Day 7-
I'm going to continue to explore "self-image and fear of others"
In this video sunette suggests to write out a list of what one perceives others to be thinking and feeling about oneself and one is seeing oneself .
I had begun with how I perceive others 'see' me, wherein I flip it around to reveal how I see myself. So far I‘ve covered beautiful and plain. Next up: aging.
Sometimes think people think I look old. It’s because for a long time I was always youngest one. Youngest in my family, I usually hung out with older people, had older boyfriends mostly. At my jobs I was usually the same age or younger than my coworkers, and then I got a job at a bar where I was the youngest by about 15 years and I worked there for 3 years, which was long enough to make an impression.
Throughout my life and especially at that bar, I associated being young with having some kind of upper hand. At that bar older men would flirt with me behind their wives backs, or guys would give me their numbers while their girlfriend’s were in the bathroom for example. Little things like this that led me to slowly allow myself to separate myself from those women and pity them because I could ‘steal their man away’ if I wanted, just because I was young and they were older. This, to me, was power.
The experience of not having power or control of my life while I was growing up exacerbated this desire to control men and prove to myself that it was finally me who had the power over others. I found this power in my youth and sexuality.
But now I’m in school as a mature student, so I’m 6-10 year older than most of the student body. Plus, I dress conservatively, usually no makeup. Meanwhile, the beings I go to school with are still playing out the game I used to play at that age. Being ‘sexy and stylish’, ‘young and beautiful’, things I no longer participate in but which I once valued immensely. So now I just feel old sometimes.
Women:
I felt that when they are older they are unwanted. I think that their male partners aren’t happy with them and do not love them, but are staying with them out of duty.
I judge older women as desperate to be loved and taken care of, but with no real means to achieve that end, because they didn’t have youth.
I viewed them as pathetic.
From this I see that I fear being unwanted, and that I believe there is no reason for anyone to love me. I feel old and pathetic.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to fear being unwanted.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to fear being alone.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe I need to be wanted and accepted to have worth.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to place the development of my own self-worth in the hands of others, and then trying to manipulate them into wanting me (men) or wanting to be like me (women), so that I can prove to myself that I am wanted, by looking to them for this reflection, thus making it their responsibility and not my own.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to place my responsibility to develop my self-worth in the hands of others who are not aware that I have done this, and when they don’t take responsibility for me because they are unaware that I’ve placed this on them, I end up allowing myself to be abused as I judge myself to be unwanted through them apparently not wanting me, as they are only functioning in self-interest. This is self abuse.
No matter how much I manipulate people into wanting me, and no matter how badly they want me, it will never create an ounce of self-worth nor will it diminish my fear of being unwanted, as only I can control such things for me.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to abuse myself through placing my responsibility for my self-worth outside myself, into the hands of unknowing others, thus setting myself up to have absolutely no direction over myself and my proper development of self-worth.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to abuse others by placing the responsibility of my self-worth in their hands, a task they could never fulfill even if they wanted to.
I forgive myself for allowing myself to manipulate other in order to develop the reflection of myself that I desire, placing the personal experience of the other below mine and placing myself above them, using them as a means to an end. This is abusive, and I am both abuser and abused, as myself and as others as oneness.
I take responsibility for the development of my self-worth now, by not judging myself through others, by treating others as one with me and valuing them as me so that I may value myself.
I stop manipulating my behaviour in an attempt to manipulate others in self-interest for my ego because I have not taken responsibility for myself.
I will not use others as a way to avoid taking responsibility for my own experience.
For the second half of the sentence: “and that I believe there is no reason for anyone to love me”
This comes up:
I remember thinking to myself when I was younger that I couldn’t think of any reason why my family loved me, and why they ‘kept’ me and protected me, supported me, fed me and went through all the motions of loving me. I wondered: why does my family love me? I deduced that it was because of blood, because I was a part of the family, they loved me because they had to because those were the rules.
I didn’t understand why my family loved me because I didn’t share my inner self with them, therefore they didn’t know me. Also because I was supposed to look like a girl but I looked like a boy, I wasn’t very good at school but my sister was, I didn’t do my chores because I knew I could get away with it although my parents would get mad at me and I would be upset and take it personally. I didn’t have any morals so I would lie all the time and steal and cheat and cut corners whenever I could and I didn’t take responsibility for anything.
When I read this over I’m disgusted with the kind of child I was, and I’m pretty sure I was disgusted with it at the time too. Regardless of how it got that way, I am going to take responsibility for it, but not tonight.
2:20am, time to drop it for now.
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