Have been experiencing a really rough time lately. My last post was premature at best. Anthony's job hasn't panned out, and I have been made to jump through all kinds of hoops to get mine started. They have asked me to come in 3-4 times now to do things that at other jobs I could have done all at once, and now I have to wait until a date opens up for orientation. It's just so frustrating.
Worse-H has been back to his old tricks. Every day is yet another exercise in "let me tell you why I think you are such a screw up." He rarely speaks to me without complaining about something I have or have not done, and when that is insufficient, he gripes about ways he thinks I let OTHERS take advantage of me. He tells me that I should stand up for myself, say no to them while basically ordering me to kiss HIS ass and do what I am told without complaint. Of course he expresses this paradox without a trace of irony.
Yes, I am on my period again, and my hormones are going crazy, but I am just so damn tired. It's exhausting trying to hold on to hope and self-esteem when you have someone who every day does all they can to destroy it and make you feel worthless. At this moment if you asked me if I want to just die, get it over with, rest and be at peace, I would say yes.
Here I am, back again-I really need to write more often. A lot of changes. My friend, Jeanne, finally had enough. This last time her H, Bob, had to go to the mental hospital he supposedly threatened to kill her, and she got a restraining order, and is getting a divorce.
Me? I now have a job, and it looks like my son, Anthony does too. It won't be easy. I have to walk to the bus stop, take a bus then be on my feet for hours before doing it again on the way home, but it will be worth it. Do I dare hope that things are finally turning around? I'm scared but excited. If things go the way I wish.... I can't even speak it aloud. Has my ability to dream returned?
I think I have made real progress. This morning H did everything in his power to bring me down, to make me as miserable as HE always is. This time I didn't take the bait. I refused to get into a big long discussion about our financial situation which he had initiated for the sole purpose of getting me upset and worried. I simply said that we needed more money, and that to get more money someone would need to get a job-end of story. after all, what else is there to say? why draw it out? like I said, he just wanted to upset me. I won't do it anymore. I am so proud of myself!
One step forward and two steps back. Rest of the week a washout. I have to get moving. I am tired of hurting, not being able to do all I want without pain, and I want to wear cute clothes, be pretty. is just so hard though. all the negativity I have around me. H is like a constant storm cloud overhead and the money situation is dire. In addition, almost every one I know is in the same position, and there are several seriously ill or have had family members ill. Bob is gone mentally, one friend at church is dying, another is close to it. others have been in and out of the hospital. it's awful. maybe it's my age. me and my friends aren't young anymore. just have to keep going I guess, make the most of things. I must shake this feeling of hopelessness.
Started looking for a job today. am not sure how much luck I had. did pick up a couple of applications though, and there actually were a couple of places that were hiring I could apply to online. As hard as I know this will be, I really do want to do this. I am tired of having no money and no control over my own life. I want to be independent, free. Depending on other people sucks. I would like to have my own phone, my own car etc, and not have to ask anyone for anything.
Going out today illustrated this point more than ever. The heat is horrible and I am out of shape, so I asked a friend to take me around. That never happened, so I asked her if she would just drop me off, and I would then hoof it. Finally got her to but only because she was already taking someone else somewhere. That is always the way. She is always doing things for everyone else based on how needy and pathetic she thinks someone is. I guess I am not pathetic enough, so I always get the short shift. well, no more. I want to depend only on ME.
I thought this was great. It really makes a great point, not just about Ben, but about people in general.
this latest quote in the New York Post just really bums me out. Really, it’s a series of quotes combined together that have been getting to me. Let me demonstrate what I mean:
”I look at photographs, the ones that people ask me to sign sometimes, and think, “What are people seeing?” I have had this face for 35 years. I’m never going to change it. But I wouldn’t desire me. I can see beauty in other men. Ryan Gosling? Fuck. George Clooney? Wow. But you can see the enigma in those kind of faces. But I can’t see it in myself at all.” (Margy Rochlin, New York Post, May 5, 2012)
“This face. It’s kind of long. Horsey. Not as in “rah” but as in equestrian… It’s very period, is what I’m trying to say. I’m a bit of an oddity in a modern context. It’d be really nice to wake up looking like, I don’t know, Jake Gyllenhaal and think “Let’s try this on for a day and see how it feels”. But I’ve tried very hard not to be typecast as the posh character in period dramas. That’s the thing I’ve been kicking against — to try and shift class and period and perception all the time.” (Esquire, July 23, 2010)
“What do you most dislike about your appearance? The size and shape of my head. I’ve been likened to Sid from Ice Age.” (Rosanna Greenstreet, The Guardian, 6 January, 2012)
“What is the worst thing anyone’s ever said to you? A blog that said, “The talentless wooden acting of arse-named, horse-faced twot Benedict Cumberbatch.” (Rosanna Greenstreet, The Guardian, 6 January, 2012)
”I’m not gorgeous. But at least I don’t have to worry about taking precious care of my face because it’s my commodity.” (15 August, 2010, Sunday Times)
I don’t particularly enjoy writing fanmail really because it makes me feel silly and I figure it just sits in a box somewhere anyways. Not that I have anything against it, or that I think it’s all ignored. It’s great. It’s just not my division. But I can’t put the thought out of my mind and I sit here wondering how other people reading these quotes are thinking. So I’m making it an open letter because it’s just a blog post anyways.
