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infinitecapacities · 3 years

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Goals

Mental

1. To stop comparing myself to others. I can feel confident pretty easily by dressing up, putting on some makeup, and doing my hair nice. But what instantly seems to ruin it is my mind looking at other people and wishing I had what they have. I know that others beauty should not take away from my own, but yet I cannot help but diminish myself and sometimes start to feel insecure in the presence of others. This is something I need to work on mentally, I have to realize that no physical attribute that I achieve will conquer this. There will always be someone who WE perceive as better. However, there is only one me, and I am special in many ways. I do not need to try and be like anyone else. I need to be at peace with myself and fully accept that no matter how I look in comparison of others I am good enough.

2. Presence. This is something that I have gotten much better at. Fully focusing on the moment and what I am doing when I am doing it. With social media there are constant ways to distract yourself. One thing that I was doing unconsciously for a while was being on my phone any time I ate a meal. Before I even realized it, I was done with my meal and I had barely enjoyed it. Consequently, I craved more food, never really feeling satisfied. Now I am very aware of when I do this and always focus back to really enjoying my food and being thankful for how it is nourishing me. I have found that I am always satisfied after eating when I put my full presence into the act of consuming and enjoying my food. This goes with anything I do now, working out, doing homework, making my bed, getting dressed; anytime I do something with presence it turns out infinitely times better than if I did it while my mind wandered. I want to be free from anxiety always, to always do things with focus and intention. I want to really utilize my time and feel accomplished each day. I want to be organized and clean. I want to enjoy every second of the day.

3. Trust. Now this is a heavy one that I really need to work on more. There are a lot of parts of me that I still have not healed. I fully recognize that I not only have a hard time trusting other people, but I also have a hard time trusting myself. I constantly doubt everything. Whether it is right or wrong, whether I should do this or that, whether it is good or bad, I do not believe in it or even my own intuition. I find myself never really believing what anyone says, and at the same time easily lying to people. What I need to do is open my heart, be vulnerable, and live my truth even if I will feel uncomfortable or judged. To just set myself free from the fear. I have to let down my walls and let down my guard and trust that what is meant for me will simply be and I do not need to try to control things all of the time. I want to be able to love easily, to give to people with no expectations. I want to radiate sweetness and tenderness. I want to be able to express myself without holding back. I want to open up to the people in my life even if they will not understand.

Physical

1. Skin. Now this has been an issue for way too long. I am so proud of how far I have come. I have accepted this part of myself more than ever before, although it is my biggest insecurity still. More than anything, I really just want to make sure that everything that I am eating, drinking, and everything that I am applying to my skin is good for it. I want to be glowing from the inside out. I want people to compliment me on the work that I put in to get it to the smoothest clearest texture. I want to feel confident without makeup on. I want to be able to look people in the eye when they stare at me. I want to feel confident when they look at my side profile. I want to not have to hide behind my hair or makeup all the time. I want my skin to feel clean and calm and hydrated all the time.

2. Body. The main thing about my body I have been wanting to change is my weight. This first came about when I weighed myself and saw that I had gained 15+ pounds than the last time I was weighed. I had also noticed that I needed to get bigger sizes. It really hit me when I started looking back at past photos and thinking about how much skinnier I was before. I recognize now how in the past, I did things to my body for others not myself, and this is what started problems. I started going to the gym for my ex-boyfriend, not for myself. He said that I should so I started feeling insecure, and going to the gym often just made me more insecure because I felt like I was not doing enough. I just kind of did it just because I thought it would make him and other people like me more. Then quarantine hit just after my consistency at the gym started picking up, and then because my skin was at its worst, I forced myself to work out more because I felt that my body was the only beautiful thing about me left. Still, instead of feeling better it just made me critique my body more. Going to college after is really changed my body the most. Since high school I have always just eaten when I was hungry. Besides being pescatarian I never limited my diet based on insecurity. I naturally did not often over eat or under eat and I did not force myself to work out at the gym either. At that time I was always happy with my body. So when college came around and I had the unlimited meal plan, I had other people responsible for what I ate and when I ate, and I tried to get as much food as I could when they were serving. Combined with excessive drinking, I ate more and rarely felt satisfied. Food was accessible to me and I took advantage of it without really appreciating it. I was often sick. I also went a period where I could barely eat due to depression. I had panic attacks. I was living with a model who always looked perfect and so I hid my body more. So long story short I have been critiquing my body so much ever since the weight gain. Over the summer I tried different things and drastically limited my diet but I did not see much of a difference. I now know what I need to do. I just need to simply eat what my body craves and drink lots of water. Simply nourish my body with nutrient dense, fulfilling meals that make me FEEL GOOD. I love eating fruits and vegetables and so I will. I have felt so much more confident and less harsh on myself because my goal is not to be skinny or even lose weight it is to just be healthy. I am much more intentional about what I put into my body and I enjoy planning my meals and cooking them. I want to be able to know that I have to wear a swim suit and not have the urge to starve myself. I want to love my body. I want to feel energized, radiant, confident, beautiful, sexy, and most of all healthy.

