Whoever said “Beauty is only skin deep,” was wrong.
Whoever said “Pretty is as pretty does,” was only a bit closer.
Whoever said “Beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes to the bone,” was actually on the right track. They just didn’t realize it applies to both beauty and ugliness.
The truth is, beauty starts in the heart, or, more accurately, in the emotions. And so does ugly.
We hear a lot these days about how airbrushed photos in magazines and other images of impossibly beautiful women affect girls’ self images, but most times those poor self images start way before that.
If we are unloved, unwanted, and abused we know there must be a reason, and we come to know that the reason is because we deserve it. That we are unworthy of being loved and cherished. Children who are loved and cherished by the adults around them grow up with feelings of self-worth and self-love. And they rarely think they are ugly. At least, not the Ugly that goes bone deep. The Ugly so Ugly that it deserves a capitol letter.
By time I hit adolescence I thought that the only reason men were interested in me was because I was Ugly. That they believed that, since I was Ugly, I would be so grateful for their attention that I would have sex with them. Or at least let them feel me up.
And who were “they”? “They” were the construction workers who frequented the local diner where I waited tables from the time I was fifteen. The manager of the grocery store who offered to “lift me up” so I could reach the item on the top shelf instead of reaching it down for me as I had asked. The clerk who had to cup my hand in his to give me my change. The men in church who couldn’t talk to me without touching my hair or putting their hand on my back – and then sliding it down to my waist.
A lot of girls like us do go for sex because it is the closest thing we can get to love. But my reaction was different. I felt humiliated. And manipulated. And I scorned their attention.
In retrospect I think that was a good thing. It kept me out of trouble, kept me from being used, abused, and tossed aside once they were done. It left me some pride. But I still thought I was Ugly.
I had no clue that they were interested because I was built like a brick shithouse. Even though many of “them” had told me that. Not to mention I had that long, gorgeous blonde hair. That many of “them” commented on. Looking back on photos of myself I can see that I really was a walking wet dream. As many of “them” had called me.
So I got a lot of attention from men and that didn’t stop when I was married at nineteen. To a man six years older than I, who I met in collage. Who I thought only loved me for my mind. Because he told me so. And I believed him. Because I was so Ugly it had to be true.
It took a lot of years for me to understand that I was “physically attractive”. That’s the best I can get. Attractive. But at least it’s not Ugly. And when my now-husband Lionheart sees that it’s me calling on the phone he always answers it, “Hey Beautiful”. Capitol letter. And some days I almost believe it.
Camellia
Showing posts with label abuse. Show all posts
Showing posts with label abuse. Show all posts
Saturday, May 1, 2010
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
To cry or not to cry, that is the question.
I believe we cry in relationship to our greatest injury. I first saw this watching my daughter as she grew. When she started walking she might cry if she wobbled and sat down with a thump. Later, if she bumped her elbow on the coffee table she would cry, but not if she sat down unexpectedly.
The first time she scraped her knee she cried a lot, but no longer cried for other, smaller bumps and scrapes. Then, after the first time she spectacularly wrecked her two-wheeled bicycle and got those serious scrapes and that one good gouge (from the pedal – remember how much those hurt?!) she didn’t cry for those smaller injuries any more.
I think this holds true for emotional injuries as well. We cry over those first small hurts because that is the worst pain we have ever known. Then as we progress in the world, gain love and loved ones, lose love and loved ones, and suffer the pain and vagaries of life, we weep for the greater hurts we suffer, but perhaps not so much for the smaller ones.
Unfortunately, if we are hurt enough, we may eventually stop crying at all. This may be a survival mechanism, both since tears make us appear weak and vulnerable, and since they are often a ‘reward’ to an abuser, prompting or prolonging the abuse.
Do you know someone who you never see cry? It doesn’t mean they don’t, of course; they may just shed their tears in private. But some of us suffered so greatly that the ordinary ‘slings and arrows’ of life are just minor stings to us. But I don’t think this is a healthy state of being.
I spent a long time healing my mental and emotional injuries and I thought I was doing quite well. I didn’t consider the fact that I still rarely cried, and never in front of other people. Then I met Lionheart, the man who would become my (second) husband. Somehow, and I don’t yet understand it, he made it both okay and possible for me to cry again. One evening, quite early in our relationship, I spontaneously burst into tears. It actually frightened me; this was just not something I did, and to make it worse, I didn’t even know why I was crying.
Then this amazing man took me in his arms and gave me his thoughts on why I was crying. And as I listened I realized he was right. And that it was okay. Everything was okay. And the world didn’t end.
