The Strange and Common War
I find Hope a fascinating thing. It’s quite elusive for an insecurity addict. We like to believe it exists but it’s always just out of reach for us personally. Other people can grasp it, find happiness because of it, but there’s something wrong with us. We never achieve anything good, our past experience proves that we never will, life sucks, we wish we were dead.
That’s the basic thought process of an insecurity addict who’s ruled by self-loathing. And hell’s bells, Hope scares us. If something good happens, whether it’s a job prospect, romantic interest, even a night out with friends, we’ll find a way to keep Hope at bay. No matter how promising something looks, we’ll make sure we see everything that can go wrong within a nanosecond, and usually voice the incorrect oracular vision out loud. Our day is ruined, our night is sleepless, and we bury ourselves in chocolate, booze or work. Male or female, this is the typical stomping of Hope whenever its light dares to shine.
In truly miserable cases, where the damage from childhood trauma is overwhelming, things are much worse but equally as despairing. We turn to drugs, alcohol, sex, violence, self-mutilation, all of the above. But don’t make the mistake of feeling guilty because someone is worse off than you. That will always be the case, regardless of what your situation is, just as it’s equally true that there will always be someone better off. Always. The key is to be happy yourself.
Joy is just as contagious as sorrow, but for an insecurity addict, far more elusive and frightening. We are yellow-bellied cowards when it comes to joy. A storm of fear immediately whips up and strips belief in it away. We don’t dare be happy. It’s too foreign a concept, too scary an idea, this seed of Hope. Best to stay where it’s comfortable. Better to stay unhappy, self-loathing, unsure. Despicable. Let me show you how disgusting I am. Let me chase you away before your love for me takes root in my heart. Before I begin to depend on it. Before you find out what I really am and leave.
There’s a dark secret in us abuse victims, a treacle darkness that truly is scary. We recognize it, realize its strength and tenacity, don’t show it in public if we can help it. With me, it’s flashes of my father coming out, a sudden look and expression, a wildness normally sheathed. I remember his face when he was angry, I remember his rages, and I hate when that monster in me is allowed to surface and my expression mirrors his. I am not violent. I don’t hurt people, but I do occasionally scare them. Since I started my self-love exercises, which I still do every day, that Bad Johnny inside of me doesn’t have the power he once did. But he’s still there. He always will be. And I’m fine with that.
Insecurity is like any other addiction. It will always try to find an opening. It will always try to worm through any chink in the armor. But instead of trying to eradicate it entirely, which I doubt I’ll ever accomplish, my goals are a lot gentler now. For years, I tried to be perfect: a smear of gorgeous varnish to hide the rotting mess inside. I fooled so many people but none more than myself. I believed my own hype. I believed I could be perfect if I just worked at it more. And every failure at that ideal, every let down of weight gained, goals unreached and dreams unfulfilled, I attacked Me. I tried harder at all the wrong things: pleasing the bullies, obeying the control freaks, blaming myself in nodding agreement. It’s a strange and common war we have with ourselves, this guilt for our failings and righteous anger at victimization. Like a tennis ball, bouncing back and forth in a court where both sides want to lose, but neither ever does. The key to controlling insecurity addiction is to stop believing the inner voice when it tells us we’re sacks of shit. The only thing that can do that is to remove the self-hatred. The only way to do that is to love ourselves. The impossible, crazy, stupid possibility that we might actually accomplish that, is scary enough to make us puke, and scream, fight and claw, cut and burn and savage our own skin.
But you know what? Who cares? Do it anyway. Love yourself. Work at it every day, like a dog with a bone. Suffer the sneering self abuse as you ridicule your own “I love you’s.” Keep saying those precious words. Go ahead and throw up if you have to, pull the mattress off the bed, prop it against the wall and beat on it if you have to. But keep saying the words. Hope is always an eternal flame. No matter what we do, it never entirely dies. But it can get down to one tiny ember, something that needs to be carefully and patiently coaxed into a flame. So persevere. A world of magic and majesty awaits all of us yellow-bellied cowards if we simply persevere in this very private and slightly embarrassing quest for self love. Tally ho, my quivering knights, my brave and trembling comrades in arms. Let’s slay that fucking dragon.
Take care.
Love, R
