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[human-oddity88]

Love and Self Loathing

ON LOVE AND SELF LOATHING

“You cant love someone until you love yourself first” Bullshit. I have never loved myself. But you. Oh god, I loved you so much I forgot what hating myself felt like.” Unknown

I was bullied. When I say this I don’t mean the cute innocent teasing portrayed in sitcoms and in movies. I mean the kind of bullying that sent me home in tears everyday from school. The kind of bullying that left me with emotional problems similar to those who grew up in abusive households. The kind of bullying that made me obsessed as a teenager with finding the quickest and most painless way to kill myself. There was literally nothing about my body, my thoughts, my past or my present that they couldn’t/didn’t use as a Knife to cut me. But the worst part was that the adults in my life either didn’t care at all, or even if they did care offered no real solutions. I spent years hearing the same old hallow tired advice like “just ignore them” (easy to do while people you’ve gone to school with your entire life pick your life apart like they’re dissecting a frog), “they’re just jealous” (trust me they aren’t), “just try to be more normal” (tried every day for 16 years and the more I tried to abandon myself for the sake of fitting in the less I did). Ultimately the bullying became so harmful l that I, an A to B student with real potential, dropped out of high school at 16 because I knew if I had to endure another 3 years of abuse my unsuccessful suicide attempts would eventually become a successful one. Bullying kills kids like me every day. Kids who are different like I was, kids who are overweight, LGBT, part of a racial and/or religious minority, or if they are in any other way strikingly different from their peers. In my case I was a strange combination of the above. I can’t even explain how much heartbreak I feel when I read yet another story on Facebook about a high school kid who killed themselves as a result of bullying. I feel myself die inside very time I read another name or see another picture. I know exactly what those poor souls were thinking as they took their own lives, because I thought the same thing. I could write a novel, hell a series of novels about the bullying that I had to endure, and about my adolescent self trying to cope with it. But I’m way more interested in writing about afterwards. What it’s like as a young adult trying to build a life based on such negative and self loathing social interactions. To show people that may be struggling even as they read this, that it really does get better. The bullying that I endured left me with many certainties about myself. I was ugly. I was worthless. No one would ever love me. These certainties didn’t keep me up at night or bring me to tears everyday they were simply facts like the description of a cell in a biology textbook. It has been studied, and verified by enough scientists that it can now be accepted as unquestionably true. I was surrounded by people who loved me. My friends and my family, and they fought to convince me that I was beautiful and worthwhile. But despite their valiant efforts I entered adulthood I with zero self esteem and even less confidence. A girl who had once been loud and passionate had become quiet and subdued. The bright Colors I once wore because I’m an ostentatious person had been replaced with dark colors that helped me blend in. When I was 18 I got my very first real boyfriend. He loved me. He thought I was pretty. He was with me on purpose. My mind couldn’t comprehend any of that. I kept waiting for him to realize all the things about me that I already accepted as fact. But he didn’t. It was a shock to my system. Our relationship was not perfect. he was the person I lost my virginity to, and as I became sexually active I realized new and amazing things about myself. Chief among those was the fact that I have an extremely high sex drive. My boyfriend however had an extremely low sex drive. Night after night I would try to initiate sex with him, and he would make excuse after excuse as to why tonight wasn’t a good night for him. On the nights we did have sex, it only happened after begging, when he would give in with a long exasperated sigh, and seem about as excited about it as you might be to take out the trash or get a root canal. After years of this I started wondering if I was the problem. Was I so ugly and repulsive that my own husband didn’t want me? Those Thoughts haunted me throughout my marriage. There were plenty of other problems in our relationship as well, such as the fact that as a result of his Asperger’s Syndrome he could never be my partner, more of an overgrown child who needed a live in Nanny, first in the form of his mother and then me. If I had not been bullied. If I had not been convinced over the course of my entire academic career that I was ugly worthless and that no one would ever love me, I probably would have left my boyfriend. I would not have settled for a guy who didn’t appreciate me to the level that I truly deserved. But unfortunately the way he treated me just helped to confirm what I already knew to be true. I really was ugly. I really was worthless. I just counted myself lucky that anyone wanted me at all. That’s why I married him when I was only 20 years old, even though I wasn’t happy, even though in my heart I wanted more than he could or was even capable to providing. I did it because even though I knew this consciously, even though I was fully aware that I was settling, I also knew for a fact that this was the best I could do. Only pretty girls got guys who truly loved, and wanted them. Only girls whom were worthwhile got the kind of guys that took your breath away. Only those girls got the kind of love that made the world make sense. It shouldn’t come as a shock that I was divorced four years later. Funny thing about marriage. The biggest difference between marriage and dating is that when your dating you can easily work past or even outright ignore all those little cracks in your relationship. From the hairline fractures up to the fault lines. But when you get married those cracks don’t go away. In fact they grow and deepen. Until you drift apart like tectonic plates. After my divorce I finally began learning about myself. I began dating my second boyfriend. He was much, much older than me, but he was also the first man who made me feel wanted. He made me feel sexy. That relationship wasn’t perfect either. I could write a whole other, whatever this is, about why it is never a good idea to sleep with a married man behind his wife’s back, but I overlooked that as well because he gave me something I really needed at that