I’m Sorry I’ve Been Avoiding You

Dear Blog,

I’ve been avoiding you. I’m sure you’ve noticed. It’s been months (?) since my last entry. Remember the last thing I said? I was so excited about starting this new journey to try to change my way of thinking and stop hating myself. I had a plan, I had lists, I had goals…

I stuck to that plan for less than one week.

So, I’ve been avoiding you. Because coming back here meant admitting defeat and I just didn’t have the strength to do that. I didn’t have the strength to look at the evidence proving that I need help outside of myself. Instead I kept myself so busy that I didn’t have time to think about it. Sometimes I think that keeping myself busy is cure enough for my problems. Maybe this isn’t so bad that I need therapy, or more. Maybe this is normal?!

And then I find myself finally with some downtime, and remember that I’m alone. It’s not simply that I’m alone on a holiday weekend without any family in the area or invitations from friends; it’s not that I woke up on my day off with no clue what to do so I cooked food I wasn’t hungry for and busied myself with work that didn’t really need doing; it’s not that I find myself cleaning for fun while smelling and hearing BBQ festivities from all of my neighbors; it’s just that when I am alone, I go back to wondering what the hell I’m doing here and when is it just going to be over.

Healing Unseen and Ancient Wounds

I can’t help but roll my eyes when I read self-help guides. Identify my talents? Take pride in my good qualities? Look into the mirror and smile? You’ve got to be fucking kidding. They swear by concepts such as “embracing a positive attitude” or “faking it til you make it.” I’ve read all of the tips and I’ve scoffed, doubted and, ultimately, rejected each one of them. But after finally voicing my twenty-year internal struggle with self hatred, I think it’s time to do something about it. I want this to be the last time I search “how to build self-esteem” in the Google search engine. I want to put in the work, find happiness, and realize that I, too, deserve it. I want to find the person hiding behind all of that black smoke.

 

The Basis

I’ve borrowed a few tips and tricks from various self-help guides and restructured them to work for me. My main goal is to change my thinking from negative to positive; to dilute and dispel all of the toxicity. To begin, I will evaluate where I stand today, at the dawn of my journey to self-acceptance and love. I’ll revisit these three questions at a later date (TBD) to see how or if they’ve changed.

1. Write about your strengths, good traits, achievements, and successes.
2. Make a list of your immediate, short-term, and long-term goals.
3. Rate your level of overall happiness on a scale of 1 to 10.

 

The Work

Each week for a month I will practice these four steps:

1. Name three achievements from this week (personal, professional, emotional, etc.)
2. Write yourself two compliments, carry them with you and read as often as possible
3. Document one new strength you’ve discovered about yourself
4. Write down ten positive affirmations and speak them out loud in front of a mirror (do daily if possible)

 

And So It Begins

Alison Scarpulla

 

1. Write about your strengths, good traits, achievements, and successes.

I am organized, driven, detail-oriented, logical, empathetic, understanding. I’ve moved across the country to a new city, landed a job immediately, was promoted in less than a year, and I’m currently succeeding in the role. I am finally moving into a new apartment. I have good credit (thank you, staggering student loans).

2. Make a list of your immediate, short-term, and long-term goals.

Complete this entry before the fear of actually following through with this overwhelms me, find a career I’m passionate about (even just a little bit), finish my degree, travel the world, run a half marathon, restore my body to normal health and functionality, find myself again.

3. Rate your level of overall happiness on a scale of 1 to 10.

One. Don’t even need to think about it.

 

 

1. Name three achievements from this week (personal, professional, emotional, etc.)

Completed a stressful task at work (setting up with a new payroll company) and saw the results of my effort.
Went for a 4 mile run even though I didn’t want to.
Attended a social gathering for my roommate’s birthday and actually enjoyed myself and the company.

2. Write yourself two compliments, carry them with you and read as often as possible

I have good style.
I am a hard worker.

3. Document one new strength you’ve discovered about yourself

I am open-minded. Despite believing so strongly in all of my self-deprecating thoughts, somewhere deep in my psyche there is hope that I can change these thoughts. I honestly never thought I’d be willing to try something like this.

4. Write down ten positive affirmations and speak them out loud in front of a mirror (do daily if possible)

I forgive myself for all the mistakes I have made.
I am beautiful and smart and that’s how everyone sees me.
I do not settle for meaningless, boring, and frustrating work.
My thoughts are my reality so I think up a bright new day.
I am in complete charge of planning for my future.
I compare myself only to my highest self.
I am more than good enough and I get better every day.
I embrace the rhythm and the flowing of my own heart.
I am too big a gift to this world to feel self-pity.
I am worthy.

