Content warning: I’m going to talk about body dysmorphia and fatphobia and in general things that might prompt extremely uncomfortable feelings about the physical self. Please take care of yourself and exit if necessary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I apologized to someone today.
That sounds odd, almost condescending in a pretentious sort of way when phrased like that, but there\u2019s a question for you: how do you refer to someone you used to be friends with, but who you haven\u2019t spoken to in seven years?
The ADHD means I have no object permanence, so not speaking to someone for a long time under otherwise non-confrontational circumstances means I usually still consider them a friend.
But things got messy around that time, and it\u2019s complicated.
I mention all this because this wasn\u2019t a rando, but a close friend I did a bad thing to.
Anyway. I digress.
I apologized because I was an asshole when he (probably still he) let the social group know he wanted to be known as X instead of diminutive version of X.
I\u2019m fairly ashamed to admit I didn\u2019t get into it whole-heartedly and I even pushed back a little in the form of \u201cI don\u2019t think of you as an X.\u201d
And then a short while after that, we stopped talking much. Possibly because I was an asshole and possibly because there was Intense Drama around that time period; who knows?
It doesn\u2019t matter. I was an asshole about something I have been very vehement about defending for the last handful of years.
Some might think \u201coh, there\u2019s hypocrisy for you\u201d, and yes, but also, the thing is, I think it\u2019s always useful to remember that often we hurt others where we were wounded.
Not an excuse! More of a warning to watch out for that tendency.
I didn\u2019t get the support I wanted and needed every time I mentioned wanting to change my name, so when X wanted to change his\u2026I wasn\u2019t appropriately supportive of his needs.
You could say that I\u2019d been \u201ctaught\u201d that other people\u2019s impressions of a person and what they should be named was more important than what the person thought themselves.
But no. I knew how lousy it made me feel then. So perhaps there was a slight element of \u201cI didn\u2019t get the support I needed because other people put their feelings above mine, so I\u2019m going to be an asshole now because it\u2019s socially allowed and even socially approved\u201d.
So the reason I\u2019m getting into all this isn\u2019t for pats and praise. Whew, look at me, I did an apology like a decade later!
The point here is \u201cmaybe sometimes you gotta nudge the sleeping dog and dig up some corpses to properly inter them\u201d.
I don\u2019t feel great about the apology. For one thing, knowing how late it is makes me twitchy. For another, I\u2019m going to have it on the brain for a while, wondering if there\u2019s going to be a response (even though I said no response necessary).
But I was going to have it hanging over my head if I didn\u2019t.
\u201cThis is a person who you should apologize to and you aren\u2019t\u201d dangles there, and I know I\u2019ll bump into it every so often, and the bruise will only get deeper and darker with every bump.
The discomfort will pass. The awkwardness will pass. The relief of knowing I\u2019ve put something fully to rest will stay with me.
Moving on towards\u2026 creating the self you want most to be.
Those of us who have played MMORPGs or D&D possibly have a little more experience with the notion.
And if any of you have, like me, gotten a wee bit of push-back from people about the characters you wanted to inhabit\u2026 time to reclaim the concept because do we have some work to do.
There are many facets to this, but above all, the most important thing to internalize is that \u201cyou get to look like whatever you like\u201d.
As this is going to be mostly within your personal universe, I\u2019m not going to get into \u201cbut maybe really deeply consider if you are ready for people\u2019s reactions if you take inspiration from Anthony Loffredo\u201d.
Sit for a while. Or lie down. Or take a walk.
But really think about what you feel the real you should look like.
There is a lot of messy stuff surrounding this, and I\u2019m just gonna throw it out there: it\u2019s okay to be influenced by the world in this, so long as you\u2019re aware of what aspects of your wants are mostly from the world and give yourself (and others!) sufficient leeway in those areas.
Frex: the \u201cme\u201d I have constructed in my mind of \u201cwho I really am\u201d has long hair, pale skin, nice tits, a perky ass, and the waistline I had in my 20s.
Pushing it, I feel, to want the waistline I had when I was 18, but I\u2019m working on that thought. Is it really? Because I wasn\u2019t that skinny as a teen.
