirror I despised the woman I saw looking back at me.  She was fat, saggy, old and ugly.  Her hair was too stringy, her breasts uneven and unattractive.  Her teeth are horribly crooked and her smile is awkward and unattractive.  Her belly had scars and hundreds of bright silver stretch marks that before weren’t quite so visible.  I cried.  I cried because she is not who I see inside my head or in my dreams.  It didn’t seem fair to be confronted with such a stark vision of reality when I feel I deserve more of the dream as a reward for all of my hard work and dedication.  I cried and asked why?  Why bother?  Why keep trying?  Why give up so much of what I love for a dream that is obviously so far out of my reach?  Why do I get up so early to go to the gym to work on my muscles, my cardiovascular health, me?  Why?  What good is it if I am doomed to be the most “Fit” “Fat” girl I know?  I don’t want to BE that girl.  The more I cried and asked why the more the hateful words formed in my head and the more I succumbed to the verbal, abusive onslaught of hate that I know so intimately well.  You don’t deserve to be happy.  That is why you can’t succeed.  You don’t deserve it.

 

In my despair I talked to a friend and she said “maybe you need to reevaluate your definition of what pretty is” 

 

Wow.  That wasn’t our whole conversation but it was the one sentence that she said that really stuck with me.  Reevaluate what pretty is.  When I think about it, I think there might be a whole lot of things that I might need to reevaluate.  Look beyond the actual and try to see the inner beauty. 

 

I remember the scars, I remember the pain that lead up to their creation, I remember my daughter, 6 months old, and me, not knowing what was wrong with me, why was I in so much pain, why couldn’t I eat.  I remember having to have my gallbladder removed and what a relief it was.  No more pain.  Some scars but I could live with them so long as I was alive and healthy and pain free.

 

All those bright silver stretch marks, I remember those as well.  I gave birth to two very healthy, beautiful babies…5 years apart.  I wanted more children but in the end I was only to be blessed with the two.  These bright silver marks are the result of their healthy growth inside me.  I never saw them before because I was so much bigger than I am now.  True, I am not thin and by medical definitions I am still obese but seeing these marks now are a sign of progress. slow and painful yes, but still progress.

 

 

I still need to work on reevaluating what pretty is for me and not how others define what pretty is but I think that will take a little more time and a lot more thought.  Not tonight.  Tonight I will start to practice self-acceptance and like anything else, my hope is…practice will make perfect.