“No
one could ever hate me as much as I hate myself, okay? So any mean thing
someone's going to think of saying about me, I've already said to me, about me,
probably in the last half hour.”
- Hannah, Girls
Its 10 days into 2014 and
I am now back in London and back to reality after a relaxing 2 weeks at home. 2
weeks of no writing, hardly any emails and nothing more than time with my dog
(not that she appreciated it), my family (they were glad to ship me back to
London by the end) and my friends (sadly missed).
A New Year often mean New Year’s resolutions or at least the intention to become a better person, healthier, more dedicated, you name it. I have never been good at keeping New Year resolutions and thus have stopped having any. I am much better at setting my mind to something at the right time rather than letting that be determined by a new number on the front cover of my calendar.
The last two years have
not been great and while I remain doubtful whether 2014 will be a good year it
will almost certainly be better than 2013 and 2012. It sounds incredibly
ungrateful when I say that 2012 and 2013 have not been great; I have met some incredible
people who have enriched my life and my mind (you know who you are) and have
had some pretty amazing experiences (London Collections, London Fashion Week,
my time with the crazy Octopus crew, moving to South London). So maybe I should
rather say that 2012 & 2013 have ripped open a few old wounds that have
taken until now to start to heal again.
The realisation of just
what exactly these are has been a slow process. I have been thrown in
situations in the last couple of months of 2013 that have made me realize just which
‘scars’ are still left over from the past or might even still be open wounds.
For much of early 2013 I had managed to suppress the fact that there were
issues I should be dealing with, things that I needed to think about and make
myself understand and get over.
It is so much easier and
so much less painful to hide. It is only when you are exposing yourself, making
yourself vulnerable by opening up to people and letting them be part of your
life that you find yourself unable to hide from it all. Most importantly, unable
to hide from yourself. If you want to be able to move forward and let the past
be the past then you need to challenge yourself and stop hiding; I have always
known this to be true yet I also knew that this would require a kind of strength
that for much of last year, and particularly the end of 2012, I just didn’t have.
At the end of 2013 it was
time for me to stop hiding; suddenly I had something to lose if I didn’t stop.
I am now, January 2014, at a point where I am tired of letting scars from the
past take over the better of me, make me weak and to a certain degree more vulnerable
than I need to be. Tired of sabotaging myself and the relationships in my life,
both my friends and the boy.
I miss feeling like I
used to: strong, confident, and invincible at times. I was the kind of kid that
just because someone said I couldn’t do something, wouldn’t try and do it. In kindergarten
I used to notoriously climb on top of the wooden play house and over the fence
when I was more interested in exploring my neighbourhood than play with the
other kids (Sorry Frau Fleischman!). I was the kid who famously insisted that I
get to play trucks with the boys in the sandpit (they had refused to let me
play on the grounds that I was a girl and that automatically meant I mustn’t enjoy
getting dirty or playing with cars). When I was 6 I embarrassed my family by
sitting with everyone but them at the hotel restaurants when we were out
skiing.
I could go on and on with
stories like this – in summary I was stubborn and confident enough to do what I
thought was good for me, much to the dismay of my parents and teachers. Writing
this down now makes me feel nostalgic about the way it feels to have that kind
of believe and love for yourself. You know that no matter what someone else
says that if you just don’t listen to them you are great the way you are.
Last year the reason that
I didn’t believe in myself at all, that I was a mere shadow of that little
girl, was something that was completely used against me. Instead of offering
the kind of love and support a normal person would, it was used to break me
into even more little pieces. Make me feel even smaller and weaker than I was from
the get go.
At the time I didn’t quite
realize that the only person who could do anything about this was myself. That
I need to start standing up for myself again, the way I used to. In hindsight I
could kick myself, slap myself for not seeing it coming and putting up with it
all for as long as I did; to let someone make me feel like that in the first
place.
Fast forward to January 2014
and things are slightly different; I now know that to grow back into that kind
of confidence, that in order to get anywhere close to being that girl again, I
need to start liking myself more again. Not necessarily love but at least like
myself to the extent where I would want to be friends with me if I wasn’t me.
And that is outside of
the way I look. There is only so much I can change about the way I look; I could
dye my hair again or (god forbid) start eating salad and become a hungry,
skinny thing. I could get more piercings or (as my Dad constantly fears) a
tattoo. But none of that will change whether I like myself or not. I might be
more impressed with what I see in the mirror but that would be the end of it.
Maybe I knew this all
along and just didn’t realize it or maybe I lived in the denial that liking
myself was the only thing that would change things. I need to stop thinking of
myself as boring, uninteresting and most importantly unlovable.
Over
Christmas I read Robert Holden’s Loveability: Knowing How to Love and Be
Loved and while a lot of it was a bit preachy for me (sorry Robert!) it did
get me thinking. What is there that I like about myself? What is it that makes
me feel loved? Why do I often feel like I am not loved by the people around me?
2014 is going to be the year
I learn to like myself. Learn that I am loveable and loved. Learn that, yes, I
can be annoying but that despite all my terrible traits and habits I have
people in my life you love me despite all that. Or maybe even for all of them. I
have never been good at keeping New Year resolutions but this is one I am
planning to keep.
Photocredits:
'Expose yourself' and Neon sign my own
'For me thats you' - Postsecret