self-acceptance

A Perfect Ten

Aside ~ ~ Beyond the Skinny Branches ~ 9 Comments

I was always ashamed of my hands as a child.

I bit my fingernails. I was always picking at the nail bed and tearing the nails. Though sometimes I made them bleed, there was a weird pleasure in the pain of that self-destruction in the moment it was happening. Later, regret set in, and then shame.

As a young girl, I would make play fake nails out of Elmer’s glue and stick them on, pretending I had lovely, long nails like the women I admired on TV and in magazines. They did not stay on very well, however. Just a few, brief moments of the illusion before they fell off, semi-hardened ovals of Elmer’s again.

I also had what I considered a misshapen right thumb. It was shorter and wider than my left. I hated my right thumb and it’s squat ugliness. I would sit on my hands in elementary school. Didn’t want anyone to see my defect, fearing it as outer proof of my innate defectiveness.

Around the summer between sophomore and junior years of college, I discovered artificial, or acrylic, nails. There were also, at the time, inexpensive, temporary stick-on nails available in stores, but for whatever reason, I never tried or trusted those. They were too obviously fake. They would never pass as my own. (So I would never pass.)

But the acrylic nails? They were an answer to my prayers.

These artificial nails were not a replacement, but an extension for natural nails. They involved the application of tips made of lightweight nail-shaped plastic forms that are glued onto the end of the natural nail. They would then don masks and brush on acrylic powder to cover the nail. Then an artificial nail is sculpted out of the acrylic and shaped and buffed to a shine.

In over an hour’s time spent in front of a nail salon employee, I, too, could have perfect, long, beautiful nails.

But the best part of it all was the polish.

I chose the richest and darkest red being made at the time. This was before get manicures and the myriad of colors of polish in fashion today.

I was drawn to the red. I had always loved old Hollywood glamour, so I guess that influenced my taste. Subsequently, I also started wearing red lipstick to match. It became my signature look in my last two years of college. (I also wore a lot of black before it was chic. I got a lot of comments on all of these things. I didn’t mind the attention as long as my nails were perfect.) My nickname was Maybelline.

After discovering acrylic nails, I fell in love with my hands. I felt more attractive in every way. Suddenly, my hands were available for self-expression and communication in a way they had never been before.

Great, right? So what if I had to pay a fortune. So what if I had to spend two hours each week in the nail salon breathing what must have been toxic fumes and having toxic substances put onto my nails in order to feel whole and worthy? Small price to pay if you ask then-me.

The problem is, when you rely on an external factor of your appearance for your sense of worthiness, you are depending on something that is transient.

And acrylic nails, while petty durable, were known to break off at times in-between salon visits. They were a system not without flaw.

If my acrylic-enhanced nails were less than perfect, I felt unpresentable, imperfect. Life had to stop until I could re-perfect myself again. But salons are not open 24/7. So that meant hours of waiting, feeling awful, until I could be restored to lovability again.

I remember literally plummeting to the depths of despair one time bowling with friends.

I am right-handed, so I was using my right hand to bowl. My “special” right thumb had trouble fitting into the thumbhole of the ball that fit the rest of my grip. It was a bit snug for it. And, well, you guessed it, disaster struck.

There I was, in all my shame, my deformity not only exposed but highlighted. The naked odd man out against perfect and polished siblings.

When I think back, I feel compassion for the girl I was then. Sad that my entire esteem of self was riding on such a superficial thing as my nails. But it was.

It took some years after college to begin to learn to let that kind of outwardly-obsessed perfection go. It symptomatically focused on my nails then, but that was not the only area of my appearance that suffered.

I have had to delve deep, to find my core self, the self worthy of love, having nothing to do with externals of any kind. I am still working on that one.

Perfectionism and obsessive-compulsiveness seem to be a shape-shifting animal that morphs from one area to another.

