I have spent most of my life hating myself and my body. And my face! I did not like anything about myself, and everything I did made me cringe. I hated everything I said and everything I did, and I thought I was just a piece of shit. This is me being muted about how much I hated myself. In my last post, I touched on how life has gotten me to appreciate myself more. I’m going to continue in that vein for this post. More with the self-love, yo!
I have always liked my boobs. Or at least have not minded them. I don’t wear a bra and they are out there and in your face. I got into Lizzo fairly late, but she’s become my icon for flaunting what you got. I love how she revels in her body. She doesn’t give a fuck what anyone thinks about her because she looks GOOD.
I love this skit from SNL because it’s exactly how my inner brain works. The outer world has beaten down my self-esteem, but when I let go of all the negative messages that flow my way, I know I am 100% that bitch. I am fucking amazing!
I worry sometimes that I’m too cocky now. I spent most of my life trashing myself and putting myself down. Not only because it was culturally expected of me, but also beacuse I hated myself. I had so many flaws (and still do), and I couldn’t understand how anyone could stand me.
When K wanted to be friends, I was blown away. She was (and still is) the coolest woman I knew. She had dropped out of high school, got her GED, then went onto college while waitressing at a bar/restaurant in a small Iowa town. Or Wisconsin? I think it’s Iowa. She’s been married since she was twenty-three, and they are still deeply in love thirty years later. She is passionate about public schools, and she walked the walk as well as talking the talk. She’s been a teacher for disadvantaged youth for almost as long as I’ve known her, and she’s passionate about her kids.
She has tats, and she was the first person I knew who had them. She went with me to get my first tattoo, and she was, and still is, my joybringer. We’ve walked on the beach late at night while drunk off our tits with White Castle sliders we were munching on. We peed in the lake, and I missed so the pee ended up on my sandals.
I never called her because why would such an amazing woman want to be friends with me? She finally asked me if I wanted her to call me. She said she didn’t mind, but she didn’t want to intrude if she wasn’t wanted. That blew my mind. She was worried about how I felt about her? I told her that I wanted her to call, and that cemented the fact that she’s the one to call me. Now, I’ll reach out by messaging, but I still don’t call. I hate the phone. We have a phone date once a month or so, but that’s always her calling me.
In return, when we used to got to the bar/dancing/dinner, I’d drive to her place, then she’d dirve us to whenever we had to go. If she wanted a drink from the bar, I’d get it beacuse that didn’t botther me, but she hated it. We fit together really well. We still do. I know that if we don’t talk for a year, it doesn’t matter. We’ll still pick up where we left off the next time we talk.
But, the thing that made my self-confidence shoot up, ironically, was dying twice. I know I’ve beaten this drum to death, but my whole life changed in that night. Well, when I woke up, I mean. I was in a coma for a week. I was not supposed to come back for a third time.
Sometimes, I look outside and I just marvel at the beauty. Right now, it’s because we’ve had a ton of snow–which I love. It’s not the snow, though, that takes my breath away in general. It’s the fact that I’m living and breathing, looking at the nature outside my window. Outside being the operative word.
I am damn lucky. I know this. I live this every day. I should be dead. This is not hyperbole. I had two cardiac arrests. The EMTs brought me back to life with CPR, defib, and an EpiPen. They were just doing their job, yes, but I would not be here without them.
I also would not be here without my medical team. I don’t know their names, but I am indebted to them. A month or so ago, I tried to look up the nurses and doctors who helped me while I was in the hospital. I thought I remembered some of their names, but I was wrong. I could not find a single one of them. I want to go back and thank them in person, but I’m not even sure who ‘them’ is. Are.
Those two weeks did something 50 years could not do–made me love my body. I went from hating it for the first 35 yeras of my life to being studiedly neutral for 15 years to thinking my body is fucking maazing in two weeks. Two weeks. Plus, I think I’m cute as fuck now, too. That is also a big change. My body is a god, and it got me through hell–twice. I traersed the abyss without the Covenant of Artorias (ring that allows you to fight the Four Kings in Dark Souls), and I did not need to sacrifice a humanity to do it.
I was marveling in the last post about how much I love certain parts of my body now, and it’s in part because I’ve done Taiji for seventeen years. My biceps are on point, and all those Golden Roosters have given me an ass. My thighs and calves are rock hard, but they have always been, and my shoulders are strong.
I just love my body. I’m infatuated with it. I run my hands over my muscles and take absolute joy in them. Especially my biceps. I am positively arrogant about them. I do the typical Popeye pose and marvel at how much they bulge. I am in love with my muscles. I love how they curve, but also how hard they are.
I don’t want to become arrogant, but I’m enjoying the ‘I’m hot’ feeling. It may be a phase, but it’s been a year-and-a-half so if it’s a phase, it’s not a short one. I didn’t realize how automatically I downplayed myself until–I didn’t.
I want to make it clear. I am far from perfect. I have my flaws, and I can rattle themoff at high speed. I’m oppositional, snarky, cranky, critical, a tad paranoid, and a smug know-it-all, just to name a few. But I’m also empathetic, caring, compassionate, warm, smart, inquisitive, funny, and generous, too.
As an AFAB person, I had it drilled into my head that I was supposed to be demure, self-effacing, and a martyr. Not just as an American, but from my Taiwanese culture, too. Even more so because my mother had absorbed the most toxic messages and proliferated them liberally around the house. Often. Repeatedly. Pointedly.
It’s also an Asian thing to talk shit about your kids so the gods won’t take them. I can’t remember my parents saying anything positive about me until I was well into adulthood, and it was too late by then. I had internalized the negative messages and was a mean asshole to myself.
Now, I love myself. I can say it for the first time without being a liar. I know I have my flaws. I know there are plenty of things wrong with me. But I’m ok with that. I’m here. I’m alive. I’m gloriously, messily me.