10.4.00

Beautiful

Low self-esteem is a blanket I've kept wrapped around me for years and years. It is knitted from threads and scraps of emotional wool; a parent yelling, "I hate you", a child in the schoolyard teasing my dorky clothes, a bad haircut, being told that everything I do is worthless. I don't treasure the blanket, but I still cuddle up in it, feeling safer in inadequacy, imagined or not. It is easier and less consequential to deny the possibility of good things being within me, of my soul being special, of my mind and my words being intelligent and unique.

Even when the blanket is in tatters, when I'm having a good day and everything feels as though it is right, I cling to the blanket. I cry for it not to disappear, for the shreds to magically sew themselves together, for it to keep me in the quiet warmth and darkness of obscurity. I want another blanket, I wail, I need this blanket. I feel so naked without it, so prone to the expectations and fire of others. If I say that I am good, and that what I do is good - I am opening my arms and welcoming the embrace of hatred and mockery. If I say that I am bad, and that what I do is bad, then if someone confirms it, I don't need to feel stupid. I can only feel justified. Compliments come so rarely that I hardly have to deal with the elevated shyness that accompanies kind words; I can continue to hide in my comfortable shadows and not think about the consquences of maybe being okay.

The last two weeks have been tearing at the blanket, pulling it thread by thread, taking it from my grasp and leaving my shoulders bare. He will look into my eyes and whisper, "You are beautiful", and I will shake my head and avoid his gaze, whimpering, "No, I'm not", wanting desperately for the twisted comfort of being hated.

But for a few moments at a time, I've been able to let go of the blanket.

It is hard to protest when you are wrapped in someone's arms, held close with no clothes to speak of between you, knowing that he has seen every inch of you, and smiled with pure love and tenderness. It starts to tug more at the threads, taking away the shield of self-hate, making you reconsider the years of quiet deconstruction going on inside your innermost mind.

I'm getting used to it.