I still don’t cry very often but when I do it feels okay now – that it is safe to do so. And sometimes he still has to help me figure out why I’m crying, but that’s okay too. This is a journey he is willing to share with me.
Camellia
Do you know someone who never cries? Have you ever asked them why?
The first time she scraped her knee she cried a lot, but no longer cried for other, smaller bumps and scrapes. Then, after the first time she spectacularly wrecked her two-wheeled bicycle and got those serious scrapes and that one good gouge (from the pedal – remember how much those hurt?!) she didn’t cry for those smaller injuries any more.
I think this holds true for emotional injuries as well. We cry over those first small hurts because that is the worst pain we have ever known. Then as we progress in the world, gain love and loved ones, lose love and loved ones, and suffer the pain and vagaries of life, we weep for the greater hurts we suffer, but perhaps not so much for the smaller ones.
Unfortunately, if we are hurt enough, we may eventually stop crying at all. This may be a survival mechanism, both since tears make us appear weak and vulnerable, and since they are often a ‘reward’ to an abuser, prompting or prolonging the abuse.
Do you know someone who you never see cry? It doesn’t mean they don’t, of course; they may just shed their tears in private. But some of us suffered so greatly that the ordinary ‘slings and arrows’ of life are just minor stings to us. But I don’t think this is a healthy state of being.
I spent a long time healing my mental and emotional injuries and I thought I was doing quite well. I didn’t consider the fact that I still rarely cried, and never in front of other people. Then I met Lionheart, the man who would become my (second) husband. Somehow, and I don’t yet understand it, he made it both okay and possible for me to cry again. One evening, quite early in our relationship, I spontaneously burst into tears. It actually frightened me; this was just not something I did, and to make it worse, I didn’t even know why I was crying.
Then this amazing man took me in his arms and gave me his thoughts on why I was crying. And as I listened I realized he was right. And that it was okay. Everything was okay. And the world didn’t end.
I still don’t cry very often but when I do it feels okay now – that it is safe to do so. And sometimes he still has to help me figure out why I’m crying, but that’s okay too. This is a journey he is willing to share with me.
Camellia
Do you know someone who never cries? Have you ever asked them why?
Friday, February 20, 2009
“I would die of fright!”
In this post I want to expand upon my theme of ‘Do it anyway’. In a prior post I talked about my philosophy of ‘do it anyway’ and a little about how it developed. I talked about having a yardstick by which I measure the risk, the danger, the threat of a situation. A measure that helps me to decide if I will ‘do it anyway’. In this post I want to expand on a particular instance in that development.
When I was somewhere in the 5-to-8-years-old time frame, my bedroom that summer was in what was called ‘the sunroom’. This was a room upstairs, in the southwest corner of the house. It had a series of tall windows that filled the two outer walls. They were hung with plastic curtains (Are any of you old enough to remember those cheap plastic curtains?). In many ways this could have been a pleasant room – but it wasn’t. It had one large defect. It was infested with wasps.
When I say ‘infested’ I mean that literally. Large wasp nests hung in each corner of the room and many smaller ones hung in the folds of the plastic curtains. During the day, when the sun poured heavy and golden against the windows, the wasps buzzed lazily in the warmth. After the sun went down and the room cooled, however, the wasps had greater difficulty in moving around and often fell from where they crawled on top of their nests.
My little bed was under the windows on the west side of the room. I have a snapshot memory of a wasp falling down onto the bed covers near my feet. My mother, who was sitting beside the bed reading poetry aloud, reached over and, using the spine of the book, crushed the wasp to death against the covers.
So I know that, for at least a while, my bed was in that room. And my small cardboard box of toys was under the windows on the south side of that room. I have a slighter longer ‘film clip’ memory of begging the adults downstairs to get my toys for me from that box. They refused. They told me if I wanted my toys I had to get them myself. My next memory is of sitting on the first of the two steps up into that room, watching the wasps as they slowly flew through the air, those long hind legs trailing behind them as they flew. They were flying barely higher than my head as I sat on the step. I remember being horribly, terribly afraid.
I had often had encounters with and been stung by wasps around this house. I remember swinging on the swingset outside and somehow accidentally kicking a wasp as it flew by. I still have a freckle on the top of my foot where the stinger had to be removed – and wasps don’t usually lose their stingers when they sting, so it must have been especially deep. I remember seeing a wasp caught in the fuzzy material of my knee socks as I ran around outside. They also seemed to be magically drawn to getting caught in my long blonde hair. And goodness knows how many times I might have been stung lying in my own bed – thankfully I don’t remember if that happened. I also remember the pain of stepping on honeybees crawling in the dandelions as I ran barefoot through the yard. So I was very familiar with the agony that flying insects with stingers could inflict. And I was staring into a room literally buzzing with them.
