God, You’re So Ugly

The old recording still plays. I can finally hear how cruel it sounds.

A couple weeks ago, I lost the second half of my high-nostril piercing. I’d already lost the first half to Truman’s hair. Then one night I pulled a blanket up while I was sleeping and yanked the other one out.

Somehow, unbelievably, I found the tiny jewelry. I ran to the bathroom, turned on the light and tried to put it back in. Then the piece inside my nostril fell out.

I looked at my face without the piercing.

My immediate thought was:

“God, you’re so ugly.”

And I started insulting myself.

Then I started crying.

But I wasn’t crying because I really thought I was ugly. I was crying because I couldn’t believe how fucking mean I had just been to myself.

It hurt.

It felt almost like somebody else had said it to me. And that shocked me because I used to live there. All day.

I bullied myself in mirrors. I insulted my body. I called myself stupid. I apologized for existing. My mind was full of suffering and insecurity and buried rage. It barely registered because it was the language I lived inside.

Now it hurt.

Instead of piling onto myself, I became upset on behalf of the person being attacked.

That’s wild when I really look at it.

The tears themselves were evidence of changed allegiance.

Years ago, the attacker and the attacked were tangled together. The insult fired and sounded like truth.

This time the insult fired and something else in me heard it.

Hey. What the fuck? You can’t talk to her like that.

There she was.

Protection.

I like myself now.

That feels enormous compared to spending years barely wanting to be alive.

I’m still waiting on the full Louise Hay experience where I stare into the mirror for forty-five minutes whispering, Hello, magnificent cheekbone goddess. 😂 Maybe she’s coming.

For now, I like myself.

I’ll take it.

This Is How I Used to Talk to Myself

I recently tried something different with one of my mirror videos.

Usually I explain. I give tips. I resolve things. I leave a long caption. I make sure everyone understands where I am now and what I mean and what I learned and why I’m sharing it.

This time I looked into the camera and said, “This is how I used to talk to myself.”

Then I turned toward the mirror.

“God, you’re so ugly.”

“You’re so fucking stupid.”

“People just tolerate you.”

“You’re disgusting.”

And I kept going.

Then the video ended.

That was it.

I left it uncomfortable.

It felt uncomfortable making it. Apparently it felt uncomfortable watching it too. One person said it was painful to watch. Someone said I made him sad because I left it without a happy ending. Someone thought I wanted pity. Someone was cruel. Someone defended me. Someone said she’d been avoiding the mirror.

And one person simply said:

“I fucking do that.”

Because that’s the thing. People say horrible little things to themselves all day. “I’m an idiot.” “I’m stupid.” “I look disgusting.” “What the fuck is wrong with me?”

It becomes so ordinary that we barely hear it.

Then you hear another person say the same thing out loud, and suddenly it sounds fucking awful. I hate when I hear someone else speaking about themselves that way.

I think I want to keep making those videos. I can still reach those lower emotional rungs pretty easily. Anger. Depression. Insecurity. Shame. I lived down there for most of my life.

I remember the basement well enough to tell you where the light switch is.

And I live far enough upstairs now to recognize how fucking dark it was.

There Were Too Many Floors Between Those Two Places

There’s a reason I keep bringing ritual and mirror up together.

I couldn’t get from hating myself to loving myself by standing in front of the glass and saying prettier things.

There were too many floors between those two places.

I’ve been thinking about emotions more like a ladder, ever since I found Abraham Hicks. Depression, shame, insecurity, anger, boredom, hope, appreciation. I spent years trying to reach for whatever emotion sounded “healthiest” while my body was several rungs below it.

Sometimes anger was actually closer.

That sounds strange when the destination is self-love, but anger gave me something depression couldn’t.

Anger had movement in it.

It had a boundary.

It could say, “I hate this. I’m tired of this. Something has to change.”

I had buried a lot of it.

For a long time, anger itself felt dangerous. Something to swallow, apologize for, turn inward, or clean up before anybody else had to see it.

And anger turned inward has plenty of places to go.

A mirror is one of them.

So before I could stand in a mirror and tell myself I loved myself, I had to meet the woman who was fucking furious.

I had to let her exist without immediately turning her into evidence that something was wrong with me.

Maybe that’s part of what I missed when I used to think about self-love.

I thought the distance between self-hatred and self-love was crossed by finding sufficiently loving thoughts.

For me, there were other rooms in between.

There was grief.

There was shame.

There was fear.

There was rage.

There was boredom.

There was the strange experience of becoming tired of my own suffering before I knew what I wanted instead.

Sometimes the next reachable thought was beautiful.

Sometimes it was basically:

“I am so fucking tired of doing this to myself. I’m tired of feeling this way.”

And that was still movement.

Ritual Gives the Pause a Body

Ritual gave me somewhere to put all of that.

When my thoughts feel louder than the room, telling myself to calm down gives me very little to actually do.

My mind can understand an idea while my body is still pacing from the fridge to the sink like it has a court case to prepare.

Ritual gives me instructions.

Stand here.

Face this direction.

Move my hand.

Say these words.

Visualize this.

Turn.

Continue.

Return to center.

My body has a job while my mind is trying to run seventeen old programs at once.

Maybe that’s part of why ceremonial magick works so well for me.

Ritual gives the pause a body.

Instead of trying to think my way immediately into a different emotional state, I can orient myself.

I can feel my feet.

I can move deliberately.

I can put my attention somewhere specific.

I can feel something without immediately becoming it.

I can move while I’m angry.

I can orient myself while I’m scared.

I can establish a boundary while some old part of me is screaming that everything is dangerous.

And then I can look again.

That’s part of what my animals have been teaching me too.

