Improve my self-esteem

Hey. So I came to this fairly large understanding today, I have realized that the only way to do this work and to recover from… eh, my life, I will need to let go of certain ideas that I have gotten stuck in my head and started to believe.

I realized that there is this weird irony, that my mother says: YOU HAVE NEVER LOVED YOURSELF, I HOPE YOU FIGURE THIS OUT.

Okay okay. Well, let’s look at the list of the things I brainstormed that my mother has tried to teach me about myself:

- You have wacko-extremist ideas

- People can’t relate to you and your weird sense of humor

- You are a burden

- You are a problem

- You are too emotional

- You are a traumatic event

- You are selfish to other people

- You waste other people’s time

- You mistreat people and don’t even realize it, because you
are just that selfish.

- You caused a rift in my relationship with my sister, because
YOU got all upset in your teen years and caused problems because you were mad that your cousin molested you as an infant

- You don’t even know what others have done for you.

- YOU almost destroyed my marriage

-You don’t even know how others have suffered or suppressed their own feelings because of you.

-You will never know my pain as a mother, watching her child destroy herself.

-... and I told your sister, to move on with her life without you as her sister and to make her inlaws her siblings.

-You are caught up in your own delusional, self centered world.

-It’s not fair that your birth family gets to meet you now because WE HAD TO DEAL WITH YOU when you were difficult, and we had to deal with all the shitty stuff when it came to parenting, they got you when you were a perfect angel of a baby and now… as the young aspiring artist/student. It’s not fair!

Some how I have to dismantle these feelings, or atleast decide whether I feel that they are true or false, so I can be more in charge of my own reality.

But yeah, I think this def. affects my perception of reality.

And my inability to work through my self-esteem issues.

It’s sad, that the person who seems to find it so important that I work on ‘loving myself’ and argues with me when I say I do love myself… and says: no, no, no, no, you DON’T love yourself is the woman who has ingrained these ideas in my head.

Hi.

So since the last time we talked, I went to the library and got a number of books about the various issues I need to think about, learn about/workthrough to help foster a better self-image.

As I started reading I realized that I wouldn’t be fully motivated to work through issues of adoption/abandonment, relationship addiction, emotionally abusive parents and racism, unless I got this whole lack of self esteem figured out.

It really would be impossible to fully work through any of my issues if I didn’t find the: “I appreciate myself”—feeling that would push me into doing this kind of work.

So I read this book called “Learning to Love yourself” it was an incredibly quick read but it did have some great ideas, more so, I realized that alot of the feelings, symptoms and thoughts that were shared in the book, were ones I have experienced.

Now I’m going to read this book about self-responsibility. I know I need to sit down and figure out what exercises from either book I want to do, but I do believe that just by reading some of these books, you start to apply the advice in the book in your daily life naturally.

I wish that I liked myself, I’m just not sure how to go about it. Recently though I had this review for illustration class, and it was the first time that I felt really confident, and not defensive when a student told me she didn’t like my work and that it was confusing and wrong.

It was really an amazing feeling, because she’d say stuff like: Your paintings don’t make any sense.

And I’d be like: Yeah I know, but it’s okay for them to not make any sense to you.

I felt as calm as a hindu cow and actually found it funny how I have found such a “matter-of-factly-way” to talk about the sheer ridiculousness of my subject matter. Like my work was this painting of a woman in an astronaut out fit, the ring around her space helmet made her look like the virgin mary, she is saving this little simple red peguin-bird from the myth of childhood-nostalgia which is represented by an evil alien mosquito that is from the future.

Yeah. The lady really thought the piece didn’t make any sense and I agreed with her, but told her not to worry, because it’s my painting… not hers.

It was weird, if only I could translate those kinds of feelings into my regular life, like:

yeah, it’s okay if you think I’m ridiculous, confusing or “wrong”, it’s fine, because this is my life and not yours, this really isn’t any of your concern.

But to be able to openly laugh about the ridiculousness of one’s own life but to still have confdiencce in who you are and what you do, would be such a relief.

I hope that this critique in my illustration class is key to how I want to see my life and interact with people.

over the years I have become so paralyzed by my own fear of self.
of rejection.
of cruelty.

growing up people were incredibly cruel to me, merciless. it was terrible. it still makes me a little sad to think about how I was treated.

it makes me incredibly careful as to how I interact with new people.

or even old people in my life.

what do I do? at one point I felt there was something intrinsically wrong with me. it made me so sad, I think it was because of the painful events I fell victim to, I was given up for adoption and physically abused by family members and then picked on for being one of the only asian people in my elementry (on up) school.

it has gotten to the point that I just gave up on trying to become close with people. I am close with my partner, we will soon be married and it gives me hope, that we are close that I haven’t completely lost my ability to trust, to socialize and to be kind.

being bitter is funny thing.

i’m rambling.

I think about Jack Kerouac and his own issues with self esteem, he didn’t know how well he was loved and by the end of his life he had become a bitter old man who had alienated almost everyone from his life.

i don’t want that to happen to me. it is such a scary thought.

i also don’t abuse alcohol which might help, but when I read Jack’s work, and how thoughtful, optimistic, emotional, beautiful and gentle he was, it seems his expectations of the world and his lack of self-esteem exploded into who he became around the time he wrote big sur.

oh god, what am I to do?

i get so nervous, i don’t even notice I’m getting nervous until I am nervous, when I’m talking with people I feel are judging me. And then if I keep talking sometimes I say something, I worry wasn’t thoughtful enough, or offensive and then I think to myself, best not to talk and just paint and hide and ignore everything that isn’t ‘easy’.

That’s me, I’ll hide in a sea shell and disappear in the ocean.

time to clean the apartment… answers? answer?
hmm.