Things Which One Does Not See

Self loathing centers in a weird sick unphysical feeling in the pit of my stomach. That’s what I recognize as self-loathing anyway. Its like my mind won’t allow it, the conscious recognition of self- disgust or hatred but forces me to acknowledge that I’m struggling with it. It names itself from the strange tightness, not quite but worse than nauseous feeling in the pit of my stomach.

I don't know where it comes from or why all I know is that, it just happens. Out of the blue. In opportune moments when something I can’t quite put my finger on triggers the reaction and I stop midsentence, midthought, as the inexplicable feeling of repulsion that is so strong it could be physical runs through me and my mind recognizes it for what it is. Self-loathing.

In its deepest, rawest, purest most unexplainable form. I don’t hate me. I love me. But in those moments I must acknowledge the literal soul and mind- sucking validity of those fleeting and sudden moments that are unquestionably self-loathing.

A fly lands beside me and all of the sudden it hits like I imagine morning sickness would hit only it's deeper than that. It's like this whole soul, mental, cognitive, physiological structure that I have to acknowledge and ride out for a moment. It coils itself tightly around every piece of me and won’t let go for a moment. I fight it off, or ride it out and then breathe.

This happened first in my adolescence. I recognized it immediately. Along with the physical feelings comes the insurmountable feeling of an unwordable inability to accept oneself, to be oneself, to care at all to inhabit one's own skin.

Many years later I learned that self- loathing and its dogged accompanist self-defeating were by-products of sexual trauma. Little hidden mind and life destroyers that lurk in your subconscious and tear at the seams of your life and successes. In your best moments, in moments of freedom or success, they come in and remind you of their presence. Whispering the deepest rejection that rips through all of your hard laid plans and tears down all your fortified walls, paths, and goals toward success. And that rejection is an inexplicable rejection of yourself, that hits you from behind because it's a product of sexual trauma, some repressed and some known.

They tell me, (the counselors and substance abuse clinicians that I have had the pleasure of receiving years of therapy from) that in order to change, to heal, to find recovery I must take the steps.

I think okay, whatever. But I do it. And years of behavioral cognitive therapy and self-knowledge and self-help later I find that I have actually found the ability to love myself. The tentacles and coils of self-loathing have evaporated and I no longer ever feel those twisted little snarls in the pit of my stomach.

They tell me that in order to ever fully heal and accept, success and or recovery I must face the demons from my past and acknowledge the traumas that have happened to me.

I am an empath. Literally, in every deepest respect of the word. I have felt so hard and loved so deep that I sometimes think that I forgot to save anything for myself. And then I realized that real love for others actually involves self-love.

So I did, I faced my past. I waded through traumas. I have been through processes in mending my mind to process and accept that I have been harmed that would make a grown man weep into his morning coffee. Literally.

It wasn’t easy but eventually, I woke up one morning and realized that the snake of self-loathing hadn’t showed to turn my stomach in years. I cried for myself, I wept for my wasted youth, my lost love and dried my tears on the sleeves of my tormentors. I vented my anger and dared defiance to anyone who would stop me from stomping a place out of their behinds for the time and life they had taken from me.

Eventually, I remembered who I am and finally found a place that signified change. Actual, real, literal change.

You see, the snake showed up again this year. A couple of times. I nearly lost myself as the coils tightened my stomach and twice the weird soul bile rose in my throat. And then I realized that I had never done anything wrong. Somehow, I had missed aspects of the healing process. My empathic, delicate mind had hidden aspects of the world's ugliness still deeper in a form of denial that didn’t forgive, that didn’t fully acknowledge and then move forward. Further, I was still holding responsibility within myself for the actions of others.

In empowering myself with the stance of not being a victim. I did one thing wrong. I believed myself to have control or be responsible for the actions of others. While the sentiment is precise, 'one should not hold the mindset of a victim', that does not mean that one may not be forced to be a victim. What does lie within my power though is to refrain from keeping the stance of a victim, whenever possible.

When that feeling showed up again this year, I had no choice but to set my resolve and remove self-blame from every aspect of my life. For the first time in my life, I was aware of the source, aware of the implications, and aware and able to process that it was a complete product of repressed sexual trauma. Hence I was able to fight it off.

Tears run down my face when I think of me feeling that feeling again at this point in my maturity and development. But then I feel gratitude because I have found my heart again and with it the actual capacity to love myself, forgive others, love others, and relinquish my feelings of personal responsibility for the actions of those around me, who are not me.

I can only control me. Sometimes I cannot control what happens to me but I can control my reaction, for the most part.

I can utilize the strands of knowledge to understand why people are the way they are, therefore giving my own soul the healing balm that it needs to never again feel those coils of self-loathing that show up for a lack of control over something that happened to me and not something I asked for or anything that I did wrong.