Whereas over the years my perfectionism has often been fixated on my appearance (nails, weight, sustaining a youthful appearance,) in the last 15 or so years it has also been on my career and accomplishments.

I am still working to find full value in myself just as I am. Nails or no. Big acting credits or no.

Today, I try to love who I am, how I look, just as I am. I try to enjoy the work I get and to treat every job as if it is “big time” because in my heart of hearts, where I don’t care if anyone else is looking or not, it is.

In over words, I am trying to live from the inside-out.

It is challenging. The outside world with all of its social media trappings and the business-of-acting business bytes is like a siren call that draws me off course to crash on the rocks.

Am I doing enough? Am I meeting the right people? Do I have the best headshots? The right representation? Am I in the right mindset? Am I relevant? (Yes, I have actually just recently gotten an email from an industry professional who council actors suggesting that as the focus of what actors must ask themselves. To whom? In what regards? And what if I am not relevant? Does that mean I should just stop pursuing what I love?)

And then there are the ever-present questions of well-meaning people: What have you been doing? What have you done that I would have seen you in? Anything big? Are you doing anything important? Yikes. So easy to slip off my own core-driven track of loving what I do and start to question my validity. Easy to feel lost at sea and doubt that I am on the right path, despite having a map that I love right in my own hand. Easy to feel like I have to use yours or hers or buy a new one in order to be marketable “enough” to feel worthy.

But thankfully, I know what is what. I may have to work hard to stay centered within my self some days, navigating the seas of the outer world that used to have such reign on my sense of worthiness, but today, I know what is what. And that is huge. I recognize the siren calls for what they are. I can course correct back to my own route.

I confess, I do still love nice-looking nails. Today, we have gel technology, so I only have to go to the nail salon once every two weeks. (I can barely stand to be in there. Some people love it. I just spent too many hours there for the wrong reason in the past to enjoy it. It is a reminder to me of where I have been. I do not want to go back to that.)

I have a new signature nail polish. It is called Always and Forever. It is a purplish nude matte color that is subtle, like a pink or a white without being pink or white. It is different, unusual.  I love it. It suits who I am right now. Next year, it might be something different.

I do still wear red every so often. I enjoy the bright red shock of color. I always feel a bit more glamorous when I wear it.

My nails do not have to be perfect today. Neither do I. I am the captain of my own career ship most days, and the sailing is fine.

 

Inspired by The Daily Post Daily Word Prompt: polish

 

 

 

Invisible Shield

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For as long as I can remember, I have not been a “huggable” person.

This used to confound me, and I actually experienced a lot of pain around it.

Huggable people are people who others want to hug freely. Hug, as in express affection for.

I remember first noticing this in college. As a freshman at a women’s college in Virginia, my friends and I would travel to the surrounding men’s colleges for parties. I would literally be standing with my other two best friends, Katie and Laura Lee, and people would come up and they would hug Laura, then grab Katie. And when they got to me, they would suddenly adopt a more subdued or formal manner and greet me verbally.

Now, Laura Lee was a beauty pageant winner who was stunning and had a perfect figure and a winning smile. I knew she was the first to attract others’ attention anywhere we were. That was just natural. Katie was a fun, fiery redhead and short; she fit right into the curve of your body, so being draw to her also made total sense to me. Who wouldn’t want to hug that?

And I was, well, me.

And I was just so confused. What was wrong with me? Why would they want to be so distant from me? To literally not touch me?

Of course, having little to no self-esteem, I immediately went to the idea that I just wasn’t pretty or interesting enough to deserve their attention. I was less than and so did not deserve a hug. This was a painful interpretation of the situation. I had no facts to support the theory, but it seemed to make sense to me.

I remember sharing about this with my high school friend Mary when we were home at Christmas break. What was wrong me? Why did no one want to hug me?

She thought it was great. She thought it gave me a sense of mystery. That people weren’t quite sure about me. And she thought this was a really big plus.

I did not think this was a plus. It felt like further evidence of my less-than-ness, my separateness. I wanted to be someone who people wanted to hug!