Now maybe these quotes are just an availability heuristic at work. It’s not like there are fifty of them.
Yet I hate to see someone I admire feeling down about themselves, and I know that we all feel that from time to time, but this has come through enough that I can’t sit on my hands anymore.
I think that often in our lives we’re made to feel “not good enough”. We’re too loud, too quiet, too dumb, too smart, too fat, too thin, too opinionated, too ignorant, and not enough ___. If we could just keep reshaping ourselves, if we could tear out those imperfections in ourselves and become enough of that ceaseless quality in the blank, maybe then we think, maybe we’d be good enough. After all, it’s not often we hear differently. Or believe it.
Certainly not in a time of media submersion, a wealth of advertisements reminding us that we are indeed flawed. Couple that with society’s expectations and our raging battle for self-identity as we try to cram ourselves into those pigeon holes.
Maybe it’s in that din that we forget that beauty can also be found in imperfection. Perfection isn’t the same as beauty, after all. Or happiness or love or inner peace for that matter.
In ourselves, I think, it’s difficult to appreciate those simple imperfections that make us unique. It’s hard for us to perceive something that we see in ourselves as a flaw as a virtue in someone else’s eyes.
(Recognizing the subjective use of “imperfections” to refer to anything that deviates from that image of a flawless human. )
What’s really getting to me I think is the, “I wouldn’t desire me.” And the “I can see beauty in other men. But I can’t see it in myself at all.”
Maybe you can’t see it, but others certainly aren’t lying when they say that they can. A bird can’t see itself making circles on a sun swept sky, but that doesn’t make it any less beautiful to the one looking up from the ground.
So while you might not see your face as beautiful, many people do. I do. I don’t think that being born with Ryan Gosling or George Clooney’s face is what makes a person beautiful.
Now I don’t know what it’s like for any actor to be struggling to escape boxes and fit other boxes to make a role and a living. Not personally. But I do know that the media’s idea of beauty is not reality. We are not what magazines and morning shows and advertisements tell us to be. That is a very narrow, suffocatingly exclusive, and may I say boring idea of human beauty.
People are so much more diverse, unique, different, and beautiful than this narrow mindset affords us.
Why should we walk through life feeling like less because we aren’t the spitting image of beauty expectations in the time that we were born?
Why should we tear ourselves down for flaws we assign to ourselves, when in fact what we see as an imperfection may be beauty and/or perfection to another?
It breaks my heart to hear another person say “I wouldn’t desire me.” Because I know it’s simply not true that you’re undesirable. There’s someone in this world that can see the beauty in each of us even when we can’t see it in ourselves. I also know what it feels like to say that about yourself. In those times, I try to remember other’s faith in me until I can find it in myself again.
So let me help you see it in yourself. And to everyone reading this blog. Please remember that there is beauty in you too. Not just beauty visually, either. I mean that wonderful spark in you that makes you you. You may not always see it or feel it, but be patient with yourself. I’m not saying I have all my shit figured out or that I like myself all the time. Does anyone? If you do you have got to let me in on your secret (though I may suspect that you’re just Tony Stark). But what I’m saying I guess is that I don’t like seeing people I admire feeling down on themselves (especially about your face), I don’t like seeing myself feel down, and I certainly don’t want any of you feeling down. People can be really shitty to each other on the internet sometimes, but we can also choose to be better than that.
sigh-Ben just doesn't get it, and most other people don't either. But we are ALL beautiful in some way,
You ever get to the point in which you feel so completely pathetic that YOU don't even want to be around yourself? yep, that's me. My hormones are all over the place; I am having minor health problems; I have no energy to do anything, and so my house is disgusting; I haven't written anything I am really satisfied with in awhile, and I feel no one loves me again! cue the fucking violins already! I am sick of feeling sorry for myself and feeling neglected just because everyone isn't up my ass 24/7 kissing my feet, but here we are. it's awful. it's like KNOWING you are insane but seemingly unable to do anything about it.
