(The idea for this one came from Ginger’s Blog, so thank you for that, Ginger. 
)
A human being’s self-esteem is shaped by internal and external forces, both of which seem to conspire to drive us around the bend and make us feel eternally, infernally, insignificant.
All my life, I was never enough.
Never skinny enough, never pretty enough, never smart enough, never funny enough. Never popular, never really geeky. Always in the middle, in flux, in limbo.
That’s how I felt, at least. Well into adulthood, I always worried about what people thought of me. Do they think I’m smart? Or stupid? Do I come across as trying too hard? Or as snobby?
Am. I. Fat?
Size has always been an issue for me. Growing up in Southern California definitely gives you ideas of what you should and shouldn’t look like, and being a wide-hipped, acne-ridden teenager with split ends and bad teeth wasn’t it.
That’s what I saw, anyway. The truth was that I was anorexically thin, with bones showing where they certainly shouldnt show. I went on to model in my late teens and early twenties, and although I didn’t have the patience or shallowness to stick with it, I still wasn’t convinced I was even remotely attractive. I had no confidence whatsoever.
By the time I was twenty I had a fully fledged auto-immune disease, and suddenly I was even less of a person, because there were days I couldn’t even feed myself. I was fat and disabled and the doctor told me there was no cure–that I would live that way for the rest of my life.
A few years ago I hit rock bottom with my self-esteem. I would never, ever, be good enough. At anything. I crashed into a cesspool of self-denial, self-immolation and eventually, utter self-destruction.
The climb out of that morass of destruction was slow and at times truly awful. It took nearly two years of therapy to move beyond all that horrific stuff clouding up my soul.
Today, this is where I am:
Some days I think people on the street are looking at me wondering who let the little window-licker out on her own. (I know that’s not PC. Sorry. But it is what I think)
But more days than that, I allow myself to think there might be something attractive people notice about me. I am still overweight, but I’m working at it, and I’ve lost a substantial amount through hard work and determination.
My disease gets me down less and less as I accept it as simply a part of me, like a finger or toe, albeit an extra.
I know I’m intelligent.
I’m learning to be more comfortable around people, and less worried about what they think of me, because it’s about relationships developed by communication, not by perception.
I still avoid the camera as much as possible, and most of the pics you’ll see here are either old ones, or don’t include me. One day, that will change.
I am happy in my own company, much as I was as a child. I don’t mind sitting in coffee houses or movie theaters alone.
I’ve come to understand that self-esteem can be built up just as easily as it can be torn down, but we have to have an inner understanding of our self-esteem before we can be strong enough to build it to where it should be.
And that rocks.
How about you? Do you have or have you dealt with self-esteem issues? How are you overcoming them?
Book: Initiation by Desire by MJ Williams (Lezzer sex, from first page to last. Seriously)
Song: Run Rabbit Run by The Hoosiers
of last year.