Later, as I got older and began to mature emotionally (aka got into therapy,) I started on a study of what in my presence could be creating this distant response of other people to me.

I began to connect dots. I looked back on the fact that over the years, I had tried to adopt a nickname or two. My name was a three syllable mouthful and was also fairly old-fashioned. It seemed like everyone had an aunt or a mother or grandmother named Margaret. So I’d attempt Maggie, or Meg, or even Mac (my initials.) But whichever version I’d try, it never stuck.

As a matter of fact, I did get nicknames, but it was usually an even more formal version of my name, such as Miss Margaret.

What I began to realize is that for whatever reason, there is a kind of formal quality to me. There is something about me that leads people to feel that they need to keep a distance physically.

What this because I was raised in a Protestant, somewhat physically non-demonstrative family? Possibly. I come from a family who believed in keeping up appearances above all else. Keep a stiff upper lip. Never let them see you sweat. And so forth. Yes, I learned to be very cautious of others, outside of the family. To hold my cards close to my chest. To watch what I said and did.

I had also developed a protectiveness in my system when very traumatic things happened to me at an early age. Anyone who has had trauma in their life knows how PTSD exists in your body.

OK, so I figured out some possible alternative theories to decry the original “I am just not lovable or worthy” theory of my youth.

What now? Well, I had to look at who I really am underneath all of that, and help myself allow that essence more space inside.

I know that at my core, my essence is warm and loving. That I am kind, and that I really want to connect.

I no longer hate or judge myself for my invisible protective shield. I have compassion and amazement at my ability to have survived as well as I did. I am patient and kind with my self and my body as I allow my essence to grow and flow.

And I have adapted the old adage if you want to be loved, love well into: I want to be hugged, so hug. I initiate the connection.

That invisible protective shield that I found so painful and frustrating before, today I claim as mine, and therefore worthy of my own love, just like any other part of me. Plus, I have it when I need it, like Wonder Woman’s invisible plane. I have a choice of whether to have the shield up or down.

Do I sometimes still wish I were more like Katie naturally and did not have to work at it? Sure. But I am me, so I do.

And so I do.

Inspired by The Daily Post Daily Word Prompt: distant

 

Etch-a-Sketch Me

Aside ~ ~ Beyond the Skinny Branches ~ 3 Comments

Sorting through the photos from my past

Looking for clues of who I was meant to be

Before the Great Divide sent pieces flying

Seeking remnants of my essence

Like the blind reading Braille

I touch as if to read my own soul

The twinkle in my baby eye

The curve in my 2 year old’s smile

Was I quick to laugh?

Did I welcome others from a sound sense of safety?

That playful 4 year old with the “Dare Me” head tilt

Did she feel held by the universe?

If I trace these shapes now

Can I create a new form

To slip on like an easy cloak

Made of former me’s?

Or will the lines disappear to take another shape altogether

Made of the me that I have become?
Inspired by The Daily Post Daily Word Prompt: trace

Apocalypse Wow

Aside ~ ~ Beyond the Skinny Branches ~ 8 Comments

When I was around age 20, my life exploded. My entire world literally blew out from its center.

Looking back, I suppose it was destined to detonate at some point or another.

I oscillate between feeling sadness that it did not happen sooner and gratitude that it did not take longer to happen.

Spiritually-evolved and wise people would say that it happened “right on time. ”

I say “Bite me.”

(OK, I got that out of my system. Sometimes I feel sorry for myself. Maybe we all do. We all have our crosses to bear in this life, right?)

No, seriously, I guess it did have to happen sooner or later.

At that point, I had been away from home for several years…the deep truths that had been bubbling molten hot at my core had had time to gain strength unencumbered by parental presence.

I was also living a breakneck speed: I was a full-time acting student, working a part time job and stage managing productions for the acting company associated with my acting school. I was busy 24/7 and running on fumes.

