Weird

I used to believe that allowing myself to express the negative, self-centered feelings in my life was counter-productive. I felt that it was wallowing in self-pity, and that to allow acknowledgement of those feelings meant that they would become larger and consume me. What I have found, in the past few months, is that each time I let the ugliness out, the confusion in my life becomes clearer, and inevitably, I discover truths previously hidden or unrecognized.

One of the complexities with which I struggle is that what I know in my head is strongly contradicted by my heart. I continuously fight to believe that the things I have lived through are not reflected in who I am--that I am more than the acts forced upon me. Every once in a while, however, I write something and I realize that I really do believe it.

"Today I looked at myself in the mirror. I realized how very much I still hate my physical self. I took a good look at my face -- it doesn't look beautiful to me, only sad, haunted. The rest of me looks very female. I thought how self-destructive it is for me to associate with friends who find my body as much of an anathema as I do. I wonder if I have sought them out because they reaffirm that I should not love that part of me. They justify my hatred of my physical body--for they dislike it as much as I do. Perhaps that's not fair. No one has expressed that. It is my assumption drawn from listening to general comments made by my friends about the bodies of women. And I am a woman."

I adore those friends. I love them with all my heart. And I'm very aware that the female parts of me, the parts I despise, are also despised by my friends. Is that the kinship I feel in our friendship? A shared hatred of me? It's no more twisted and bizarre than the fact that, although I hate those physical aspects of me, I am attracted to them in other women. It doesn't make sense, and yet it is so. And when I am with those friends, I feel at home, at ease, and infinitely aware that I hate my body--and justified by their shared distaste of me.

I know. This is too weird for words. It's freakishly wrong. It's also very true, and I don't know how to change it. This will be a good one to discuss with Therapist.