Idle Teen

I ate melted brie for dinner tonight and set a poptart on fire. I've been drinking milk out of tea cups and handfuls of cereals out of their boxes and there's an awful lot of warning signs that I'm falling into deterioration again.

Which, y'know

Would suck.

I got my hair cut super-short today and I look like a brunette Tinker Bell. My mother is making noises about ditching my homeschooling and attending a public high school next year, and I have the irrational fear people will mock me for having a "butch" haircut.

(I don't have a very good track record with public school kids)

For some reason an awful lot of strangers have been complimenting me tonight and it made me smile and grab fists of my (short) hair and cradle my grin into my hands because I've never known how to respond to compliments, and a whole tsunami of them renders me absolutely incompetent. Except for squealing and flailing my arms about- but that seems pretty incompetent to me anyways.

But it reminded me of all the times I've stared into the mirror, or into the synthetic-white-page of a text document, and berated myself. The times I've told myself "you're fucking worthless." or "you're an absolute idiot, what the hell do you expect to accomplish in life?" or "no wonder you don't have any friends- who'd want to be friends with a piece of shit like you?"

Self confidence, thou art not a common word to my ears.

Basically I used to get really upset with myself and sort of cuss myself out which is really depressing in retrospect and probably not the least bit mentally sound? But it worked, in it's own weird, derogatory way, and I sort of ended up programming myself to hate myself. My sister recently asked if I loved myself, and I said that for the most part, I'm apathetic towards myself. With occasional, seldom bursts of pride. So she asked if I'd ever really loved myself, and I told her the truth.
Which was no.

Which isn't good or healthy, I suppose, but I am a teenager and I'm of the general impression that self-loathing just comes with the territory. So it's kind of a shock to me on the few nights like these, when I look into the mirror and don't immediately recoil from what I see. It's a surprise when I smile and don't mind the reflection that grins back at me. Because sometimes, some few, glorious times like these, I get to like myself. I get to think, "you're pretty nice" or "you're an okay writer" or "wow nice bone structure there girl. A+ on your genetic makeup". Because really, I've got a decent set of cheekbones on me. And that's pretty cool.

Maybe someday I'll be courageous enough (or, perhaps, naïve enough) to love myself, really, truly and unconditionally.

But for now, I think occasional bouts of self-like is a good start.



(Wow this is very depressing in hindsight basically it's just me talking about my inability to love myself yikes)