Spiritual

1. Connect more with God/spirit. Lately I have been studying a variety of different philosophies and religions. The ones that resonate with me the most have been Buddhism and Hinduism but I believe every religion has validity that is meaningful. Do I know if there is a God? Yes and no. It is kind of hard for me to understand why things are the way they are, why God did all this. And so I question if there really is one and what he represents and how I am supposed to connect with him. At the same time, there is so much evidence in my own life that I am being guided and protected by something divine. I am so thankful my mom taught me very young to form a relationship to spirituality. She told me and my sister to pick something symbolic of our angels watching out for us, for her it was a white feather. I had a few different symbols but none were very convincing. I eventually decided on dragonflies, because I thought they were beautiful creatures and I was fascinated by them, and they are something you do not often see. Since making this decision, I have seen dragonflies every time I need a sign when I am most down or scared or confused. There is divine powers that are helping me navigate life, and I want to become more in touch with them and listen to their wisdom. This includes meditating, praying, reading, and journaling, because we can gain a lot of wisdom from within and from others stories as well, and our thoughts contribute so much to influencing the energetic field of the entire world. I want to feel good about my way of life. I want to learn more about spirituality and how it can better the world. I want to trust that there is more than meets the eye and have inner peace that there is a divine plan in everything.

2. Do shadow work.

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queenoflightningpoet · 5 years

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Character sketch

This is a little different than my normal poetry and a lot longer. I wrote it for class and wanted to share it here. Tw for physical abuse, emotional abuse, and sexual abuse.

!!!

Our middle school had stricter rules than my house. Their unofficially Catholic values were underlined in every class. The most hilarious and absurd rules of this institution included but were not limited to: no boots (too informal for footwear), no gelled hairstyles (spikes are of the devil), no scarves, and failure to recite the pledge of allegiance everyday would result in suspension. This was the world I was thrown into. The kind of place a Mormon girl is sent in the urban sprawl to avoid the public middle school. According to my mother the reason for this was a pregnant seventh grader at the public middle school, but I fear the problems at my school was just as bad if not better kept secrets.

We went there together, best friends fresh out of elementary school. She stood next to me, about a half inch taller for the first four years of our friendship until my legs came in violently. Her deep brown hair shone and glistened under private school fluorescent lights. She strutted around in pleated navy skirts and white polos, her eyes always hunting for someone new. While she was sweet and delicate looking, her almond eyes snapped from person to person, just searching for a weakness to exploit. That was why I had liked her in the beginning.

Her name was Jen. She stuffed her ego with the people she let get close, people like me. Her slender hands always seemed to find my wrist in the crowds at assemblies, our arms linking as we sat by each other. She reminded me of a tiger. Her calculated protection and subsequent friendships seemed strategic. When I would ask her about it, she would pull a sucker out of her mouth, lips stained purple, and say “No need to worry about that.”

She had a knack for power, even in middle school when our knees were dirtier than our hands. She would find out secrets just by looking and in turn she would trade one of theirs for one of hers. It was a sort of preteen binding ritual. They were inextricably linked from then on. Her hordes of friends grew over our years in that Febreze clean school, but only she was allowed to be my friend. Anytime anyone would look at me in a slightly friendly way she would beat them off with an arm around my bony shoulders or a sneer that would show off her exaggerated canines. I began swallowing my opinions like the school’s slimy canned peaches.