Do I really feel more \u201ccomfortable\u201d at a heavier weight, or is it that I feel more comfortable presenting myself as a heavier weight For Reasons, or is it that I don\u2019t want to be accused of being fatphobic, or because I don\u2019t want to \u201cask too much\u201d or because I am pushing back a bit against my own socially-given fatphobia?
That is stuff for me to work on, but while working on it, it is okay to want that 18 year old waistline for \u201cmy inner perception of who I am and want to be\u201d.
I feel there are three thoughts to hold here: it is good to imagine how the true you wants to be embodied; it is good to examine how those wants are being affected by airbrushed photos of celebrities and the like; it is good to reconcile who you are in meat-space with who you want to be in your mind.
As an example: I like tits. I like clothing that showcases tits (not necessarily on myself anymore, but I like seeing cleavage on other people because pretty). I like how they feel because it\u2019s like a built in stress toy.
I do not like saggy tits as much because they don\u2019t look as nice in swimsuits.
In this case, it hurts no one if I get plastic surgery for some tits that won\u2019t sag (for a while).
Caveat: as long as I don\u2019t think \u201csaggy lumpy tits = age = bad\u201d. Ageism is actually harmful. Acknowledging that real tits are unlikely to be a nice looking as human-made tits is probably mostly benign.
It especially hurts no one that at the moment we\u2019re only considering mental plastic surgery.
The weight thing is more complicated because fatphobia is a real thing and hurts a lot of people.
There is little like being a fat woman in Taiwan, so I get it.
It is really, really, really hard separating \u201cthis is what I really do find aesthetically pleasing\u201d from \u201cI am beyond tired of being treated like I\u2019m either invisible or trash because of my weight\u201d.
But for the moment, because this is a journey and not a one-step thing, I\u2019m going to say it\u2019s okay to hold \u201cI want to look like this in part because I will be bullied if I don\u2019t but I also find it aesthetically pleasing in myself\u201d.
Again with the \u201cso long as we don\u2019t extend this to other people and judge them for it, we\u2019re just going to roll with it as a mental thing for now\u201d.
In part, true-me\/ideal-me weighs less because my joints are unhappy with the weight. So in my personal universe, I am the weight where and when I felt most energetic and happy with my physical abilities.
Tangenting smoothly into \u2014 but what about my chronic illness and disability? Is ideal\/true-me disabled and sick?
Yeah. Yeah, even in my personal universe, I am disabled and sick.
Not because I \u201cdon\u2019t want to be healed\u201d, but because it would be actively detrimental to my mental state to be in denial about my disability and illness. I spent about a decade working on towards claiming \u201cdisabled\u201d, and I\u2019m not about to go backwards on that path because I deeply believe that denial of the self is what promoted my slide into chronic illness and then disability.
This is an imperfect and incomplete example of how to construct this mental meatsuit for your true self, your consciousness to reside.
There are going to be paradoxes and hypocrisies and contradictions. That is okay.
It has to be okay because we are all immensely complicated beings who swing on a range of spectrums.
But one has to start somewhere.
We interact with the universe through our meat-suit. So much of our experiences and existence is bound up in this meat-suit.
I thought about if incarnating the self could be done through feelings and words alone and decided that no, much like naming the self is necessary to properly manifest the self, because we are physical beings we must also be aware of what we are using to navigate the world.
We cannot heal wounds we do not know exist – sometimes we must dig them out from where they were hidden from us or by us so they can be treated.
It can be difficult to move towards a goal unless it is made clear \u2014 having a roadmap showing which way to go can be helpful.
Naming something is a key step towards acceptance. You cannot acknowledge something which has been denied.
Construct your avatar, your key to the world. Look upon yourself so you can really see yourself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Content warning: I’m going to talk about body dysmorphia and fatphobia and in general things that might prompt extremely uncomfortable feelings about the physical self. Please take care of yourself and exit if necessary. I apologized to someone today.That sounds odd, almost condescending in a pretentious sort of way when phrased like that, but there\u2019s… Continue reading