Dear Self,
A letter as I walk down memory lane.
Before
I grew up in a family of strong believers; my parents did not just talk the talk, they walked the walk. Church became my second home. Everyone encouraged each other and uplifted each other.
Home was my safety net. Church was my comfort zone.
But whenever I stepped out of those two settings; I did not feel at home.
In fact I did not feel safe… with my self.
I did not feel at home in my own skin.
I was obese, over weight.
When I was in school, that was the target point for anyone who wanted to score social points, my weight made me a target.
“Pick on the fat kid, who cares?”
I always felt very insecure being in front of people because of my size.
I never felt like I belonged. I always felt that I was being judged as greedy or lazy or a glutton.
Which also ended up affecting my relationship with food.
I hated it. And yet I was stuck with it. You can only starve yourself for so long.
I hated that I need to eat. And not eating does not magically cut the weight.
You know what I loved? Self-deprecating humor.
I developed the skill of humiliating myself early on. It put me in control of the situation. If I made fun of myself and laughed about it, no one else could say the same thing and hurt me.
Self-deprecating humor allowed me to keep people at bay, beat them to the punch. I figured they were already laughing about me on the inside.So I will say the thing that they are probably already thinking so I could turn it into a joke so they could be laughing with me instead of at me.
I didn’t know how to put what I felt, growing up, into words.
I became a master at perceiving how people were accepting me and if I felt like you liked me, then and only then did I give myself permission to like myself. But if for some reason I felt like you did not like me, I would point out to myself all the possible reasons for why that could be; I would pick myself apart from head to toe. I would focus on those things and magnify them.
My feelings for myself were based on how I thought other people felt about me.
Finally I got became brave enough to admit,
“I hate me. And I need help.”
Now.
I still struggle with self worth and confidence but I’ve been getting help. I’m also deliberately putting aside time to read the word and understand what it means to be a child of God, to be created in his image and what that means on an individual level.
There’s somewhere in the Bible where it says, ‘love your neighbour as you love yourself.’
And its so important because we all need to accept ourselves—our personalities and imperfections—knowing that although we are not where we need to be, we are making progress.
So self, we might not be where I had hoped we would be but we are a work in progress.
And that’s gold.
Dan.