But I wanted my toys. So I started crawling on my belly across the linoleum-covered floor as the wasps flew low over my head. I remember, about halfway across, looking back over the smooth shine of the floor to the doorway, so dark in contrast that I couldn’t see into the hallway beyond. I remember reaching the box, then being even more terrified to raise myself up from lying flat on the floor. I remember finally raising up high enough to peer over into the box. I remember exactly how my toys looked as they lay there.
That is the end of my memory. I have no clue what happened next. Did I reach in and retrieve the toy I was after? Was a wasp waiting in there to sting my hand? Did I manage to get out of the room with a toy at all?
No clue. But I do know that, at that young age, I looked absolute blinding terror in the face, and I did it anyway. And it didn’t kill me. So now I never, ever, let fear alone be the deciding factor in any decision I make. If fear is the only reason I have for not doing something - I do it anyway.
Camellia
When I was somewhere in the 5-to-8-years-old time frame, my bedroom that summer was in what was called ‘the sunroom’. This was a room upstairs, in the southwest corner of the house. It had a series of tall windows that filled the two outer walls. They were hung with plastic curtains (Are any of you old enough to remember those cheap plastic curtains?). In many ways this could have been a pleasant room – but it wasn’t. It had one large defect. It was infested with wasps.
When I say ‘infested’ I mean that literally. Large wasp nests hung in each corner of the room and many smaller ones hung in the folds of the plastic curtains. During the day, when the sun poured heavy and golden against the windows, the wasps buzzed lazily in the warmth. After the sun went down and the room cooled, however, the wasps had greater difficulty in moving around and often fell from where they crawled on top of their nests.
My little bed was under the windows on the west side of the room. I have a snapshot memory of a wasp falling down onto the bed covers near my feet. My mother, who was sitting beside the bed reading poetry aloud, reached over and, using the spine of the book, crushed the wasp to death against the covers.
So I know that, for at least a while, my bed was in that room. And my small cardboard box of toys was under the windows on the south side of that room. I have a slighter longer ‘film clip’ memory of begging the adults downstairs to get my toys for me from that box. They refused. They told me if I wanted my toys I had to get them myself. My next memory is of sitting on the first of the two steps up into that room, watching the wasps as they slowly flew through the air, those long hind legs trailing behind them as they flew. They were flying barely higher than my head as I sat on the step. I remember being horribly, terribly afraid.
I had often had encounters with and been stung by wasps around this house. I remember swinging on the swingset outside and somehow accidentally kicking a wasp as it flew by. I still have a freckle on the top of my foot where the stinger had to be removed – and wasps don’t usually lose their stingers when they sting, so it must have been especially deep. I remember seeing a wasp caught in the fuzzy material of my knee socks as I ran around outside. They also seemed to be magically drawn to getting caught in my long blonde hair. And goodness knows how many times I might have been stung lying in my own bed – thankfully I don’t remember if that happened. I also remember the pain of stepping on honeybees crawling in the dandelions as I ran barefoot through the yard. So I was very familiar with the agony that flying insects with stingers could inflict. And I was staring into a room literally buzzing with them.
But I wanted my toys. So I started crawling on my belly across the linoleum-covered floor as the wasps flew low over my head. I remember, about halfway across, looking back over the smooth shine of the floor to the doorway, so dark in contrast that I couldn’t see into the hallway beyond. I remember reaching the box, then being even more terrified to raise myself up from lying flat on the floor. I remember finally raising up high enough to peer over into the box. I remember exactly how my toys looked as they lay there.
That is the end of my memory. I have no clue what happened next. Did I reach in and retrieve the toy I was after? Was a wasp waiting in there to sting my hand? Did I manage to get out of the room with a toy at all?
No clue. But I do know that, at that young age, I looked absolute blinding terror in the face, and I did it anyway. And it didn’t kill me. So now I never, ever, let fear alone be the deciding factor in any decision I make. If fear is the only reason I have for not doing something - I do it anyway.
Camellia
The theory of relativity
It’s all relative. A matter of perspective. A determination of your point of view. In my last post I wrote about my attitude of “Do it anyway.” My means of making sure that I don’t spend my life huddled in a corner, paralyzed by my fear. I wrote how many years of practicing this have made many of my fears disappear and many others lessen in intensity.
Well, that sounds all well and good, but just exactly how did I arrive at this particular philosophy? How did I decide that I could “do it anyway”?
