Mad Weir of Tigerish Waters

26th May 2012

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Going to smoke and sleep. Hopefully I will feel better in the morning - I have to.

Will delete rants forthwith.

11th May 2012

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So I had my interview today.

I woke up at 8, showered, dressed in my best black work trousers and new Topshop chiffon shirt (both, to my delight, a size 6). I stepped into my black court shoes and put minimal make up on, just enough to highlight my features. I looked in the mirror and gazed at myself, feeling myself, my sense of self, my look of self, me. I looked studious; I looked pregnant with promise, and dare I say it, I looked beautiful in anticipation. I hope no one thinks me arrogant for saying I looked beautiful, and God knows I’m terrified that I’m turning into a narcissist, but I don’t see why self-assurance has to be seen as taboo nowadays. It’s strange: the vast majority of girls my age are so wrapped up in doubts about their body and their worth, entangled in self-hate, that each of them feel outsiders: but the real outsiders are the ones who love themselves. It’s bizarre to be comfortable. Asceticism is enforced, or you are unworthy, for you don’t know pain, everything comes easily to you, you’re up yourself, arrogant, condescending etc etc. But I’ve seen both sides of the coin; you know, a year ago, even a few months ago, if I’d seen myself now - thin, happy, feeling beautiful, accepting - I’d have fucking hated that cow. But that scene in Mean Girls where they all compare faults and turn expectedly to Lindsay Lohan waiting for hers is just so fucking true. If you don’t hate yourself, you’re not part of the club. The zeitgeist of self-disgust. I’m arrogant because I love myself. But the way I see it, the distinction is that while I think I am wonderful because I am alive, I don’t think I’m more wonderful than anyone else. Every single one of us on this planet is a rich and complex mystery of experience, nuances of personality, thoughts, potential contributions, history, sexuality, life. Just because Heat magazine tells you to hate yourself, just because the prominent idols of cultural fashion are idols because they have the “strength” to endure self-inflicted misery (starvation, surgery, gossip etc) doesn’t mean we all have to swallow the bullshit. Self-love is a risk. When you’re tangled up in hatred of yourself the most terrifying thing fathomable is allowing yourself to feel worthy (or pretty, or thin). You cling to the devil you know. Confidence is, to you, a mirage. Pain, hatred, is the truth. 

I thought that. I’ve got so many rambling monologues I wrote whilst in agony (and drunk, mostly). They’re all about how pain is true, it’s what I deserve, what I am destined for, how real life is bullshit and mundane and the truth of life is when we are screaming in agony. Obviously I was fucked up beyond belief so that’s an exaggeration of the norm, but it’s basically the same thing. 

Children are naturally confident. We are born whole, undiminished, burgeoning with wonder and unaware of ourselves as anything but ourselves. “I’m just me, now let’s play nurses”. As we grow up, in this bizarre world of conflicting messages, we transition out of the haven of infancy and are exposed to the attrition of negativity. On all sides, we are attacked. Not good enough for parents, teachers, excluded by peers because we are somehow lacking, too young for ‘grown up’ things, too old for childish privileges. We are too something and not enough something else. We are always wrong somehow.

In some ways this is natural, and good: how are we supposed to develop if we don’t change ourselves? It’s just when the constant barrage is mostly negative, or the wrong kind of positive (over-praising your children for academic achievement is just as damaging in some cases, as it makes them feel they have to live up to a standard - I am a case in point) that we are diminished. We end up, after the hell of growing up, not a fully-formed fledgling about to set off on our wondrous voyages as we’re meant to be. We’re bruised, stumbling, and fucking knackered. Most of all, we’re angry. Teenagers are ‘hormonal’. Yeah, that’s a fact, but it’s not the reason why every single teenager in the history of mankind has had some kind of outburst. We hate our parents for asking too much of us (directly, or indirectly through lack of interest - no parent is perfect and don’t we just know it), we hate the world for being too difficult and picking on us. Mostly, we hate ourselves. Because we have lost our self-assurance - what we knew to be who we were. Now, who the fuck knows who we are? All we know is, we’re not right.

So we react. We say ‘fuck it’ and devote our lives to aesthetic, short-term pleasures to take our minds off everything - drugs, alcohol, sex, friends, clubbing, wanking, movies, internet. (To be honest, I’ve always respected the ‘fuck it’ people. Bravery doesn’t come into it - they jumped into oblivion, living fast, dying young. That’s why I started smoking.) Or we’re too scared to, so we desperately try to improve ourselves. We find fault and we attack it with all we’ve got - society isn’t the problem, that’s just the way of things, so there must be something wrong with us. Voilà, you have an eating disorder. Or anxiety, anger, self-disgust, self-obsession, exam performance anxiety, body image problems, obsessiveness, loneliness.

In the end, we all want to give up. And the obvious way for me to turn this around into something inspirational would be to say ‘don’t give up’. But I’d be a hypocrite, because I gave up. I gave up hard, and spectacularly. And that has made all the difference.

Don’t keep fighting, because an internal conflict is not one worth fighting. You can’t win. So you just keep waging your private war until you’re exhausted and have no choice but to give up. Stop now, while you still have the choice, while you still have something of yourself left before you chip it away. I was an idiot and kept going until the bitter end; the bitter end being, in my case, being bedridden and walking-dead for two years. It’s not our fault we hate ourselves. It’s ‘the way of the world’. A fucking stupid world, that goes without saying, but the only way we can stand up against it is to do the unthinkable and refuse to hate. I’ve told many of my friends to look in the mirror and say, ‘I’m beautiful’, and it’s crazy how difficult they find those two words to say. They’re so packed full of meaning, they feel so false, as if you are unworthy of such a statement simply because you’re imperfect. 

Too many of us are indoctrinated into the cult of self-doubt. Break the fuck out before it breaks you.

You’re never fully free. You’ve lived with the burden for too long to ever be fully free; it’s part of you, a building-block in your experiential make-up. There’s a rotten foundation in your mind - do as I did and let the whole thing crumble to nothing and build it back up from scratch, or carefully replace that one block and retain the rest, for the rest is wonderful. It’s just that one mutinous cell that’s the problem. Not you. You are incredible, because you are alive. You have so much to give.