Healing My Self-Image

I stare at my face sometimes. In the mirror or random pictures of myself. I have a hard time seeing the beauty that all people should see when they look at themselves. It’s sad but true. Deep down inside I do not feel beautiful. So, I am working on it. I stare at myself regularly and see the lines, the freckles, the birth marks and the color. I just caught myself saying “the" instead of “my”, so I apparently still have a lot of healing to do. I write this not for pity or for any affirmation from people, family or friends but to reach others who may be going through this very same life lesson of achieving self-love. As with everything that I write, I hope this helps people. I really do.

I try to look at myself every day to correct the disconnection, the dysfunction or dysmorphia or whatever the hell it is that I have been carrying for some time. And I think I am beginning to slowly see my beauty. What helps is seeing everything I have endured and survived in my life. I look exactly like I am supposed to look and I am built exactly like I am supposed to be built.  

I am and have always been Gay, Feminine, Strong, Mexican, African American, Intelligent, autodidactic, Spiritual and magical. This is what I have come to see in my face. If only my eyes could tell stories. In my childhood I was really sick with asthma and spent much of my childhood in bed, in the hospital within an oxygen bubble, the emergency room and seriously over medicated with Prednisone, Theodure, Benadryl to a point where I was in a dazed blur for much of my early life. I think this contributed to my poor self-image because I never was able to see myself clearly. I slowly began to think something was wrong with me because all the other kids I grew up with in school were adapting socially and I wasn’t. I also wasn’t quite accepted because I was either not black enough for the black kids or not Mexican for the Mexican kids all the while in an overpowering sea of white kids. I was and still am naturally flamboyant, effeminate, articulate, and sensitive so I couldn’t help but to stand out like a sore thumb. I’m healing my internal self-image. By letting go of what I think people expect from me and for my need to be accepted by people so I can better be able to accept myself. I never really had a chance to. I was always trying to be somebody I never really understood that I already was. I never truly embraced the fact that if I don’t accept myself I had no right to expect anybody else too.  If I didn’t, why should they? 

When you have a warped sense of self, you tend to attract emotionally broken people as mates that reflect what you feel about yourself. If you feel that your ugly or worth shit, you will always be attracted to or attract prospective mates that will reinforce those feelings. You will also find yourself in romantic situations where you seek out romantic situations that are destructive, abusive, toxic or all together non-existent and non-reciprocal. I have learned that the hard way. I am starting to believe that I am better than that. I whole heartedly believe that I am worthy of the same love I am capable of giving and I will never settle for anything less than that. Ever. 

As I look at my face now? I forgive myself for hanging on to what modern society depicts as beauty. I forgive myself for thinking I was not what beauty is. I forgive all the people that made me feel like I was ugly and worth shit. They only were allowed to hurt me by me, because I thought the same thing about myself deep inside. I forgive myself for thinking that I am ugly and comparing other people’s beauty to my own. I will never be a super model but they will also never be me. I am different, exotic, unique and that, right there, is three different forms of beautiful. I am beautiful. I think we all are. Not just physical appearances but also inside of our very souls is where true unending beauty slumbers waiting to be seen and touched by another’s beauty equally hidden. I see myself now. And…I can honestly say that I like what I see. Scratch that. I love what I see.