As a child I was struck by hearing so many folks say things like, “I could never give a speech/dance in front of people/fill in the blank of your particular fear; it would kill me!”
I thought that was so odd. It just sounded strange; not right somehow. As I grew older I realized that I thought it was odd because I was automatically thinking, “It will NOT!” You see, I knew about things that could kill you. I have been in situations of abuse that did kill my spirit and could have physically done lasting harm if not death. And these things that folks kept going on about were NOT in that category.
I had a yardstick by which I could measure the potential threat or danger of a situation.
Let me weigh the circumstances – give a speech, take a beating. Does the thought of making the speech make my stomach churn? Yes, it does. Will it kill me? No, it won’t. Does my churning stomach make me uncomfortable? Yes, it does. Will it kill me? No, it won’t. And even if I totally bomb, sound ridiculous, and have spinach in my teeth, there is nothing the audience can say or do to me that would even come close to what I endured as a child. So what is there, really, to fear? Do it anyway.
Camellia
P.S. As for my spirit? As the old joke goes, I thought it was dead. But it got better.
What yardstick do you use to judge whether or not you will pursue an activity?
Well, that sounds all well and good, but just exactly how did I arrive at this particular philosophy? How did I decide that I could “do it anyway”?
As a child I was struck by hearing so many folks say things like, “I could never give a speech/dance in front of people/fill in the blank of your particular fear; it would kill me!”
I thought that was so odd. It just sounded strange; not right somehow. As I grew older I realized that I thought it was odd because I was automatically thinking, “It will NOT!” You see, I knew about things that could kill you. I have been in situations of abuse that did kill my spirit and could have physically done lasting harm if not death. And these things that folks kept going on about were NOT in that category.
I had a yardstick by which I could measure the potential threat or danger of a situation.
Let me weigh the circumstances – give a speech, take a beating. Does the thought of making the speech make my stomach churn? Yes, it does. Will it kill me? No, it won’t. Does my churning stomach make me uncomfortable? Yes, it does. Will it kill me? No, it won’t. And even if I totally bomb, sound ridiculous, and have spinach in my teeth, there is nothing the audience can say or do to me that would even come close to what I endured as a child. So what is there, really, to fear? Do it anyway.
Camellia
P.S. As for my spirit? As the old joke goes, I thought it was dead. But it got better.
What yardstick do you use to judge whether or not you will pursue an activity?
Do it anyway
Nike says, ‘Just do it!” Some folks, like Leo Babauta on http://zenhabits.net/, say “Do it now!” For many years my mantra has been, “Do it anyway.”
If I gave in to all my fears I would spend my life huddling in a corner. Period. Totally non-functional. Paralized by fear at the thought of doing anything. But when I was seventeen I made the choice to not do that. No matter what it was, no matter what it took, I would do it anyway.
So - am I nervous about giving a presentation? Do it anyway. Meeting new people? Do it anyway. What about driving someplace new? Someday I will post about my relationship with driving. Suffice it to say that white knuckles, tight shoulders, and a churning stomach are the price I pay to drive. But if I don’t drive I am back to huddling in that corner. So I do it anyway.
Return an item to a store? Confront someone with whom I am having an issue? Buy myself anything? Yes, believe it or not, for the greater part of my life, situations like these and many others generated stomach churning fear. But I did them anyway. And over the years the fear has become less.
In some cases it has disappeared entirely. I can now return anything for any reason, because by continuing to confront my fear I have learned that I used to view the clerk as someone in authority, someone who could deny me what I wanted and humiliate me and make my life utterly miserable. Because that’s what the authority figures in my early life did. Now I view the clerk as someone who is there to provide a service for me, a service that I deserve and have every right to expect. That’s not to say, of course, that even now the occasional surly service desk person can’t, for one moment, make my stomach clench. Then I take a deep breath, strengthen my resolve, and do it anyway.
Camillia
What gets you out of your corner and into your life?
If I gave in to all my fears I would spend my life huddling in a corner. Period. Totally non-functional. Paralized by fear at the thought of doing anything. But when I was seventeen I made the choice to not do that. No matter what it was, no matter what it took, I would do it anyway.
So - am I nervous about giving a presentation? Do it anyway. Meeting new people? Do it anyway. What about driving someplace new? Someday I will post about my relationship with driving. Suffice it to say that white knuckles, tight shoulders, and a churning stomach are the price I pay to drive. But if I don’t drive I am back to huddling in that corner. So I do it anyway.
Return an item to a store? Confront someone with whom I am having an issue? Buy myself anything? Yes, believe it or not, for the greater part of my life, situations like these and many others generated stomach churning fear. But I did them anyway. And over the years the fear has become less.
