Lies

Most people don’t notice that I’m constantly ready to run. That my shoulders are tense. My eyes watching for danger. My breath shallow. My brain working on overdrive. What do I do next? Am I saying the wrong thing? Are people looking at me? Do I look okay? Does everyone else see that I’m fat and ugly? Of course, they do. Yes. Of course, they do. Because everything is my fault. Because I am all wrong.

“Why do you listen?” some people ask. “Why do you choose to listen? Why don’t you refuse the untruth and believe what is true? That it’s not your fault? That you are not ugly?”

I want to punch these people. Or at least tell them to shut the fuck up. Or to be quiet. Or something. Or just give up and cry because the point is they don’t understand. They don’t understand all the work I’ve done already. They don’t understand that despite the work, I still can’t believe that I don’t do everything wrong. That I don’t look wrong. Act wrong. They don’t know how far I’ve already come in the messy business of changing the lies I think are truths that have been there most of my life. No one else knows how hard it’s been. How pathetic I feel to be a middle-aged woman with a good life who is still struggling with loving herself. I do not punch anyone or yell at them. I do not because I have been well trained to behave. To have compassion for others. To be quiet. To be good.

In therapy one day we were talking about this belief I have that I am ugly. We were unpacking the past, trying to make sense of things. And my therapist said, “You are beautiful, Myrna.” Or maybe she said, “You are not ugly.” That would be easier to hear than “you are beautiful” but I think she said, “you are beautiful.” And I shook my head no, tiny movements that most people would not have seen, but she did. And I lifted my chin and set my jaw and sat there staring at nothing. But then I started to quake. My shoulders shaking, my breath short, and I fought back the tears and then couldn’t take it anymore and I yelled back at her, I AM NOT! And she, from her chair across the room from the couch upon which I sat, said, “You are. I know you can’t believe it right now but you are.” But I said, “No, it’s not true. It’s not true.” And I pulled my knees up to my chest and rocked there back and forth, back and forth. A sad sad middle-aged woman acting like a lost little girl.

Here’s the thing, though. I was a beautiful baby. Even I can see that. My newborn picture, two days old, takes my breath away. Darkish hair, a fair amount for a newborn. Tiny lips slightly parted. A cute nose. My little hands, tiny fingers touching, steepled as though I was in prayer. And my eyes – open, framed by perfectly arched brows – looking right at the camera with no fear.

You can prove that you are ugly. You have known this since you were a child. All you’ve got to do is look at the pictures of ideal women that have been set before you for as long as you can remember. Hear the comments about people’s looks. All you have to do is go back to TEEN magazine and pull out the “you could be a model” pages and see how you don’t measure up. How your eyes are too close-set. That your nose is too small or maybe it’s too big. What does it matter? Either way, it’s wrong.

Your height is wrong, too, not quite tall enough to be a short model or a flight attendant – that magical 5 foot 4 inches you’ve been told. Your teeth are gapped and crooked. Your lips are too small, too thin. If you still aren’t convinced, all you have to do is find a picture of yourself, a headshot, and put a mirror in the middle of the image of your face to see if your face is symmetrical like a classically beautiful woman like Elizabeth Taylor’s face is. Yours is not symmetrical. Yours is a mishmash of nose and eyes and ears. You look like a girl no one could ever love. Or maybe you look like a boy because at one point in junior high you have short hair and the substitute teacher calls you a “young man” and everyone laughs. And laughs. All you have to do is listen to the voices of the people around you who tell you you are ugly. Who call you an ugly dog. Who laugh at your hair the day you set it in foam rollers and you know it looks good but the boys say you look like you stuck your finger in a light socket. But still, you don’t learn so you set it in curlers again. Fool that you are. And you think you look good but then learn you do not when the boys taunt you again the next day. And the next day. And the next.

It’s in the water, my therapist says, this system that tells girls they don’t measure up from a young, young, age. This world is where we start to believe we are not good enough, attractive enough. And then there’s family and media and bullying and all sorts of factors that shape our belief that we don’t measure up. These false beliefs. But you got it bad, she tells me, looking like she might cry herself over the things I believe that she says are not true. You got it bad.

At a writing retreat, you try a writing exercise and it is so painful that you realize you are walking around and around and that you have made fists with your strong hands. That you are taking big gulps of air, filling your squishy belly so that you feel steady and grounded. That you have set your lips into somewhat of a frown. That you have narrowed your eyes into a serious look, almost a glare. That you have started to walk with a greater sway to your hips, a bit of a bounce to your step, like a prizefighter heading to the center of the ring.

You find yourself punching the air a few times. Jerk your head a bit from side to side. You don’t care if you don’t feel beautiful because you feel strong. Strong like you wish you felt around all of those men you encountered over the years. The bullies and the bastards and the boys who didn’t like you and the boyfriend – was he really a boyfriend? a friend? – the man who bashed your head against his headboard thump thump thump and all those others who wanted to take take take more than they were supposed to. You feel like now, at last now, you could kick them in the nuts, tell them to fuck off, and run.

Trust me. I am working. Hard. I am tired of believing these lies. Exhausted.

I have learned to fly airplanes, have flown in competitions where I’ve been judged on how beautifully I can fly a pattern of loops and turns and rolls and spins in the sky. I have traveled with the rodeo and handled the bulls and bucking stock and, most dangerous of all, the cowboys. I have biked thousands of miles through mud and forest and farm-lined roads to the middle of nowhere. Have hiked in the wilderness with a pack on my back. Have fought off men. Sometimes more than one at once. Have snuck out of houses in the middle of winter in dead of night to escape. I am no stranger to doing difficult things, to being strong, but this, this telling myself that I am okay, that not ugly (even now I can’t type that I am beautiful) is the hardest thing I have ever done.

I have been rewiring my brain to not hate myself. To come to terms with the fact that I am not ugly. That not everything is my fault. That I am not somehow, simply, less than. I am getting the words to change things, to change the way I believe. I name it. “This is the false belief that I have that everything is my fault.” Or, “This is the false belief that I’m ugly. It’s a belief I’ve had for a very long time. It is not true. I’m not going to believe it anymore.”

I feel my legs drive me up the stairs, out the door, and through the woods but I am no longer running. It’s taken a long time, I am still working on ignoring the negative voices that surround me and on accepting myself, but, at last, all of my pain and all of the lies and all of the things others have told me have made me ready to walk with purpose. To stand up strong.

I am no longer in flight mode. I am ready to fight.

Photo by michael schaffler on Unsplash