Keep on Keeping on

**This is an old post, but I really liked what I had to say in it, so I'm posting it*

It's mother's day today.  While I am annoyed (and slightly disappointed) that we will spend this mother's day (and several more) just celebrating our own mothers instead of each other (due to the ever-present not-being-pregnant thing), I'm grateful that at this moment in time, I still have my mom.

I've been doing some really deep work lately, it's gotten really intense.  I am *so* glad that I've connected with my counsellor and feel safe exploring the dark places of my soul.  The question that came up lately was "why are you preventing yourself from achieving what you really want?", I attempted to argue that it wasn't *ME*, how could *I* be preventing myself from moving forward.

Like always, there was a knowing look and a gentle push to get deeper into myself.

And then there was an... "incident" a week later.  A small thing really, a mistake in my calendar, hardly a big deal (I was an hour late to a party due to a typo when I entered the event start time), but I simply went over the edge with myself.  I realized that I do not like myself very much.  This was hard to hear, especially because I think that people see someone completely different (self-confident, happy, smart).

It took me nearly a week to forgive myself for it.  I started to dismantle the rage and fury I felt at myself, and how underneath it all was this place of horrific pain.  I was able to take apart the really horrible self-talk that was going on.  It took an excruciatingly long time.  I ended up having to back off because it was just too much.  It's incredible difficult to look in the mirror and realize that you hate yourself, and with every fibre of your being, and that you've spent the past 25+ years of your life trying to cover that up.

It's where the harsh judgement, weird control issues and uncomfortability with things come from.  The internalized homophobia is still absolutely rampant (although on the outside you would *never* suspect, because I know what to say and keep hoping that if I repeat them enough that I will internalize it all).  It's where my body issues come from, where a lot of my struggles communicating my boundaries, even understanding what and where my boundaries are.

I dumped this all on the floor for my counsellor and I to piece meal it all out and it was hard, it hurt, but it was so good.  She understands.  She promised that it would get easier, that loving myself will take time and energy, but worth it in the end.

We are our own worst critics, and now I have to remind myself that I am being TOO critical.  It's also given me a new lease on my snap judgments of others, I have a new understanding of what it means when judgements are a reflection of how the judger feels about themselves.  The things I was hyper critical of in other people are things I struggle with myself, how deeply I am uncomfortable in my own body and life.  My crabby comments about what people eat expose how critical I am of the kinds of foods I put in my own body.  My judgements over how people dress expose my deep uncomfortableness with my perceived inability to dress myself in what I want to wear.

I know I don't walk alone in this, I've read enough blogs and had long 3am conversations with co-workers about this kind of stuff to  know that I'm not alone, that these struggles do not exist just in me, but in many many many people.  It's nice to be reminded that we are all together in this, working on a shared human experience.