Friday, January 17, 2014

(In)security.

I could do with one of these right about now...

I am not sure when it happened, or even why or how it happened. It just did. I guess one day I woke up, looked in the mirror and didn't like what I see. That was around twenty years ago now. Things do get better I guess, or maybe we just get lazy with loving ourselves, we kind of accept that this may just be "as good as it gets" and that "our prime has been and gone and forget to say thanks and goodbye". Any which way, it just ain't there anymore.

Then one day you fall in love. Sure, it has happened before, you have loved and lost in love, but for some reason this feels different. Or is it? Maybe the fear of being alone is what is setting in and you hurriedly try to find someone, anyone, to fill that void that you so desperately need to fill, the void of plain and simply, being loved. It's scary beyond belief.

All those emotions and feelings of self worth start to come flooding back. Every little flaw (and not so little) becomes highlighted as if someone is permanently following you with a strobe light reminding you of why you just aren't good enough. You decide that you need to focus on the gym and have a good two weeks to lose say, twenty kilograms. Crazy. You buy every vitamin on the shelf to ensure your skin is glowing, hair is shiny and teeth are as white as the most beautiful pearl that adorned your Grandma's neck. Then reality hits. You walk past that damn mirror again and it just doesn't lie to you, why can't it just lie to you one time, just one damn time. It's me I see, nothing or nobody else, just me.

The eyes start to well up. I need to move away, right away, what am I going to do now? I go back to the mirror and disrobe, completely naked in front of the mirror, fuck I hate what I see, I really do. But I am not going to let this beat me. Again. How did I get to this place of self loathing and why can I not, just for the life of me replace that "L" word with another one, Love. It's all good, I'm going to go out, I'm in a foreign city, I'm going to hit the streets and see, live and meet people. Yep, that's what I'm going to do.

I do that. I end up in Central Park. There are squirrels all around me, they are so cute and seem to love me, coming right up to me to take the peanuts out of my hand. They just see me as someone with food, not scared or grossed out in any way what so ever. Then a man starts talking to me, he seems nice enough. The usual banter ensues, I explain where I am from, where I am going to next and yada, yada, yada. He asks me if I am single? A kind of random question I guess, I start to stand up and respond with "well, there is beautiful man I like in Brazil, its complicated, but I will be seeing him soon and..." He cuts me off. "Right" he says. I said, "Sorry?". He went silent and said the following "I guess for a Brazilian you would be good, you have that chunky/chubby kind of body they seem so fond of. I'm sorry, I only saw you squatting down and your beautiful face. Have a nice evening". He almost ran away, I kid you not. WOW.

I literally had no words, nor did I have any tears. I don't know if I was even shocked, more saddened that this same story seems to circulate every so often in my life and I am just not sure why. I may not like what I see in the mirror at home, but I sure as hell don't walk around with my head between my legs, I try to "fake till I make it" for like of a better term. So why the hell would someone come up to me and say that? Or maybe I am just completely oblivious to the fact that my community really is just that superficial, that it is ONLY about your body and nothing else and you can't have a "beautiful face" and not the body to match. That is suposedly just to fucked up for anyone to understand. What has it all come too?

I guess we all have our own demons, but it doesn't help when others push their insecurities onto you, especially when we are all just looking for that one thing in life, to walk past that mirror just once in our lives and stop, acknowledge the reflection and say "I really like what I see today, actually I love what I see". One day, one day...

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