“but I have come undone
My love is not enough”

Casey - Ceremony

I hated myself. I visually hated myself. I thought I was worthless. I thought I was ugly. I thought I must be what’s wrong. I took it all upon myself. It must be me. And in the end what hurts the most, where the real trauma comes from, is that you refuse(d) to even acknowledge that there was an issue. “I thought it was solved”. I let you devalue my the way I had learned to be devalued as I was growing up. I was never enough for anyone. Then I stopped becoming enough for myself. I lied to myself. I lied to everyone.

Your own self worth should not be determined by others, especially those who claim they love you.

The constant rejection is where it started. The denial of the issue is where it progressed. The almost complete destruction of my own self worth was where it ended. It moved on to me sitting in parking lots close to home because I couldn’t be there. It’s heading towards healing, self acceptance, and a recovering body image.

I started to working out and calorie restricting in roughly 2010 or somewhere. I had ballooned up to my highest weight of 171. Then over the course of 415 days I slowly had reduce my weight to the mid 140s. It felt great. It was a slow gradual decline in a safe way. From there I just chilled for a long while. I went into maintenance mode and casually mentally tracked my calorie intake. This was all healthy and I didn’t guilt myself over anything during this time frame.

Starting somewhere in late 2017 early 2018 maybe even earlier I really don’t recall. I don’t want to recall. I broke. I’d had enough of the same argument and I guess I decided that I was the cause. Maybe I was ugly or fat and that’s why things were the way they were. The constant rejection and lack of acknowledging me lead me down a dark path. It was this time the lie started. I started lying to myself. I took on the burden. I started working out and cutting calories at this time. I couldn’t stand what I looked like in the mirror. I always had an issue with my “tummy” and let me tell you that it can still bother me, but not at all like it did. I had been rock climbing for a long time at this point. I lied to myself and others and myself. I lied to myself and I hid it all behind this guise that I wanted to increase my strength to weight ratio so I could “crush” harder. I was working out 6-7 days a week between weight lifting, HIIT, climbing, and running, sometimes twice a day. Maybe I can reach the goal of getting a 6-pack. Don’t get me wrong I got close and started to “like” the way I looked. It all came at a very heavy cost. I was so depressed and lonely. I was yearning for intimacy and not just in a physical capacity. I just wanted to be loved by someone that was supposed to love me. I knew I had made the wrong choice long before. Now I was paying the price. I was hurting myself for someone else. It’s learned trauma behavior for me. I would look in the mirror in disgust. I would feel guilty for eating a cookie or something. I love cookies and that’s part of why I chose them to be a tool for my healing and self acceptance. I’m sure I had some form of an eating disorder as well as body dysmorphic disorder. Mild cases if they existed, and yes this is a self diagnosis. It all finally broke for me late 2018. Something inside me snapped. I had hit my own self hatred rock bottom. Only I didn’t sink deeper somehow. What I found was the start of my own self worth. I woke up to what was really happening. There wasn’t going to be anything I could do to fix the situation I was in unless I chose to do it. I started to accept who I was and the position I was in. I chose to start the path of liking myself. Fortunately for me I found someone who asked me if I was ok at a critical point. I broke and let it all out. I chose to be vulnerable and discuss things and how I feel for the first time. Moving on from there was some counseling/therapy where I learned the tools necessary to really see what was going on. Where I had done my own damage. Why I was doing the damage and where that stemmed from. It was now a slow crawl back towards liking myself and how I looked. I found the acceptance of someone else (my partner in crime on this site). I started to see my self worth as I was shown the love I so longingly desired for. I can only hope I’ve been able to show that back to said person.

In September 2019 the company I worked for started to go through some major changes and I started to admit to myself, with the help of my partner that I needed help. I reached out to my previous therapist and she said she’d help me again. It took until December 2019 for me to finally accept and go forward with it. The stigma surrounding mental health was a monumental hurdle for me to have to overcome. I was so worried that anyone at work would judge me. That my parents would judge me. I knew I had the love support and acceptance of my partner and that was vital. This stigma and fear is what’s driven me to try and help others by sharing my stories. I can now look in the mirror and be mostly ok with what I see. I don’t fret about it anymore. I still have yet to lift weights or do HIIT. I’m not ready for that yet. I’m so scared it’ll be a slippery slope back in the wrong direction.

It can be done. It’s extremely hard work. You are worth it to yourself to change your own self image. Get rid of those in your life that won’t truly support you for who you are. You owe it to yourself to start to like yourself. From there you can move forward and love yourself. We all have dark places and times. We all owe it to ourselves to at least try. The are resources out there and people out there that want to help you. I can be one. There are links in the help section of this site that can guide you towards them. Please reach out if you need anything. I hope my openness will help you in your journey towards healing.