It was really all lies

It was really all lies.

 

Never have I felt that it is more important to be a good role model than now. Deep down in my heart and soul I have this urge to share what I’ve learnt from not being my own friend, from constantly burning myself down like evidence you have to get rid of. I want to share so that you, beautiful young girls who are like my teenage me, with a lot of love for everyone in the world but myself, don’t waste your teenage and young adult years on picking on yourselves, because believe me; life can be so much more.

 

I was bullying myself, always whispering in my own ear that “you are not good enough”, “she is way prettier than you are”, “people will never truly want to be your friend unless you make a complete fool out of yourself and make people laugh at you, not with you”, “no one wants to listen to what you have to say”.

 

Me, as my own bully was actually very creative. I came up with some pretty interesting reasons to why I was wrong and why people was faking when they acted like they liked me. I don’t want to share all of them as it’s not those details that are important today. Today it’s important to understand that as mean as I allowed myself to be, I could have been that nice to myself, instead. I could’ve, I just didn’t know how to. I realize now that it all started with finding the strength to say F*** OFF to myself! I found a way to put my foot down and decided with all I’d got that; I will not settle for this. I will not settle for a life where I hate who I am; because who I am is all I’ve got.

 

No, I had to figure out a way of living with myself and actually enjoy it. That was the first step; to finally realize that I didn’t have to be that fucking mean to myself. Even if it felt like I was telling myself the truth, I could somewhat understand that what I believed couldn’t be the whole truth.

 

So what else? In my desperation to love myself I went to the only beauty I saw portrayed in my world; external beauty. I read about how to get the perfect set of eyebrows, how to look skinny in clothes and “hide your shame”, I read about the perfect butt exercises and how to tone your tummy – you know, the important things in life. Or??

 

I asked myself, will the way my butt looks change the way I speak with myself? Will those eyebrows suddenly come with a set of twelve compliments I give myself daily? Is the toned tummy the source of self-love and compassion?

 

Well yes I thought for a minute, because its what the bully in my thoughts and feelings had made me believe for so long. But for some reason I allowed myself to take it one step further one day..

 

The way I Iook doesn’t have anything to do with how I feel. And if starvation is the solution to the lack of self-love we feel for ourselves; then why is it that I never get and feel more love for myself the skinnier I get?

 

I have never been so full of panic, fear and anxiety as I was when I had lost my period and was about to starve myself and my family to death. But somehow my bullies told me to keep going, “if you only loose five more kgs you’ll be happy. Liar!

 

I understand that mindset of never being happy with who you are, what you are doing or where you are heading; like everything you are really trying to achieve is turning into shit. I understand that you can believe that – because you feel it, it is true inside of your body. That makes it real, doesn’t it?

 

Liar!

 

I was lying to myself and I believed what I felt for so long, but today I know that it was all lies – no matter how true it felt in the moment. There is always more to it –  it is not the whole truth. The truth really is that no matter how much you believe that shit is happening to you; one day, any day, you can decide to fight back. Any day you can decide to tell yourself – I understand that you are hurting and I understand that you are treating me like shit to make the pain go away, but I will not let you step all over me and suck the living life out of me; I want to live and I want to enjoy it. I won’t be able to enjoy life while you keep telling me all the reasons to why I shouldn’t enjoy life. I simply have to tell you to shut the fuck up for a minute so that I can re-learn what it is in life that makes me feel alive.

 

In my book, Free the girl – a story about (finding) self-love I speak openly and honestly about all those sabotaging thoughts that I once believed, some I think many can relate to. But the best thing about this book is the way I challenge my own reality and learn how to speak over that bully in order to listen to my true self – the part of me that wants nothing but to live, laugh and feel fantastic.

 

The biggest part of recovery for me was to sit down and really getting to know myself again. I re-learned what made my time fly and how to treat myself as a person and respect my wants and needs in life. I sat down and started to explore what life could be like without guilt, shame and comparison. I started to explore myself in comparison to nothing but myself, which turned out to lead me back to home.

 

Stop believing the lies and find trust in life (and love), Maya