In some cases it has disappeared entirely. I can now return anything for any reason, because by continuing to confront my fear I have learned that I used to view the clerk as someone in authority, someone who could deny me what I wanted and humiliate me and make my life utterly miserable. Because that’s what the authority figures in my early life did. Now I view the clerk as someone who is there to provide a service for me, a service that I deserve and have every right to expect. That’s not to say, of course, that even now the occasional surly service desk person can’t, for one moment, make my stomach clench. Then I take a deep breath, strengthen my resolve, and do it anyway.
Camillia
What gets you out of your corner and into your life?
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Wanted: Third Grade
Did you ever lose a year of your life? Sometime after my marriage I was helping my mother clean out one of her storage boxes. I came across a large yellow envelop full of childish drawings, done in crayon on that flimsy paper used in elementary schools, most of them folded in half like primitive Hallmark cards. As I flipped through them, reading phrases like ‘Get well soon’ and looking at names scrawled in staggering letters, I was completely puzzled. Where had these come from? Why were they in my mother’s trunk? So I asked. And she said, “Those were from your third grade class. Don’t you remember? That was the year you went to X Elementary and you had pneumonia that winter. Your class made these get-well cards for you and your teacher brought them by.”
Ahh. Puzzle solved. No, I didn’t remember. I experienced mental, emotional, physical, and sexual abuse and have almost no memories of the first seventeen years of my life.
I have become somewhat adjusted to this condition. Since I can’t join in, I just smile politely when people around me start to reminisce about their early years. I do have some of what I call ‘snapshot’ memories, when literally the memory has no ‘before’ and ‘after’ context, but exists on its own, a tiny little film clip. Most of these I can’t place in time other than a very general period, and sometimes I can’t even place the place.
But this was the first concrete proof I had of this. For grades one through six I had attended, I thought, Z Elementary School. But no! For one whole year we had lived in another place and I had attended another school in another building with another teacher and with other children. Children who had drawn and colored get-well cards for me and a teacher who had brought them to me. And I had no memories of any of it. No memories of the location, of the building, of the bus rides every day to and from school, of the teacher, or of the children whose names I saw signed on the cards I was holding in my hands.
That was really freaky.
Most times I don’t think about my ‘lost’ childhood. But sometimes it rises to the front of my brain and I start worrying at it like a sore tooth. Should I get (even more) therapy? Should I try hypnosis to penetrate that blankness and retrieve my memories? So far my answer has been ‘No’. The memories I do have are not great (okay, awful) and frankly I’m not thrilled with retrieving any more.
But it’s a shame that the good had to disappear with the bad. What a kindness, to have taken the time to make and deliver those cards. It would be nice to have a memory like that to look back on.
Camellia
How’s your memory? Or the memory of those closest to you? Any gaps, missing information, or times you don’t want to think about/they don’t want to talk about? What, if anything, have you done about it?
Ahh. Puzzle solved. No, I didn’t remember. I experienced mental, emotional, physical, and sexual abuse and have almost no memories of the first seventeen years of my life.
I have become somewhat adjusted to this condition. Since I can’t join in, I just smile politely when people around me start to reminisce about their early years. I do have some of what I call ‘snapshot’ memories, when literally the memory has no ‘before’ and ‘after’ context, but exists on its own, a tiny little film clip. Most of these I can’t place in time other than a very general period, and sometimes I can’t even place the place.
But this was the first concrete proof I had of this. For grades one through six I had attended, I thought, Z Elementary School. But no! For one whole year we had lived in another place and I had attended another school in another building with another teacher and with other children. Children who had drawn and colored get-well cards for me and a teacher who had brought them to me. And I had no memories of any of it. No memories of the location, of the building, of the bus rides every day to and from school, of the teacher, or of the children whose names I saw signed on the cards I was holding in my hands.
That was really freaky.
Most times I don’t think about my ‘lost’ childhood. But sometimes it rises to the front of my brain and I start worrying at it like a sore tooth. Should I get (even more) therapy? Should I try hypnosis to penetrate that blankness and retrieve my memories? So far my answer has been ‘No’. The memories I do have are not great (okay, awful) and frankly I’m not thrilled with retrieving any more.
But it’s a shame that the good had to disappear with the bad. What a kindness, to have taken the time to make and deliver those cards. It would be nice to have a memory like that to look back on.
Camellia
How’s your memory? Or the memory of those closest to you? Any gaps, missing information, or times you don’t want to think about/they don’t want to talk about? What, if anything, have you done about it?
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