She would come to school with bruises. Some from ballet class, pushing herself too hard. Others were from her Russian dance teachers. A smaller number she would cover with her hand and shrug, her sharp smile accompanying a weak excuse. I quickly learned the size of her father’s fingers by the bruises that looked like pinches. I could draw the size of her ballet instructor’s cane by the hyphenated bruises on the back of her thighs that were three inches too big for his standards. Her feet were a scarred mess, toenails always falling off and sores that never healed.

In her darkened bedroom, one blanket pulled over us both, she used to tell me about the punishments she got for having blood seep through the pink satin of her pointe shoes. Her arms would tighten around my waist as I combed her hair with my fingers. Her hushed voice stuttered over the timed stretches and literal lashes she received for being unable to prevent a red stain. My softer body shuddered at what she had endured, my dancer’s feet only slightly better looking than hers. She would stroke a hand down my back eliciting a shiver before pinching my side lightly and saying goodnight, kissing me on the forehead.

She was a sealed box to all but me. Something I would one day wish I had never opened. Perhaps it had something to do with me taking care of her in school when she had first arrived from Korea. Her English was spotty, her white mother tried her best to get her Korean baby to wrap her small lips around softer sounds but only got confused staring. For those first years, I took care of her. I was her shield from teachers and students alike. Maybe it was her way of repaying the favor, cutting me off from anyone who tried to be my friend. Maybe she didn’t know how to love after her family’s litany of punishments for slights and her ballet instructor’s cane and constant body shaming. Or maybe after all she had endured, she enjoyed hurting someone who trusted her so completely.

As she grew, she became more beautiful. And she used it to her advantage, dating boys who would get her bootleg test answers for a cherry lip gloss kiss. It was first here, in seventh grade that I learned she was growing bored of me. It was when her boyfriend Nate touched and groped my butt, tripping me to look up my skirt, stealing my water bottle and selling it back for a kiss. She would stand by and laugh, looking at me like I was doll for her to play with as she wished. Nate had a different kind of doll in mind, but before his fun she would whisk me off to my house and give me makeovers. She dressed me, did my hair and makeup, and made me promise to wear it for the rest of the day.

As soon as she closed the door behind her, I stripped and returned to my natural state of tomboyish hues and low maintenance hair. Her taste for pink and perfect curls left a raw taste in my mouth, my opinion counting about as much as hers always did in her parents’ house. It was at this point that I started having dreams of abandoning her. Jen often told me what to do, and most of the time I said yes. But the rare times I would look at her black Pumas and say no, she would lift my chin with her finger and glare at me.

“Do it or I’ll tell my mom you don’t need a ride home. I’ll leave you behind and let you find your own way back. I think you’d make it before dark. Maybe Nate will walk you home.” She would speak like I was her disobedient child. I would grit my teeth and do as she asked, my heart pounding in my chest. It was because of her that my first panic attack started a wild chain of obeisance and obedience. Opportunities to choose for myself came few and far between. She started ending most sentences with “Tell anyone and I’ll kill you. I know where my dad keeps his hunting knife.”

That would make my heart stutter no matter if it was the fourth time I had heard it that day. At the same time, I didn’t think I could ever leave her. We needed each other. I thought it was better that she hurt me instead of another. I thought she would keep me awake when I drifted into an anxiety attack. I asked her to hurt me if it was what she wanted to hear. I feared her more than God, her influence had wormed its way deep into my life. I saw her every day for almost four years, my fear and love for her growing with each encounter.

As she grew in popularity, she isolated me often leaving me in the company of her boyfriend of the week. These encounters either ended in fist fights delaying sexual harassment or muscle flexing competitions. This isolation lead to the school’s prime rumor that year: that I was a lesbian in love with my best friend (it’s still funny to me that the worst insult in middle school was “lesbian”). While I was in love with her, the lesbian part was incorrect.

Jen’s family life continued to pound her body and she often used makeup to cover her bruises and cuts. I was always there holding the antiseptic and tissues for her inevitable breakdown. After bandaging her up, I would let her take out some of her aggression on me. I thought it would help her to not blow up in school. I reassured her she was beautiful, and she told me she wanted to kill me. I guess you could say we were both toxic. We both had reasons to cry and hurt each other, but when it came down to it, we always fell back on each other for comfort. Honestly, I’m not sure if I miss her or want to watch her be beaten to death with her teacher’s cane. Either way, I’m sure I deserve the same.

#abuse tw #poetry #my poetry #personal rant #rant assignment

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