Porcupine says:

Wait. Look again.

Sometimes I mistake discomfort for danger.

Sometimes my body reacts before the rest of me has gathered enough information to understand what’s happening.

Ritual creates a sequence where there used to be a reflex.

Feel.

Stand.

Move.

Orient.

Look again.

Choose.

That’s very different from trying to become calm enough, spiritual enough, healed enough, positive enough.

Sometimes I’m angry.

Fine.

Anger gets a body too.

Why Bring It to the Mirror?

I think that’s why the ritual and the mirror keep finding each other.

The mirror gives me very little room to hide from being perceived.

There I am.

Face.

Body.

Scars.

Teeth.

Eyes.

Whatever changed.

Whatever aged.

Whatever disappeared when the piercing came out.

Whatever story my brain wants to attach to any of it.

And if being perceived has historically activated fear, shame, comparison, anger, or the desire to disappear, standing there and immediately reaching for I love myself can feel like trying to jump an entire staircase.

I know because I tried versions of that.

Sometimes I needed a lower rung.

Sometimes I needed:

I’m angry.

Sometimes:

I’m scared.

Sometimes:

I hate how I feel right now.

Sometimes:

I’m tired of attacking her.

And eventually:

I like her now.

That last sentence means more to me because I know the rooms underneath it.

The ritual helps me stay in my body long enough to find which room I’m actually standing in.

Then the mirror can give me information instead of immediately becoming a courtroom.

Protect This Space

Even protection means something different to me lately.

For a long time, protection could mean trying to keep the thing that hurt me away.

Lately I’m more interested in what happens inside me when something painful gets through.

I can’t control everything that enters the room.

I can get better at deciding what gets to stay.

Maybe protection is partly learning how to experience something painful without turning it into another reason to abandon myself.

The mirror used to feel like somewhere I got hurt.

But glass never said anything.

The attack came from a voice.

If the mirror itself is the threat, protection means avoiding the mirror.

Cover it.

Look away.

Get through the bathroom without catching my reflection.

But if the attack comes from a voice, another possibility appears.

Maybe protecting myself sometimes means protecting the person in the mirror from that voice.

That’s what happened with the nose piercing.

The old recording fired.

“God, you’re so ugly.”

And this time something in me objected.

The insult hurt because I had become somebody who cared about the person receiving it.

The tears themselves were evidence of changed allegiance.

I was standing on her side.

Maybe protection sometimes looks like that.

Maybe it looks like anger finally pointing in a useful direction.

Maybe it looks like recognizing the attack before joining it.

Maybe it looks like putting my feet on the floor and giving my body a sequence.

Maybe protecting myself online means leaving something I made and walking away from the comments and messages.

Maybe it means letting another person misunderstand me without immediately abandoning myself to chase after their interpretation.

Maybe protection sometimes looks remarkably unimpressive.

Post the work.

Put the phone down.

Go make cereal.

That’s practically a banishing ritual in sweatpants.

The Closet

There’s something Truman has been doing with the closet lately that keeps sticking in my head.

For a while, the closet scared him.

Then my husband hid inside it.

Truman approached.

Eventually I went inside with him.

Then the stuffed animals came.

Then it became somewhere we could play.

The sequence was basically:

Scary place → approach scary place → bring safe person → bring companions → play there.

And slowly the closet changed meaning.

I keep thinking about the mirror when I think about that.

The mirror used to be somewhere I got hurt. Now I walk back into it deliberately.

I bring a camera.

I bring songs.

I bring animals.

I bring rituals.

Sometimes I even bring the old voice and let it speak.

Maybe there are two kinds of protection living beside each other here.

Sometimes:

Get this out of my space.

And sometimes:

I can enter the scary place, discover what is actually here, and not lose myself in it .

Boundary and second look.

Both matter.

Because I can’t banish every uncomfortable thing from my life.

And I also can’t leave the front door hanging open for everything that wants to walk through.

The work becomes discernment.

What leaves?

What stays?

What deserves investigation?

What belongs to me?

What am I carrying for somebody else?

What feels dangerous because it’s dangerous?

What feels dangerous because it’s unfamiliar?

Sometimes protection means closing the door.

Sometimes protection means opening it myself and looking inside.

The closet can become somewhere we play.

The mirror can become somewhere I make art.

And slowly the room changes ownership.

Maybe that’s what I’m doing in more places than I realized.

Protect the Person in the Mirror

I think that might be the piece I keep coming back to.

I used to think the mirror was showing me the problem.

My face.

My body.

My scars.

My weight.

My teeth.

Whatever feature had been selected for prosecution that day.

But the glass never built the case.

The voice did.

And now I can hear it.

Sometimes I still hear the old recording.

“You’re ugly.”

“You’re stupid.”

“Sorry.”

Sometimes it starts playing before I even realize I pressed anything.

I’m less interested in pretending the recording disappeared.

It still plays sometimes.

The difference is that I can hear which voice is speaking.

I can feel what happens in my body when it starts.

I can notice the urge to agree with it.

I can notice anger.

I can notice fear.

I can give those things somewhere to move.

I can protect the person being spoken to.

Years ago, “God, you’re so ugly” could pass through my mind as barely noticing the weather.

Now it hurts.

For me, it feels like evidence.

Cruelty feels cruel now.

I hear it.

And if I hear it, there’s a moment where something else becomes possible.

A pause.

My body.

A choice.

Maybe a porcupine clocking in for another shift.

And then I can look again.

And now I hear it.

Thank you for looking.
May the old recording sound strange enough that you finally hear it. May you remember whose side you’re on when it starts playing.

A little crow’s on the wire, keeping watch over you.

I’ll leave another breadcrumb soon.