Image of self

Whenever people tell me what they want, I shrink. I feel - I can't. I can't want, I have to do what they want. The thought does not even cross my mind, until someone else has told me. I feel that I can't. I feel handicapped. I should be able to say it so easily, like them; I should have "the want" on my mind, like others. I should think about myself - but I don't. I look to others and I try to read them - their clouded faces, their fingers tightened into a fist, their body twisted into a nut - and I want to help. I want to give myself up, cut myself to pieces and offer it on a plate - is there anything I can do to make you feel better? Anything I can sacrifice to satisfy your hunger? Anything you want from me that you are not getting anywhere else? How can I be of service? Of course I am getting rejected, because it is not what the other person wants - because their pain is about their stuff, and has nothing to do with mine. But I shrink even more at that, and am eager even more. Yet I suppress it now, I know it's not welcome - and I'm in pain. It is a fucking dead-end. No way out. Only to cut across and bleed in the process. Wrench out all my upbringing and wreck the blueprint that was established in my toddlerhood. Hack it, ignore it, reprogram it.

When people tell me - I am lucky to have them in my life - I think, of course! I am worth nothing, and why didn't I come up with this concept first? Telling someone you're lucky to have me? I have no self-worth. The thought does not even cross my mind. And so I listen, and shrink again, and think - what about me, how can I think of myself as someone who is worth a lot to someone else, someone who can be the source of someone else's happiness. I can't - it's not part of my fabric. But it gets me - gets me on the level that prompts dark thoughts again, prompts digging deep into the past, cutting my insides in search of that stinking little nugget that is whispering into my body - you are nothing, you are not worth anything good in this life, you are a pathetic and ugly loser. I don't care how bloody I get, but I will fish it out and extract it once and for all. Its poison is wrecking my happiness, dipping my head down into a swamp any second I decide I'm fabulous. Every time I bounce around happily, it's there - it stinks and I am suddenly lost. I wonder why the hell I thought I could be happy - I can't. And it starts all over again - the never ending cycle. 

Maybe it is because I know how much it hurts when you're asked to do something you don't want to do but are obliged - maybe that's why I have a hard time asking for help, asking people to do what I want, talking to them about myself and how awesome I am and how grateful they should be to know me. Maybe because it was painful for me, I think it will be painful for others - and I spare them from that. Because that's how my father treated me, and all other abusers in my family. I had to be grateful for what I had, I was a nobody, a little nothing - to be used and then tossed aside. But all of this is a complete and utter nonsense - every single person will have a different reaction to a request - based on their own upbringing and pains and dreams. As soon as I can get rid of this mindset, I can be free to feel and to ask, to tell, to talk. To be me - whatever that actually is. To stop cutting my imaginary wrist any time I stumble across a negative comment or thought or action. To be stable enough to not take anything personally, so it all bounces off of me, without harm. To able to express what I want, even if in the process it will hurt someone else - to not be afraid of wanting something badly for myself and not settling for the mediocre, for "half-way there", for "almost but not quite" - to be free to want and to go after it. Is this possible? I don't know - but I will try. I have to stop eating glass, to stop torturing myself, and simply enjoy the discovery process. Pick up a mirror and look inside, understand who is looking back at me, be ok with my own image and with projecting that image onto others. To stop shattering it and running away and hiding under the bed - because there is no way I can hide from myself. And no bed is big enough to hide me. Because I am always there - my own friend, my own enemy, my own family, my one and only partner for life. Me. 

Photo by Ko-An.