The Plight of the Quiet, Shy and Awkward

Haiiro (2012)

Here’s the thing: I hate myself. I have hated myself since second grade. I’m pretty sure I hated myself before that but having destroyed so many brain cells from years of excessive drinking and high-school experimentation with drugs, I cannot say this for certain. I can’t blame my parents for this self-loathing; they did their best to encourage me to be me, always telling me they loved me and that I was smart and beautiful and unique. Yet somehow, as early as age seven, I hated myself. I compared myself to other girls, I was shy and embarrassed around boys and the popular crowd, I thought I was ugly. At seven fucking years old. Unfortunately, almost two decades later, those feelings have not changed.

I feel that there are two very strong forces fighting against my chance at happiness in life. The first, which I believe actually stems from the second, is my complete lack of sober socialization. As I matured, I thought I knew how to flirt with boys and have relationships with them. I’m realizing now that they flirted with, liked and had relationships with Drunk-me. Drunk-me is talkative; Drunk-me is funny and has opinions about things; Drunk-me actually has a sex-drive. While Drunk-me has my fair share of problems, the problem itself lies in Sober-me having virtually no experience with relationships with men, platonic or otherwise. I have always, always struggled to open up and relax around others, especially with people who I find attractive, who are older than me, or who I perceive to be “cooler” than myself. Once it’s up to Sober-me to interact with these people, I fall short and they lose interest. I’m afraid that the social skills of Sober-me never progressed past the age of 15, when I began drinking to socialize. It is a horrifying thought but it explains a lot about my interactions with people today. I am a 26 year old with the socialization level of a teenager. Christ.

The other force that is working against me is my low (see: non-existent) self-esteem. I have a hard time talking about it because I want to throw the word “depressed” in there but not having been diagnosed as such, I hesitate to say anything even similar. What I can say for certain is that I am sad most of the time and when I am not sad, I feel nothing. Occasionally I’ll say or do things, but it’s never said or done with any passion. If I leave any impression on other’s lives, it never has a lasting effect and fades instantaneously. I am a ghost.

As an example, today I spent the majority of my day with a group of friends planning our upcoming road trip to New Orleans. Sounds like fun, right? We went to brunch, mapped out a route, browsed the various roadside attractions we’ll be passing by and booked our hotel in the destination city. I spent a total of six hours in great company making plans for a huge life experience, and yet that the exact same day could have happened with or without my presence. Conversations were had but I was not a part of them. I listened to people I’m supposed to be friends with have a good time with each other, teasing, laughing, casually hanging out; I chuckled here and there but I was an outcast. I was boring. I was dull. I was stupid. I was ugly. I was lame. I was fat and weird and awkward and I wish they were taking someone else on the trip so I wouldn’t feel so bad for being such lousy company.

This is how I think of myself every single day and it only worsens with time. Where I used to have interests and hobbies and favorite subjects, I now have feelings of inadequacy. I find myself saying things like: “I’m not familiar with that subject” or “I watched that show once, it was okay,” or “I recognize the band name but I don’t really remember how they sound” or “I don’t have any strong feelings about that one way or the other.” At this point, I don’t have any strong feelings at all. I am not strong. I am poisoning myself from the inside out. I don’t feel worthy of claiming ideas or interests or passions as my own because, compared to others, I don’t like them enough.

It always comes back to comparing myself to others. When I’m with people, I am silent because I feel that I am less everything compared to them. When I’m not with people, social media has given me the opportunity to compare myself to others on an even broader spectrum than I could before. Not only can I compare myself to people I actually know, I can compare myself to people I don’t know and probably never will. Against them I can scrutinize my looks, thoughts, intelligence, cliques, accomplishments, wealth, ambition, passions and interests, my overall happiness. Yet I know that social media allows us to create masks of ourselves for the world to see. I look at my own social media pages and see only posts of the fun things I’m doing and the people I know and the good moments I have and what a hypocrite! I sit here alone contemplating my own misery and contempt; comparing my true level of happiness to false and unattainable goals.

I’ve never been tested for or diagnosed with depression or any other mental illness but I cannot imagine that what I’m experiencing is healthy. I’m afraid that with the combination of a social media centered world and my damaged self-esteem, I have completely forgotten how to have a personality, how to relate to people and how to live. A few weeks ago I was describing this to a close friend from my hometown, trying to put to words what it feels like to watch my own self-destruction. I told her that what I see is the image of a woman with a head filled with black smoke, you can’t see her face because it’s just a dark and empty void. This is how I feel when I look at myself each day, when I lie in bed alone, when I interact with friends and acquaintances. Unrelenting, toxic thoughts, slowly destroying me and everything around me and with each passing day the cloud of smoke grows.