time. He gave me confidence. He helped me realize that I was beautiful, I was sexy, and I was worthwhile. I stopped hiding the body that I had always found repulsive under dark drab clothes. I started wearing clothes that made me look as sexy as I felt. I started flirting which I had never done before. It was a magical time in my life. When that relationship finally came to its inevitable end, I took my new found confidence and threw it at a guy that was attractive beyond my wildest dreams. He was the kind of guy that the high school version of me had fantasized about dating. Tall, dark, and brooding (sorry I can’t even type that without laughing g but we are getting to that) and even though my intuition warned me against getting serious with him, warned me that like a low voltage electrocution not only would it kill me it would hurt the entire time I was dying, I got serious. I felt like I needed to date someone like him to prove to myself that I could, prove that I was beautiful and sexy enough to date someone as hot as him. Even though I finally had confidence and self worth I still felt like I was dating way above my station even though in reality I had reached the bottom of the barrel and was now digging in the ground beneath. The first time he cheated on me was literally two weeks into our relationship. But I didn’t leave. He continued to lie and cheat for the entirety of our relationship and I never left. I had finally realized how beautiful sexy and worthwhile I was just to end up dating every bully I had ever endured all rolled into up into one handsome incarnation of everything evil. He methodically and quite effectively reminded me that I was ugly. That I was clingy. And just like before I accepted it all as fact. I knew I was ugly, and that if I wasn’t so ugly he wouldn’t have to cheat on me. And if I wasn’t so clingy he wouldn’t he to be so distant and unavailable. And that I could never leave him because I was so ugly and worthless that I would never ever be able to convince someone else to love me. And I believed all of it. It wasn’t just a belief for me it was a fact list like they had been facts in highs school. So I never left. Even after he cheated on me for the ten millionth time. Even after he gave me an STI and blamed it on me, even when I began to financially support him, a guy who made over twice as much money as I did so he could blow his paychecks on drugs video games and I’m sure sex with other girls. He finally left me when I had nothing else to offer that he needed. And in the theme of our relationship he made me feel responsible for that as well. He had tried so hard to love me, But I was just too hard to love. he needed to love himself enough to find something better, and I needed to die alone. And I accepted that he was right. I accepted that I really was this awful ugly worthless person that he and every person at school had convinced me I was. I had finally overcome the pain of my bullying, but this saint of a man had held a mirror up and shown me that they had been right all along. That’s why when I saw a guy who made my heart flutter the very moment I laid eyes on him, I didn’t introduce myself, I didn’t flirt. I knew I was ugly, worthless and impossible to love so I just admired him from across the room, fantasizing about what it would be like to talk to him, to kiss him, to be with him. Even after a friend (who didn’t know about my weird little crush) introduced him to me I still lacked the confidence to actually make a move. But I did talk to him. We talked for hours. Sharing and laughing. I found it easier to talk to this guy than I had ever felt talking to anyone before in my entire life. I didn’t hold back, I didn’t need to with him. He saw me. Making a move on him was literally the hardest and most terrifying moves I’ve ever made. I liked him, I was attracted to him both physically mentally and emotionally. I needed to know if he was attracted to me, but the terror of rejection, the terror of all of those terrible things about me being once again confirmed by a possible rejection filled me with dread that I cannot describe. But I did it. I made a move. It was 6 in the morning. Him and I had literally stayed awake together all night talking. And I was having so much fun talking to him that I didn’t even feel tired, even as the sun began to rise. After hours of plotting my move in my head I decided my move would be to lay down on the ground beside him and lay my head on his leg. Silly I know. But I felt like if he was attracted to me the way I was attracted to him he would allow my head to stay and if he didn’t share me feelings He would ask me to sit up or something else subtle that would be less soul crushing than a full blown rejection. Then we could just keep talking and I could pretend my move had never happened. So I did it. I laid my head on his leg, and to my surprise and delight he allowed it to stay. He didn’t say a word about it in fact, just started running his fingers through my hair as we continued to talk. We shared our first kiss that morning. I’ve been with him for over two years now. And I’m happier than I ever thought I could be. All those years of self loathing have become a distant memory. Because of him, I not only feel beautiful, sexy and wanted, but I feel an actual detachment from the memories of when I didn’t. As if they happened to someone else. Those feelings are no longer a part of who I am. I’m not saying my confidence is flawless. I’m still scared, more scared in fact than I ever want him to know that I will one day be replaced. That he will someday find someone better than me, that it wouldn’t even be that hard for him to find someone better than me, and he will abandon me like everyone who came before him. I tell him I feel this way sometimes, and he holds me and reassures me that I am beautiful and perfect and that he could never want anyone else. And I believe him. For the first time someone saw me. He saw everything that I was, everything that I had been or may yet become. He saw all of the things that are wonderful about me, and also the things that are not so wonderful. and he loves every bit bit of it. But the thing I love most is the gift me gave me. A gift I will happily spend the rest of my life thanking him for. He saw me, and when he saw me, he saw me so clearly, and so completely, that I couldn’t help but see myself. I saw myself reflected in his eyes, and finally after years and trying and failing, I was able to reconcile the me in my head to the me I saw in his eyes. I was able to see the me my family and friends had spent so many years trying and failing to convince me was there all along. I see myself, she’s a beautiful baddass, and I love the fuck out of her.

