Dawning - or the inside out

Right so...after those carefree intro posts...it's time to talk serious.



I suppose it's fair to assume that most people are not entirely (like a 100%) happy with themselves. So when I was younger, much of my concerns gravitated towards my physical appearance and my body in general - I felt weaker and didn't do as good in sports as most guys in my age, I was shorter and hadn't been blessed by a somehow outstanding body neither with model looks (and those teen years can be particularly hard on you...people can be mean, and sometimes, you do look damn ugly XD).

Anyway, I struggled a lot with that because, you know, we tend to compare with others and for some reason (which is another great post idea) we have a tendency to put ourselves down...I have created this idea that much of my personality was derived from my physical characteristics and that there was nothing much I could do to change it - well, that pretty much sounds like the eternal doom and agony of the finally impetinent. Talk about unreasonable...

Years went on and I changed. I had pretty radiant periods in which I seemed to have finally put such things behind me. And while I know, rationally, that these thoughts don't really do me any good, for some reason they never really went away. They kept ebbing and flowing like a menacing tide waiting for a moment of weakness to wreak havoc on ground and drawn whatever was standing there firmly.

Last week I just had one of those breakdowns. All I'm going to say is that it was really, REALLY dark and bitter. Nothing dangerous happened but it was definitely a time when I came close to do something regrettable. I eventually felt better on the following days and made a deal with myself that I would avoid going back to that dark place again - there's nothing for me there, only pain.

Then, while I was thinking things over tonight, something dawned on me. About those concerns. I realized that my concerns were not really steming from my body - it's definitely not frail or somehow flawed (much otherwise - I have been learning to accept and love myself and be thankful for my body lately <3). I realized while paying attention to other people. Because well, some people have worse conditions and other people have it better - but their level of happiness is certainly not correlated to that. It's all in their heads - so it must be all in my head too...I realized that I have certain psychological traits which I find difficult to deal with - and THEY are much more connected to these struggles than my body. Had my body been worse or better (in my views...), my personality would always have found a way to make things work the way they are. It's like I saw myself in alternate realities, experimenting different conditions - but they would all potentially lead to the same point in which I find myself in now.

So let's not take it too hard, shall we? My body has nothing to do with it and the answer lies, of course, deeper than that. I may not know everything, but tonight, I'm certainly one step closer to it. I think this is the first time I am starting to feel more accepting of myself, FOR REAL.

Futurely I will try to stop taking it out on my body and understand more about my past, my feelings, my psyche. I want to start accepting and loving that too...everything about myself :-)