I had a doctor who called it that. This feeling. This knowledge that you are physically so disgusting and hideous that nobody can love you. You focus on a flaw you have and your brain magnifies it. You look in the mirror and there it is. You look at it for hours until you feel you may vomit. Then, just as quickly you swear off mirrors. You vow to never look into a mirror until this feeling passes. You cannot look at your disfigurement. So that’s me lately. I have the uglies. It is so painful that the thought of dying is the only thing that I can imagine will bring relief to this pain-this knowledge- that I am ugly and disfigured. The thought of dying or some serious reconstructive plastic surgery to make me beautiful-and loveable.
I didn’t always feel ugly. In fact, I remember sitting in front of a full length mirror just after a bath. I must have been grade two or three. I thought I was so cute. Adorable. I loved everything about my body. I was not vain and I didn’t think myself better than anyone else. I just felt comfortable in my skin and I could pick out certain things I loved about myself. Then, something happened. Many things happened. Horrific things happened to me that I could not escape. I could not fathom how these things were done to me, and, WORSE, how people could look away and not help me. I needed help. Asked for help. Screamed for help. But nobody helped me. I watched those commercials that advertised the fact that “if you just told an adult you needed help, you would get it. Never keep secrets. If someone is hurting you, ask an adult for help.” It’s not always true. Adults will not always help you. Adults will look away. They will cower. They will even blame you. They will tell you it’s your fault. They will ignore your screams or even try to silence them.
I have always been someone who wants to know WHY. Why people behave the way they do. Why people feel the way they do. Why people think the things they think. I am obsessed with trying to figure out WHY. I don’t know why I want to know these things, other than I think maybe it will bring some relief from my thoughts. So I try to figure it out myself. I would look at myself in the mirror, as I grew older. What exactly about me was it that made people ignore my pain? I often looked at other people, who seemed to me to be loved and happy. Often, those people would be well dressed-and beautiful. Naturally beautiful. Pretty and cute people are often treated better in this world. I realized that, if I was being treated badly and ignored, it must be because I do not appear to be someone who deserves help, compassion and love. And what EXACTLY about me makes me appear less worthy to other people? I looked for “it” for months and years. Staring into a mirror looking for that “thing” that made me disgusting to other people. I remember when I saw it. When I finally realized what might be making me less valuable and unloveable in other people’s eyes: my nose. It was crooked. How could I have not noticed it before!? It was like a punch in the throat. Mainly because it was something “unfixable” without a LOT of courage and money (two things I certainly did NOT have!) I stood in front of the bathroom mirror. I must have been 17 or 18. I felt hot. I felt sick to my stomach. It was hideous. And right then began decades of mental anguish and torment. I could not stop looking in the mirror. When someone treated me badly, I’d look into the mirror and swear I saw it getting more crooked right before my eyes. I’d be driving my car and, all of a sudden, I’d glance in the rear view mirror and see it was even more crooked than before! OMG. If I was unloveable with it being this crooked, how could I ever hope to be loved as it got more misshapen!? I would sometimes have to pull my car over from the panic of being so ugly and unloveable.
I was trying to describe it to my doctor once. This hideous feeling of ugliness and un-loveability and disfigurement. I said, this is how it must feel to be anorexic. You feel so fat and horrific that you would rather die than look a certain way. He agreed that the feelings must be similar. I even consulted with a plastic surgeon about fixing my nose. I walked out about ten minutes before my surgery. Why? Because of my phobia of vomiting. (That’s a whole other blog post) So, in one fell swoop, I pissed off my doctor, who, in my eyes, was my last hope of possibly becoming loveable. I would forever be ugly and disgusting and unloved. That was twenty years ago, but it still makes me feel sick when I think about how close I was to having an entirely different existence. A better one. A more peaceful one.
I have a new “ugly” that I have never really had to deal with before. I am now fat. I’m not obese but I could lose about 40 pounds. And, now that I am 41, I am getting wrinkles. And I still have all the other “little” traits about myself that have bothered me for years also. I am pale. My eyelashes and eye brows are so fair that I look ill and washed out most of the time. I recently got a sun burn and my skin is peeling this week too. And of course, there is always my crooked nose. And just being 41 in general is uncomfortable to me too. It is uncomfortable because I have no children and that is so shameful and embarrassing to me. It is uncomfortable because my “prettiest years” are far behind me now because of age alone. Even if I was gorgeous, I would never be as gorgeous as I was in my twenties. Aging makes everyone, especially women, invisible. I am embarrassed and ashamed that nobody wanted to marry me. I am humiliated that my own family ignored me and deserted me.
A few times in my life a couple of people have given me a hint as to why I may be unloveable. They were only hints and nobody was straightforward enough with me to make it clear about what exactly is unloveable about me. I was too afraid to ask them. I wasn’t ready to hear the truth. The truth still scares me. The first person to almost tell me what was wrong with me was a guy. They’ve all been men actually. He looked at me and said, “You know, I’d almost date you if it wasn’t something about you. I don’t know what it is.” And just like that, those words would haunt me at least once a day for the next twenty years. What was that “something” about me? WHAT WAS IT!??? I didn’t ask him. And he has likely never again thought about those few painful, life-changing words he said to me so long ago. I know it had something to do with my personality. That much I did know. So, not only did I have to worry about my physical characteristics that were deeply disfigured, I also had to worry about part of my personality that was making me unloveable. Unwanted. Then, years and years later, I developed a huge crush on a guy. A doctor. Doctors are one of the most amazing kinds of people to me. They dedicate a good portion of their lives learning how to heal people and help people. And after they have learned and learned for years, they dedicate many more years putting that knowledge to practice. That is absolute beauty to me. Anyways, this doctor was a charmer. One day he took me for a ride in his car and, said to me, “You’ll never have children.” He didn’t just say it out of the blue. I don’t recall how the topic came up but I will never forget those words. They were like a punch in my throat. I think because, deep down, I already knew he was right. Nobody would ever love me enough to think of having children with me. And, because I looked up to him and valued his opinion, those words hurt me to the core. He saw it too. That “thing” about me that made me unwanted and unloveable and disgusting. Another time he told me that if I ever did want children, I would have to be artificially inseminated. Often, when I just cannot stop wondering what exactly makes me unwanted and unloveable, I am tempted to contact him. Ask him to please tell me what it is he sees in me that makes it evident that I am deeply flawed. Then I get scared. I never do contact him to ask him. I’m afraid to know. I have worked on trying to “improve” myself for decades. I have never met another human being that tried so hard and was still a failure. I think it would be too painful to know the truth about myself. I don’t think I could really handle it.
So, this is what is keeping me awake tonight. I have run out of my Zopiclone and can’t get a refill until tomorrow. Zopiclone makes me forget about all of this so I can fall asleep. Get some relief from my thoughts. If you are reading this and know what it is about me that makes me unattractive and unloveable, please don’t tell me. I obsess about knowing, but I am not strong enough to know.
emboldenedgal 