If you are reading this and can relate to this in any way at all, I want you to know…no….i need you to know that you are not ugly you are beautiful, you re not worthless. You are perfect. You are not weak, you are powerful. And someone will love you. Someone will one day look at you and wonder how they got so damn lucky. And if you end your life now you will never understand how wonderful that feels. I love you, and I pray you learn to love yourself.

[human-oddity88]

Telling someone ‘You are shit’ and ‘You ain’t shit’ are both insults.

[human-oddity88]

“omg you can’t play video games on easy mode!!”

listen if i wanted to struggle with some dumb task and fail a dozen times for bullshit reasons only to get some underwhelming reward once i finally get it right i would just live my actual life and not play video games smh

pls love urself

[human-oddity88]

I'm that person, and that expression makes it worth it

I’m the someone

[human-oddity88]

This dog really loves his automatic ball thrower (video)

[human-oddity88]

Having an anxiety disorder is like that moment where your chair almost tips or you miss a step going down the stairs but it never stops

[human-oddity88]

Lol

[human-oddity88]

A horse rocking a baby (video)

[human-oddity88]

i don’t really understand where penises go when boys wear pants

[human-oddity88]

Video - Via Siz iOS app

[human-oddity88]

Video - Via Siz iOS app

[human-oddity88]

[human-oddity88]

[human-oddity88]

Time lapse Dandelion flower to seed head - Video

[human-oddity88]

RIGHT OKAY SO I WAS TALKING TO MY 5 YEAR OLD COUSIN ON SKYPE ABOUT HALF AN HOUR AGO AND SHE LEFT FOR A LITTLE WHILE TO GO DO SOMETHING AND DIDN’T WANT ME TO BE LONELY, SO SHE LEFT HER PET FURBY (SHE CALLS IT “LULU”) ON A CHAIR TO “TALK” TO ME FOR A WHILE

SO I ROLL WITH IT AND JUST KIND OF BUM AROUND FOR A MINUTE WAITING FOR HER TO GET BACK WHEN SUDDENLY  A NOISE THAT SOUNDS LIKE SATAN’S ASSHOLE FARTING OUT A METALLICA SOLO COMES OUT OF THE SPEAKERS, WHILE AT THE SAME TIME LULU DECIDES TO START LAUGHING FOR A GOOD 20 SECONDS NON-STOP IN A HIGH PITCHED SCREECH

AND THEN MY COUSIN WALKED BACK IN AND EVERYTHING JUST IMMEDIATELY HALTED

NOT SURE IF I SHOULD INFORM SOMEONE THAT SHE’S PROBABLY LIVING WITH A HELL DEMON DISGUISED IN A PLUSHY PINK PACKAGE JUST WAITING TO DEVOUR THE SOULS OF THE LIVING

[human-oddity88]

Awwww

Kitten afraid of the carpet - Video