Sitting with My Self-Hate

Some days, the ickiness eats me up. What I see in the mirror: my face or that part of my body I have touched. The ickiness eats me up. I look and see the emotional disgust erupt throughout, like so many times before. Fractured ribbons of hate, self-loathing. An explosion of discomfort insidiously batters through every metre of my digestive tract, through each pore. Through every nerve. I feel cold inside out.

I look at it and sit with it. I ask myself what is going on for me.

I keep asking, as I open each day, with no good news. Day after day. No way of getting out of here. No options lay before me apart from the massive cloud of uncomfortableness I feel about myself. I’m a failure and can’t get back up. I’m emotionally damaged and don’t ever seem to repair.

I just compare and then despair.

I know its festering roots grew from my father’s fleeting appearances, to his long-distance disappearances; his huge emotional absence. His unloving words and openly cruel jibes and jokes about my broken mother.

And I know its roots, much deeper roots, grew from my mother. Her nagging criticism, her contorted screaming face. Cold, emotionless. Barking order after order. I accept she didn’t have it easy, but knowing doesn’t take away my self-contempt.

How do I know if I can truly save myself?

I look at it and sit with it. I ask myself what is going on for me?

I’ve abandoned myself and don’t know how to offer trust to who I am. I don’t know how to be free of those cantankerous roots. No matter how much I see them and try to cut them out, they keep pumping their venom into the very core of my unconsciousness. Crafty and cunning. They have blindsided me and told me I won’t ever be able to change myself.

I won’t ever be free.

I make mistake after mistake, road after road. People like me can’t change. I am misunderstood. I look strong. I look like a bitch. I look like I have it all. But none of this is true.

I look at it and sit with it. I ask myself what is going on for me?

I feel my stomach repulsed by my self-rejection, and I see it more now than ever because of my life right now. I have moved into the darkness of the lake and see all the floating rottenness. In this place, I get to face my self-hate and challenge it:

Will I ever love me?

A small voice calls out and says, ‘Curve outwards, love others, reach others.’ Self-love is through relationships, through loving another. Feeling isolated and abandoned by a lack of income and choices only cements my self-hate.

I feel stuck. But it’s only I who can help. But I can’t, I tried and tried and tried.

So many doors keep closing on me. I am exhausted and broken, wandering into the desert on my hands and knees. There’s no water, and my insides throb from the intense heat.

I look at it and sit with it. I ask myself what is going on for me?

I know I have to forgive my parents. They were damaged and didn’t know any different. But I can’t be angry anymore because that anger is only directed towards me. And that anger has morphed itself into my self-hate. I know I have to release those people who were once my parents, let them walk out into the sea. Free them up and let go. Let go of the pain. Let go of the lack. Let go of the anger.

And let go of abandoning me!

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