Accounting
I have to do bills and budget, accounting and bookkeeping today. I am behind. Unfortunately, one of the things my body does is respond to things by making me sick. I get exhausted and nauseous and or vomiting, and stomach pains and all sorts of bathroom issues. I pretty much always get sick over this part, but I can’t keep putting it off or it won’t get done. Some days are really hard and today is one of those days. But I am here and working and struggling and I work from home so I can sit and or lay down when needed and go to or spend as much time as necessary in the restroom. I hope I can just make it through today functioning enough to at least get the time sensitive stuff taken care of. Some of you can relate to the fact to that it’s so much worse when you have no money. Because it’s hard to resolve bills or needs when you have no money, but the biggest part with my personal struggles with business has been a.) having to time to do all the work of a business in one person while also struggling with debilitating health issues. b.) Getting my business out there and noticed so people can see my products to buy them so I can start making money (I also find my horrible self-esteem to cause a lot of problems here)
Doing social media and putting yourself out there and trying to make contacts with people in person or online is actually quite painful when you have severe social anxieties. Every photo or word has hours to days of rehashing and stomach pains and nausea waves to accompany, especially with the added needed of perfectionism clashing with the reality that mistakes and problems will happen and there is a necessary learning and experience gaining process to become a master. Every time there is little to no response or views you have to keep trying and try different things all while attempting (usually unsuccessfully) not to keep hating yourself like you have your whole life. Try with me? To love ourselves too? I think we will be better lovers.
I might not love myself or the things I make but I have been able to learn to enjoy creating the things I make, and love some of the things I make. That is a start for me. It’s been so easy to give everything away for so long to discount myself. It’s time to sew love starting on the inside and bearing fruits rather than what I was taught: that I was nothing and nobody and worthless and worth less than every other person in the world and that I should be obedient. submissive. a good woman (second to the man- dad always used that god said that the man is the head of the house to quell my mother. I don’t know if she was always so submissive or if he ever hit her, but I know not to disagree with dad or you WILL get hurt and I did, physically as well as mentally and verbally. Mom’s been with him since she was like 16 so who knows if/what she has suffered but she doesn’t share and I have caught her lying, as humans do when they feel the need to protect themselves, then again maybe she is just so different from me that she is just fine and happy, again I wouldn’t know. There are so many times trying to talk to mom that she told me she could not talk to me about things because dad didn’t want her to.)
Dad scares me to this day. He might be different now, but I re live his anger and oppression daily still and he wonders why I want nothing to do with him. These are things I have said to him before as well as many others, but my words were as fruit I threw and as it neared his ridged iron walls the fruit rotted in his narcissist’s aura and then splattered easily but violently, my heart. And all he does is smell a stink in a whiff on the breeze while your heart drips and slips in splats with blood off the wall. But he is the man of the house: “come on now don’t you want to give daddy a hug and kiss? HELL NO!) So, yes, they taught me to turn the cheek, give the very shirt off your back, and treat unkindness with kindness (in such a way as to give in and reward mistreatment rather than maintain kindness while retaining boundaries and holding each other accountable).
Those experiences and many others have ingrained in me to mistreat myself. I am mean, mostly mean to myself as well as deep in the places where the bitterness and anger live that I buried long ago, so deep to never see the light of day and never feel the warmth. Planting all that hate and hurt has not sewn fruit. It has left a baren field, a dust bowl, a world without light, and a world where the blood and the cuts and the ripping and tearing of my own skin is the only relief to hydrate the dead fields, near the dark caverns and tunnels, and massive castles with limitless walls, all mazes with monsters and locked cages and boxes. I despise this place, with the aura of death, where sweet things hide in fear, inside myself- the place that formed from the experiences I had in the christain home I was raised in.
To be completely honest I am bitter and angry at the people who taught me these things and treated me so poorly and this is a normal reaction to have to the way I was treated. If I was treated so well, where are all those memories? Why do I have all these bad memories and feelings and PTSD? Why do I have to go to therapy and spend days and weeks and years struggling through untangling all these complexities, memories, nightmares, flashbacks, and survival systems, to try and relieve all the pain that has physically manifested. Definitely a factor being because being sick was okay but emotions and feeling and standing up for yourself and having your own opinion and a making mistakes was not okay. So of course, being a being full of emotions, feelings, individuality, opinions, creativity, and inexperience I ended up feeling like I am not okay. I just want to feel okay to live rather than feeling like I should just die because I am shame, a burden, an abomination, a piece of trash, in the way, not good enough, demon possessed, crazy etc. Everyone deserves to live.
That is some of my struggle to try to love myself. I wish you best of luck in loving yourself too. For those that need to hear: You deserve to exist, to live, and you matter. It is a good thing to love yourself. It is okay and good to love yourself. It does not make you selfish, prideful, or a bad person to love yourself. We can love ourselves and each other better every day.
-CKC
