day 1: what is your biggest struggle with loving yourself?
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For 4 years or so, I have obsessively shaved my booty hair. I would try to get it porn-star smooth, dragging the razor in as many directions as needed to avoid missing patches or rogue strands. Sometimes I'm a little too aggressive with it and I cut myself in the most inconvenient place, the warm water stinging the freshly nicked wound while I watch blood and shame swirl down the drain. My thoughts bounce from, "I hope whoever sees my anus doesn't think I'm gross for having hair" to "I hope whoever sees my anus doesn't think I'm gross for having a cut where the hair used to be".
Here's what's most important about this spiral: it is 1000% self-imposed and has no basis whatsoever. I was never doing reverse cowgirl with my live-in boyfriend and he said, "Shit, bitch, this is one hairy peach." Nor was I ever in the midst of doggy style during a one night stand when the man penetrating me exclaimed, "Ew! Please take care of this, Lady Chewbacca. I gotta go." No one has ever complained about it. Ever. And I can't even remember why or when this obsession began. What I do know is that I consult my closest homegirls about it and make it a hygienic priority and that my stomach hurts from the stress surrounding how others perceive me.
I feel like this applies to a lot of my insecurities. Maybe society at large has a subliminal influence, like the magazines I've been reading since I was a teenager & all the movies or tv shows I consume & my religious following of women on Instagram who can afford liposuction, personal trainers, and plastic surgery. My single mom who raised me only ever showered me with compliments and told me how beautiful I am.
A fallacy I perpetuate is the I need to be perfect always in all ways— the prettiest, smartest, funniest, kindest, most honest, cleanest... The list is endless. An inch shy of these attributes equates total failure where I somehow don't possess a shred of any of them. Conversely, my friends & family are allowed to be human: to have hair above their lip, to accidentally say the wrong answer out loud in class, to not wash their dishes at night, to wear an Adidas shirt with Nike shoes. To human is to err and this is not only normal but expected. However... in my own fucked-off noggin I have convinced myself I am unworthy of the grace and freedom others experience at their leisure.
Living by this dysfunctional principle can be draining, but I do have an occasional reprieve. Sometimes when I look in the mirror and stare at myself square in my deep, chocolate chip irises, I see someone who has endured a lot of pain and misfortune and blunders. Regardless, I am still hilarious and fun and intelligent and artistic and loving — so, so loving — and I want everyone to be okay. My biggest struggle with loving myself is a world that tries every minute of every day to convince me I'm unable to do so until I buy the smelly-good bath bomb or the latest Fenty lingerie set or the ironic self-help book to help me cultivate something they taught me to resent. I weave in and out of this space until I get sucked back in when my boyfriend invites me over late at night and I call out to my mom, "Do you know where the shaving cream is?"
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