And then, one day in a bookstore, I was drawn like a magnet to a particular book. (This is the book that was to teach me that I do not chose books but rather they choose me.) It was Alice Miller’s The Drama of the Gifted Child.

I bought it and read it as quickly as I could, and shortly thereafter, the volcano of my psyche erupted.

This book seemed to be explaining things about my experience growing up that I had long since hid from myself. It was as if in reading each chapter, carefully placed barriers were loosed around the nucleus of my being.

In the days following reading it, I felt like the ground I was walking on was constantly shifting and moving underneath my feet. It was unsettling.

Pressure within me began to build, until one day, one Sunday shift in the restaurant where I worked, my internal world just exploded.

Shards of self flew from my core, and in an instant, a horrific revelation from within flew up through my body from my gut into my consciousness in a searing flash and the fairy tale fantasy that I had been living inside my own mind of a perfect family and a perfect childhood turned to ashes.

And, just like that, I was forever changed.

From that day to this one, it has been a whirlwind, rollercoaster ride filled with astonishing kindness, loss, addiction, danger, self-abuse, despair, hope, comedy, tragedy, loneliness, desperation, shock, torment, friendship, mentorship, recovery, love, joy, bliss, confusion, celebration, emptiness, wholeness, perversion, goodness, synchronicity, luck, terror, horror, wonder, adventure, growth, overwhelming gratitude and grace, forgiveness, miraculousness, passion, sexuality, understanding, caring, shifting, healing, working, giving, taking, receiving, being lost and being found, again and again and again.

(I suppose that is simply a life being lived.)

I would not change one moment because if I did I would not be right where I am today.

Don’t get me wrong. Right where I am today is not puppy dogs and moonbeams.

In some ways, I feel like I am only now rising, like a phoenix, out of the ashes of that apocalyptic day.

And as uncomfortable, often terrifying and unsettling as that feels, to be in totally unfamiliar territory in my own surroundings once again, I know that I am indeed in the process of rising, like a phoenix, out of those ashes, and that knowing, in and of itself, is pretty amazing.

I don’t know where I will land, or even if I will. But I know that this is my journey, meant just for me, and I am rising to the occasion.

 

Prompted by The Daily Post Word Prompt: detonate

 

Free Fall

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I’m in the middle of a massive shift.

The last time I felt such a massive shift in my life, there were all of these external changes happening.

In the space of three years, my mother died, I planned a wedding, my brother died, I got a mortgage, bought an apartment, my father died, I got married and moved from Manhattan to the Bronx.

By the time I was settled into our new apartment, I didn’t know which way was up. I literally did not recognize the outer landscape of my life.

With so much having changed on the outside, it made sense to me that my internal landscape would need to recalibrate. I was living in a new world. I needed to find a new true north.

This time though, there’ve been no circumstances creating the pressure that precipitates such movement. This time, the shift has come solely from within, a seismic shifting of the tectonic plates of my very soul.

It is terrifying and yet so right-feeling at the same time.

Everything in my life has come into question. A massive excavation. A massive exploration.

It’s as if I have been squeezed out of myself and am born anew, looking around. And the one thing I can see clearly is that my whole life I have been in pursuit of one thing or another. Popularity, academic excellence, talent, money, happiness, fame, career success, love, a thinner body, a better me, forgiveness, acceptance, self-love, a desire to live, a desire to stop wanting to die (they are different,) peace, direction…fame (I come back to that one because that is a huge one)…you name it.

I’ve been running around like a woman with my hair on fire for as long as I can remember, and I couldn’t stop even if I had ever wanted to, and I didn’t. There were times I wanted them to stop, for life to stop, for the pain to stop, for everything to stop, for me to stop being conscious. But I never wanted and could never imagine not being in pursuit.

Until now, that is. Now, I just want to…stop.

That is the seismic shift I am in right now. I am shifting from a life of pursuit to a life of, what? What is the opposite of pursuit? I don’t know.

