Things I Love About Myself – Kinky Advent Calendar 2020 – Day 6

If there is one thing on my blog that is consistent, it is the odd combination of seeming sure of myself and my words often expressing a lack of self-confidence. I am aware of that I come across as much more filled with self-esteem than I actually am. I feel safe with words, and I feel safe when I am in control of the angles and edits of my pictures. But the moment I need to really talk about myself in depth, or I am pushed outside of my comfort zone, I am a bit like a headless chicken. I panic and don’t believe that I can do a good job.

Being conditioned by a traumatic upbringing and later, years of bullying, has had a huge effect on how I see myself. My goal has never been to love myself fully. But it would be really great if I ever came to a place where I accept who I am, and I’d be okay with it.

Christmas is all about spreading love and joy, and when I saw the prompt for today, I knew that it would be helpful for myself if I focused on talking about six things I love about myself. There have been a few setbacks in my life lately, and I am also faced with a very difficult situation in my family at the moment. And I have been feeling very helpless.

Now, I am used to that feeling because it has followed me all my life. And with that also comes a drop in self-confidence. I just wished I had the tools, the strength, the abilities, to handle it all. But I don’t. It doesn’t mean that I am worthless though. So that is what this post is about. Showing myself that I have good qualities, and that the love I constantly try to spread, I should really apply to myself more often.

1. Intelligence and Wit

I think I am listing these qualities first because they are what I most appreciate in other people. I love intelligent conversations with people who think outside the box and aren’t turned off by big words and concepts. My intelligence is important to me because it has kept me alive. I love that I am able to question my emotional thinking, and get through difficult times because of my ability to apply logic. My Master would argue that that isn’t always the case, and it is true. Still, my intelligence has saved me many times. I want to get a tattoo saying “Je pense donc je suis” to remind myself of that I can get through this by using logic. I am my thoughts, and my intelligence can be in control of those.

2. Empathy and Compassion

I am a very empathetic and compassionate person. And I have always been that. But I think I have cultivated these abilities a lot during the last ten years or so. When my mental health declined and my mental illnesses had taken over, it opened my mind to the feelings of others. I get the value of kindness and understanding a lot more than other people do. It is the reason why I had been able to climb the ladder so easily in the mental health volunteer community. I am proud of myself to never deviate from kindness and empathy, no matter who I am talking to. So I try to avoid the use harsh words, I don’t threaten people, and I rather focus on the other person than myself.

One of my core values is that everyone’s feelings matter, and that they deserve to be validated. All this comes very natural to me, and is definitely a part of myself that I love and am proud of. I just want to add that I am not a saint and I of course think judgmental thought and feel anger and aversion. But I don’t express those in hurtful ways, and if I accidently do, I apologize and learn from the experience. Feelings can be always validated, behaviour not so much.

3. Resilience

I have been through some shit. Most likely worst shit than many people can even imagine. And I am still facing a lot of situations nowadays that are so out of the ordinary, that they would break others. I am broken but I am unbreakable. I might be a million pieces that can never be put back together again, but I am still those pieces. And I am thinking back to moments when I felt so incredibly weak and in so much pain that I wanted to die. The dozens of suicide attempts in my past. The abuse. The times spent in the hospital. The abusive relationships. And still, I am here. I got through all of it. So I am broken, but my mind has saved me and has given me resilience.

I have the skill of dissociation that can be helpful in many circumstances. I can appear perfectly normal while my brain is on fire. So I don’t have public meltdowns, neither in real life or on social media. And when faced with extreme situations, I know how to get through them. There is definitely the whole “don’t care if I live or die” mentality, but I’d like to think that surviving through the worst is a skill that I have developed due to my experiences. I am handling the pandemic well (I never panic bought toilet paper!), and these days, when faced with a difficult family situation, I logically come up with a plan instead of panicky emotional outbursts. When it matters, I am resilient. Broken but unbreakable.

4. Creativity

I never had a lot of confidence in my creative skills and it has only been in the last few years, when others have called me a writer and an artist, that I have been more in love with that side of myself. There is not a day that I don’t create. It might be mail art, photography, writing, junk journalling, DIY-ing, make-up. I am always in a creative mindset, even on days when I am really struggling. It is interesting that I hadn’t seen that for a long time. I was so focused on “making it” that I didn’t realize that the one thing that brings meaning to my life is creativity. Being creative doesn’t necessarily mean that you are good at it. and that is okay. My judgment of my own work isn’t always positive. I am getting the creative energy out and that is what counts.

5. Uniqueness

I am different, and I love that I am unique. And I am not even trying. When I was a teen, I decided that I would never allow anyone to control my thinking and the way that I express myself in my style. I know that my mental illness (especially the DID) also makes me a very unique person. And so does my background, my lifestyle, my skills, the fact that I am goth.

I never had a goal to be different, or to stand out. I am just being myself, and I love that that is the fact that makes me stand out. And I will never be classed as “normal”, and although I sometimes wish I could at least function normally, I don’t want to be average. I don’t want to be perfect either. I want to be me. And I managed to stick to that need of mine.

6. Curiosity

I have an incredibly strong thirst for knowledge. I want to learn new things, I want to educate myself, I want to hear all sides of a story. And I think part of it is that I want to understand how the world works, how the human mind works. But learning new things also often challenges the way that I see the world. And with that follows that I might change my opinion based on reliable information. My curiosity helps me grow as a person, and helps me be unstuck. There are few ideological cornerstones that can’t be destroyed for me (socialism, feminism, atheism, animal welfare etc) but in general, my curiosity has shaped me into an open minded person, and I love that about myself.