So I will occasionally go and read the blogs others have posted. I find them interesting and want to see what others are posting…I have found some interesting things posted and then I have found regrets.
Regrets are posts that have wonderful things to say but need to be edited. Spell check please. I don’t want to share something with horrible spelling errors. Grammar and punctuation errors don’t bother me as much because they can be typos or choices but the huge spelling errors just make me cringe.
I have refused to share things on social media for the same reason. Seriously spell check is easy.
I have never had great self esteem. I honestly do not see myself with the eyes others have. And you know what? That is perfectly fine. I struggle with where I fit in society. Perfectionism and imposter syndrome war for control of my life. But then there is all I am capable of.
I can make candles. I can make lovely jewelry. I make resin art. I paint. I sketch. I do digital art. I do watercolor art and other multimedia art. I code in c++. I sew. I crotchet. I garden. I bake. I cook. I edit. I write poetry. I write stories. I do amateur photography. I have random bits of useless knowledge in my head. I help people. I do cover design. and sometimes I am even a decent person.
in the social life I struggle with interacting and being friends. I don’t see the beauty of my own body but I am able to see the intelligence and kindness within.
so maybe it’s just me over thinking what self esteem really means.
so I had the first visit with a new dr Friday. Yesterday I got in email notes from the visit. Now before I get to the reason why I was upset about the notes…I need to state a bit of history. I have been 450 lbs at the largest I ever got. I have been on every diet possible as a teenager. I have been fighting with disordered eating for years. I barely eat once a day and I eat a proper portion when I do. it’s all in my chart.
so I looked at the notes and the doctor said I should be assigned behavioral counseling for obesity. I am sitting at 278. which is even 10 lbs less than the last time I was there.
I am still around 50 lbs more than I want to be…,but I will always be obese as I am 5’2. according to the bmi chart I would hit obese at 120. I have no way to get that small.
so I will be looking for a new dr and I had a good cry.
So I was talking to my therapist about how inadequate I felt when it came to my art…she laughed and said stop trying to be perfect leave some for the rest of us…and it got me thinking.
I feel inadequate and insecure but honestly how many people are intimidated by what I do manage. I might seem to be handling it perfectly to the outside…but so many do not see how close I get to jumping off my own personal cliff.
No one judges me as badly as I judge myself. So I promise you that I am not perfect. I drop more balls than I catch on any given day. I work myself to exhaustion and then I get mad at myself for napping.
So, trust me I am not perfect. I am kind hearted and I will gladly help those I can. Which has gotten me called a door mat a few times. I have boundaries but most people don’t know when I get done, because I don’t keep contact with the people that break boundaries.
There’s still days where I don’t see my own light. Days I struggle with my demons. I am doing better….but I am not done yet.
I keep meaning to post my word counts for the day on my Facebook account. I update them as I write anything for my own personal ability to keep track of where I am and I mean to post it. I move on to other things that I have to do and I forget to go back more often than not.
And the way I have my work listed may end up making people confused. Things only stay on the list until they are done. Then the list occasionally will not sync. so I get random mistakes in it as to how much is in a poetry volume. Or I have a notification on the top saying that it has a conflict from another version.
I love the feeling of accomplishment I feel when I do share the word counts. it feels like I am saying hey I am making progress. Unfortunately I mostly end up feeling ashamed because I forgot to post it.
I think that’s one of the main problems with juggling so much. The dropped balls become shame. I try to make sure that I only drop the ones that will bounce. I might be capable of catching them and then I can get them in the next pass.
Tuesday I mentioned that I was going in for an MRI. I said I would explain it today.
I have always called my issues with closed spaces Claustrophobia. I knew where I got the fear from…but NOTHING I did could overcome that. Someone once told me that there was two types of fear. The kind where you are in a life or death situation and the type where you can overcome it. For my brain the being locked in somewhere is a life or death situation. It is not Claustrophobia in the normal sense though. I told my therapist about it, and the panic that just the thought of the MRI was giving me…and she identified it as a PTSD trigger.
I survived the test. It wasn’t even as bad as I had expected it to be. It was not as bad as previous MRI’s have been. Maybe that is because I was able to prepare. I was able to compartmentalize and tell myself I was not in danger. I am no longer the nine year old child being locked in the trunk of a car and being told I will die. I am healing.
Politics are a nasty thing. They always have been. I take after my grandmother where politics are concerned and I am fairly proud of that.
She didn’t read newspapers or watch the news because she didn’t want to feel any worse about the way things were. I don’t do either, but nowadays all a person has to do is open social media and they will find themselves bombarded with current events.
Quite a few of my friends are talking about taking social media breaks because of the mental health strain that comes with the current events. The problem is that for some of us social media is the only time we actually do socialize. Loneliness doesn’t help mental health issues.
This is why we need books and art. We need creative people to make the world less hard to accept. Music, movies, books and art bring the world a light and right now the world is so very dark.
So I will be doing my best to post more art, and make more poetry and stories to bring a light to the world. I ask everyone to do what they can to do the same.
So I posted about an anthology that Serena is in. It really is such a lovely book. The other authors are amazing…and I can’t help feeling like I don’t belong there. The story I wrote was decent…I am not going to claim it was awful or any crap like that. But there is an Introduction in the front of the book that lists that authors as the top horror and dark romance authors…And my brain goes ok now I am guilty of lying to these amazing people.
Imposter syndrome is such a tough thing to grapple with. Most of the best authors I know fight with it. It can seriously cripple even the best writer to a mess and make writing a defeated blank on an overthinking mind…
So, I am struggling with my own brain. I don’t want to accept the idea that I am unable to tell the stories locked inside the squishy lump calling itself my brain.
Pattimouse 