No, Cupid

I have been on and off the online dating site, OKCupid, for a number of years now; off during moments of contempt and clarity, on during moments of loneliness, longing and slight inebriation. I’m currently in the latter stage and decided that, this time, it might be a good idea to document my various failures and successes.

Let’s start with a failure because, let’s be honest, it’s OKCupid. Here are the highlights from my date with Dan*:

1. Met someone even MORE awkward than myself, and somehow became the non-awkward one. It was awkward.

2. For the first time ever I went on a date with a bro, but the bro was me! See, we went to this bar near my house on Thanksgiving eve which is, apparently, one of the busiest drinking nights of the year. The bar was PACKED…with extremely attractive men. I found my gaze slowly drifting away from Dan’s face to the babe(s) at the bar behind him. I struggled to pay attention and I hated myself. I really hope he didn’t notice.

3. Towards the end of the date when I told Dan I didn’t see this going anywhere besides a friendship, I was given the pleasure of a 15 minute – NO JOKE – detailed explanation on why he was in agreement. Sigh.

4. Dan is bisexual and, after we got past his Reasons Why I’m Also Not Attracted to You Guide, he told me about an experiment he’d done on OKCupid where he’d made a fake profile as a woman. He’d experienced a small amount of harassment from the Men of OKCupid (MOO) when he changed his sexual orientation to “Bisexual” so he wanted to see the online dating world from a female’s perspective. That definitely gave us (and any female who has ever used the internet ever) something to talk about. MOO are the worst.

I don’t know if I’ll ever see Dan again (though he has sent me two different pictures of his cats in the last 2 days…I have to stop giving my phone number out so quickly) but I’m going to take this mediocre date as encouragement to keep trying. It could be better, and it could be worse, and sometimes it’s neither and you just get a few free beers out of it.

*Name has been changed due to my inability to remember this guy’s actual name.

The Most Expensive Metal Show Ever

Image source.

Never before had I been in a position where going to Maryland Deathfest was an option, but having moved to a city only two hours away from Baltimore, suddenly the idea didn’t seem so crazy. So when the lineup was announced and I saw that not one, not two, but three of my all-time favorite bands (okay, four) were playing on the same day at the same venue for the low, low price of $55 I whipped out my credit card and bought a ticket immediately.

 

One round trip bus ticket and a hotel room later I am finally all set up for my trip – cab fare and booze not included. And despite the fact that I am paying hundreds of dollars for a trip that will last less than 24 hours, and that I am going alone (going solo to an all-day metal festival? That won’t give me any anxiety. Oh, no) — I HAVE NEVER BEEN MORE EXCITED TO GO TO A SHOW IN MY LIFE!

 

Maybe it will force me to make fri….who am I kidding, I’m not gonna talk to anyone.

I Don’t Know Shit About Bicycles

I was born and raised in Portland, the unofficial (or maybe it is official?) cycling capital of the world, I spent many an hour riding around my neighborhood as a kid, and I’ve owned at least one bike throughout my entire life. And yet, I still couldn’t show you how to fix a flat tire if my life or journey home depended on it.

 

Last August I moved out of America’s most bike-friendly city to a city 3,000 miles away that ranks at number eighteen, a city that beat its record for most snowfalls during the winter that I moved here, and here I am embarking on a mission to revamp my old-ass craigslist bike.

 

Since I’m starting at the very beginning with this blog I feel like I should start at the very beginning with this bike. Here she is:

 

The stellar crew at Bicycle Revolutions will be my go-to team for all things maintenance and I will function as the cosmetic director…

 

Step 1: Make things pink.

Step 2: Actually learn how to fix a flat.

Not Another Fucking Food Blog

The internet advised me to write a “welcome” post and this is the closest I am going to get to that:

 

In the moments of life where I feel so completely destitute and alone, I will seek out mini projects or rituals to create some kind of purpose in my life. Currently, this includes fixing up a bicycle I bought on Craigslist two years ago, dedicating one post a month to reviewing a book I’ve recently read, and exploring every aspect of my current city from kitschy tourist attractions to centuries old cemeteries.

 

I hope to create a space of accountability for myself and entertainment for others. This is one case where accomplishing only 50% of my goals will be deemed a success.

 

ENJOY. OR DON’T.