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Beauty

 the ugly side of unworthiness 

This could be long.

It may be a bit of a rant and it may twist down roads that I have yet to take myself. This is a place that I keep isolated and hidden and mull within my dark abusive corner.

I have laid inside this pocket of shit before, many a times.  A place inside where I can hear the snide comments to myself, horrific judgements, and a constant seeking to feel anything but how I really feel.  I use the mirror in my bathroom and my exterior reflection to keep the self abuse going.  Next comes the begrudgingly wish that I could see a different reflection and now that train of self hatred runs through me…fast, furious and in a downward spiral and it’s only 8am.  What a fucking way to start my day.  And while I target my outer appearance, I NOW know that this cycle and this pattern runs deeper.  This feels like a plaque at times, a plague that is not even mine.  It feels like a lineage of insignificance and inferiority that allows women to preoccupy themselves on the surface.  All the while, we intuitively know that we are more….much more than the surface of our outer skin.

This is my brutal honesty coupled with my embarrassment to admit that the size of my thighs and the countless flaws I see when I look in the mirror are causing me this anguish.  I can look around my life and list a million reasons to feel happy and yet sadly to be hung up in this shitty place of judgement seems like such a waste.  And here I am, I sit and type and I am more than willing to begin to expose this ugly side, so that I no longer muse within its dark and isolated corner.  

But that’s the thing, when you are awake enough to KNOW it is NEVER really about what you think its about.  Awake enough to know that this pocket, this feeling, this place where I take myself from time to time is here for discovery.  And yet, even as I type this I can hear myself whisper…really…can’t you just decide to BE done with this shit?  How much of your life, of your energy, of your amazing gifts will you waste in this shit hole of menial self worth.  The place where you beat yourself up for the ways you don’t look, the beauty you wish you had, and the youth you can’t get back.  And that is just the quiet surface of self belittlement and as most women know there is mountain more where that came from.

Even as I type this, I am having an inside conversation that is laughable, but real to say the least.  The conversation acknowledges the ways in which women are set up for this external occupation with HOW THEY LOOK…because god forbid we dive into how we feel.  God forbid we have enough satisfaction within ourselves as I am sure the truth of how women really feel would rise… and well, that may ‘appear’ ugly.  I hear the conversation inside that acknowledges the brilliance of wanting to be anything but beautiful as a little girl.  I understand the brilliance of not wanting to draw any attention to myself with the lurk of child molesters close by.  I am sure there is an underlying theme or twisted belief that being a “pretty little girl” was in part to blame for my experiences.  I can look back and see the trail of shit boyfriends who used my insecurities and vulnerability as a stomping ground to boost themselves above their own shitty stories and small lives.  I can look back and see the patterns where being a victim of abuse became my identity and the twisted comfort of normalcy within that darkness.  And yet somehow I have had the courage and determination to NOT have my past BE what defines my future.  I have come to know that I am much more than the sum of my experiences OR what I have been taught to believe.  The force of this lie is too great to undo, there is no going back to render this beauty enslavement that has infected our world.  

But this goes beyond disliking my smile or having a poor body image. 

In many ways I could make this easy, in a torturous kind of way, and just stay on the surface of what I don’t like.  Unfortunately I’m not exactly a surface kind of girl.  

I could simply make this ‘pattern’ about my occasional low self worth and leave it there and it could serve as an ‘ugly’ detour past how I really feel. I am sure that millions of women can nod and ,at least, secretly agree that we know the downward spiral inward that then builds our walls of insecurities and limitations. Although our stories differ and our patterns vary, I think we can collectively agree that we now do it to ourselves…an automatic pilot of inferiority.

It is the one place, that despite our own level of consciousness and mindfulness, this lineage runs strong and has been taught exceptionally well. There has been global ‘beauty’ preoccupation amongst the women on this planet that has less to do with beauty and more to do with compliance. Imagine if women IDENTIFIED with themselves beyond their appearance and collectively woke up to honor and love the feminine nature of their being. I believe the social structures that need women to literally BE ‘worth less’ would collapse, our priorities would shift and momma bear would rise.

I have written the above words over three weeks ago. Feeling lost in moments of internal chaos and my inability to pinpoint where I was taking myself with this path of discovery. My jaws have been clenched and aching for weeks, as though my body were fighting the words that want to rise. I feel a fierce rawness awakening and a massive ‘fuck that’ brewing, one that will change my life. I could hear my own wisdom cry and wanting to shake me to the core…awake enough, to finally see this coma of illusions around worth, beauty and the feminine.

You see, I was looking back and recalling what was mirrored to me and my focus was on the women in my life and where this pattern came from. This is more than a pattern, this is a vortex of denial and coma. This is an atmosphere of feminine unconsciousness that feeds men’s institutions, feeding the global appetite for consuming lies and everything else that gets in its way. This is a mindset to ensure that women feel “worth less” in order to continually RESOURCE the surface of our bodies and this planet. So YES, this is about the men too. This is about what we allow, what we subscribe to and what we endorse for the women in our lives…our mother, sisters, daughters, wives and friends. The 'image of women' in our culture IS a language all on its own…it is a language that few want to talk about and many deny its existence. And yet, when I look around I rarely see images of men’s bodies being exposed and exploited. The FORCE of this language is calling for women to perpetually feel 'less than' and buying into the cycle of competition and collusion. And while many see the current economic system as a man’s world, I see the foundation of 'this world' supported by the unconscious feminine beauty myth. It is a myth, a story that we have been buying into and the only 'ugly' that exists is what we are doing to each other, this planet and ourselves.

I can clearly see this morning on this beautiful day of April 4, 2016 that, I DO NOT benefit from feeling dissatisfied with how I look. And while there is a world, a market and a culture of patriarchy bullshit that clearly benefits from MY unworthiness….today, is my day that I say fuck that. My hesitation to share this, to talk about it and call it for what it is FOR ME is evident on just how programmed we are.  Evident to how easily we have been led into a “norm” that does not serve women but rather has us competing and de-humanizing ourselves. For me, this is a deeper exploration around my previous beliefs about what ‘beauty is’ and when I sink into that shitty place of unworthiness to simply notice and question ‘ just who does this benefit’?