Is it simply being? I don’t even know what the hell that is. Is that really OK? What will happen? What if I give up the pursuit of pursuit? What will I do with my life if I do not pursue something?

Who will I be? Will I fall I back into the chasm? Will I be falling into the obscurity I have so feared?

And if I fall into the chasm of my own soul, will it be a free fall that lasts forever, or will I land on soft ground at some point? This cannot be yet another pursuit. I have to let it be whatever it is. I cannot fall back wishing it to be one way or another at the other end.

I just have to fall back. And that is terrifying and yet so absolutely right-feeling at the same time.

I’ll either see you on the other side, or I won’t. Deep breath. Here I go.

 

 

Ceasefire

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I was clearing out papers and photos from my life –
An envelope my Dad had given me after my Mom died

She’d saved every note and card I’d ever written her

And the truth staring me in the face

As I read through them was this:

I have never been OK with myself

Always searching for answers – why me, why not, what if this, what if that

Working to improve my self – this dress, that diet, walk this way, talk that way

Every day a struggle, so hard to get through

The bitter pill of life I just could not swallow

It caught in my throat, choking my voice

And I grasped at the ever-dangling carrot of a better me

And wore myself down to nubbins and grace

Today I will Just breathe

I will live in the questions

Stop searching outside for the answers

I will wear life like a loose garment

Listen to the breezes blow

Seek comfort in my own heart

And choose to forget whatever it was I was fighting so hard to be

There are no more truths to swallow

It is time to simply be

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Essential Excavation

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I pulled down the walls myself

I was the one who built ’em

They were mine to demolish

I removed each stone, thanking it for its work

I excavated my own soul

I dug until I discovered the me I was before.

Anemic and shivering

I performed CPR on my self

I pinked up, began howling

Raw and primal, hungry

My natural beauty exposed

No renovations necessary.

#soulexcavation

 

 

 

 

 

 

Stalled

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This time, I was gonna get it right.

I waited in the bathroom stall

until the other girls were gone

and I silently prayed as hard as I could.

Please, God, make me be better.

Please, please, make me like Katie.

She is so perfect!

Her long, brown hair so straight

she can sit on the ends if she wants to.

She’s so thin and pleasant and neat.

Not like me – plump, awkward, shaggy-haired.

If I pray hard enough, it will happen:

I will become her. On the count of three.

One — Fingers crossed tight….

Two — When you wish upon a star…

Three — please please please please please…

Ok. Here I go. The new me. I am Katie Koening now!

I open the stall and look in the mirror.

I seem taller. I smile her smile and think Katie thoughts.

Head out into the hall, head held high,

floating on my hope.

I get to the classroom

and enter, waiting for heads to turn.

My heart dives back into my stomach.

No one notices a thing as I go to my desk.

I am just same old me.

God has failed me again.

 

Inspired by The Daily Post word prompt: better

 

Old Baggage

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When I was in junior high school, I begged my parents to go in on a purse that I was desperate to buy.

Not just any purse. It was a Gucci Speedy/Doctor bag. (We didn’t call it that then. I only know that’s its name from researching this…it is now considered vintage! Ouch!) It probably cost a couple of hundred dollars, which was a lot in those days (at least to my family) to pay for a purse, or anything, really.

Everybody had one, or so it seemed to me.

I went to a large public high school, so there was a mix of economic and racial backgrounds, kids from many different backgrounds.

On any given day you would see the many different lifestyles reflected in the fashion of the different groups. Sometimes what a kid was wearing reflected their socio-economic status, but not always.

There were “Stoners” (or “Partiers.”) The “Kickers” (this was Texas after all — so these kids were cowboy/farmer types.) It being the 80’s, there were the “Punkrocker” or “New Wavers.” ( I know, this is beginning to sound like the movie “Pretty in Pink.” That movie resonated for a reason, right?)

It was the height of the Preppy or Preppie craze, and though Houston, Texas was not NYC, we did get the fashion trends, albeit maybe a season or two behind. So the other main group was the “Preppies.”

The majority of kids in the Preppies definitely came from upper middle class to wealthy families. Looking back, for a public school, there were quite a few kids that came from great wealth.

I didn’t really fall into any one group. While my family was white-collar, sort of upper middle class, my father, having come from next to nothing, wanted to be sure that we were not spoiled. We never wanted for anything, but we lived fairly simply in comparison to some of the other kids in my school.

I was never one of the popular kids. I was an outcast until I lost a bunch of weight at 14, when suddenly I became of more interest to the “in” crowd. Though my outsides changed, my insides were the same. So though I was allowed around the in crowd now, I never felt a part of it.

There were others like me. We found each other and created our own group. We didn’t have a name, at least that I know of.

We were sort of mysterious: people knew we had fun going out to clubs and bars and hanging with older college kids. Though we had friends across all the groups, we would hang with just each other outside of school. We dressed in a mix of all of the fashions of the day.

But back to that bag. The bag that “everyone” was getting. I just had to have one. I had some money from babysitting, but not enough for THAT bag. So through the implementation of Chinese water torture on my dad, I promised over and over dramatically that “I would never need to buy another purse again for as long as I lived if I had that bag!”

Eventually, I wore my parents down. I got THE bag.

I have no recollection as to whether or not obtaining the bag actually brought me any pleasure whatsoever. I ‘m pretty sure that the amount of time I actually used it was very brief, much to my father’s chagrin.

Years later, after my Mom died, when we were sorting through some of her things, my Dad reminded me of that bag and that promise. We laughed about it, but I felt a cringe of guilt at how easily I had let go of that bag after having fought so hard to get it.

I think it’s because I really had no connection to the bag itself. Only to the way I wanted to be seen carrying it. The lifestyle to which I wanted to be associated. Which was not reflective of my own style at all, or even who I really was or even wanted to be.

But I wanted to feel like, or to be wanted by at least, (or to be seen by others as being wanted by or as one of “them,”) those popular girls, and so I got the bag. It didn’t make me feel any more a part of the “it” group than I ever had. I was an outsider and I always would be, bag or no bag.

It makes me sad that the girl I was then didn’t feel good enough in my own esteem to have seen that bag for what is was: a status symbol. It wasn’t the bag I really wanted. I wanted status. How I wish I could go back in time and tell that myself that being an outsider was actually pretty cool. Now I know the kind of status I needed would never be able to come from anything outside of my own heart. I wish I hadn’t sold myself so easily and so cheaply.

After my Dad died, I found that old Gucci purse in a box in the garage, where my Dad had kept it for me all these years. It was in mint condition, barely used.

Maybe you are hoping I’ll say I started to use it again. Or that I sold it at a profit on Ebay.

I gave it to the Salvation Army, where I hope it became a found treasure for someone who really wanted it for its beauty. I hope it is being put to good use in the world, as should all things.

Today I carry a very practical Lug Moped Day Pack bag as a purse. It costs about $35.


It’s light, leaves me hands free and has just the right ratio of open pockets, zippered pockets, divisions and space. (As it turns out, I am quite finicky about a handbag’s function, would love to design my own ideal bag, but this is as close to my ideal as I have found to buy.)

I have no interest in designer handbags. I may admire their beauty sometimes, and be amazed at and appreciative of the women who pay for them, love and carry them. But they were never my style and probably never will be.

I can live with that.

#purses #handbags #self-love #Iamnotmybag #theeighties

Inspired by The Daily Post word prompt: lifestyle

The Apprenticeship

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I bound myself to you

My love master

Studious and eager

I leapt in full-hearted throttle

Since you’ve left

I see that what I learned

Had nothing to do with love

I grow my own heart now

The Daily Post word prompt: apprentice

#selfrealization #healthylove #dailypost