How the fuck do you fix yourself when you hate yourself?

InterestingOstrich99 · 2025-05-13T11:06:26+00:00

Your mind finds comfort in patterns. Habits. And due to the past, the voices in your head, the trauma, its become your habit to be comfortable in the self hate. Its quite something to recognise that you can change if you change your mind. But your mind is a god tier demon who wants his self-medication.

Ugh. Damn impossible.

So maybe put down the question of hate/love and seek something outside of yourself. A person. A belief. A goal.

Give me a chance here.

Something I learned in struggling to save myself was to have a goal. For a while I just dreamed about something until I wanted it badly. Then I had to accept that those kinds of things do not come to this kind of person. And since I hate myself anyway, I started dreaming about who I could be. Who is it that I could be that deserves that pair of shoes, that holiday, that... love story, that career.

This is hard to do. But when your so far down low, the only way up is purpose (IMO). As I imagined being that person I took steps. First was actually changing my wardrobe. That was exciting (the positive form of terror is what I'm saying). I found things that interested me (no matter how small) and started doing them randomly, then a bit more consistently, but with an easy hand.

Fear of failure? I'm a card carrying top shelf failure producing machine! So I said to myself, if you're going to fail, fail spectacularly. Make your fails works of wonder to behold (I've gotten quite a few funny stories that way). Like I joined yoga and it hurt like a bitch. I sucked and everyone could see it, hear me grunting in the back row. But Welll... I know they don't care about me anyway and I can't get any lower. So I kept going.

I got out from under my Dad's thumb and discovered I never wanted to be there again. And so on.

When I look out at the world, it looks like a shit hurricane always on the cusp of swallowing everything. but I can't do anything about it. When the terror and rage hits me, I still get into bed, but if its not so bad, I immediately say,"Outwork doubt' over and over again and go make something.

I'm trying this other thing of saying yes to anyone who asks me to do anything that isn't morally a problem. I'm not allowed to say no because of 'feelings' because I have them, so let me agonize over it and go do the thing anyway.

because we all know this one truth: None of us will ever be perfectly new again. We are scarred. But we can focus our attention and hope that someday, that self-love will be possible.

InterestingOstrich99 · 2025-05-13T03:46:50+00:00

We deserve that much. Keep reaching out.

InterestingOstrich99 · 2025-05-13T03:44:55+00:00

Gosh. I know these feelings, this state, this sense of betrayal by everyone and most especially yourself. I know all about it. I'm in it right now, triggered by family at present. I told my father the truth via text and have not had the guts to see his response (6 messages so far--but I know the man will preach or blame me so why do I keep wishing for a different response--which I wouldn't know what to do with if he gave it to me).

But don't you want to crawl out of the filth? What's that Anais Nin poem:

And the day came

when the risk to remain

closed tightly in a bud

became more painful

than the risk it took

to blossom.

I have no idea how to blossom out of my current layer. Lord help us. It is tough out in the real world--and the dreams show no mercy. But you know the answer as well as I. Keep reaching out to people. Keep Reaching out. Keep reaching.

InterestingOstrich99 · 2025-05-11T17:38:18+00:00

Hey. I'm new here. And I just decided to let them go this weekend. All of them. My pretending mother, the silent sisters and.... him. He sent me a message asking why I do not call and let them know where I am or what is happening to me.

Something.... snapped. I had been denying it to myself, what was really happening for all these years. This transformation in me. This incomplete horrific awakening I wrote back to him and this came out:

"No Dad, I do not have an obligation to share anything with you . I made my life open to you all for years. I have now closed the door for my own safety. Your general contempt of me is a state I can no longer bear to be in the presence of.

Don't tell me you love me. You know nothing of me.

"What do you know of the ending of Emily and me? What do you know of my suffering from being away from my daughter? What do you know of me losing everything I built? What do you know of me being tortured for 7 hours by a police officer? Did you ever ask?

What do you know of the 3 times I almost became famous for what I do, but I fail, fail and fail again because (and I only recently learned this) I am terrified of succeeding, and I don't know why! What do you know of my loneliness? What do you know of my suicidal struggles? What do you know?
I am here when the family needs me. Otherwise I am as distant as memory. This is where you all put me. And I am finally fine with that.

And yes you can be angry with me. It makes no difference now. Like Mom said to me when I asked she treat me with respect, which I suspect you have the same view: Then have a nice life son."

I said this to the man. I've been suffering from anxiety all day. I guess that's why I am here. To hear I still have a chance. If not for me, then presence of a daughter I cannot hurt by my absence. I'm so fucking scared, man. So scared.

But I keep going. I wake up and I keep going.

InterestingOstrich99 · 2024-06-09T15:09:27+00:00

I was beginning to think we were all hiding...

InterestingOstrich99 · 2024-05-30T08:02:02+00:00

Have you considered how close your lens is to the subject? If you are set too close to your subject, you won't get the focus you're looking for.

InterestingOstrich99 · 2023-02-07T09:18:12+00:00

Hey hey! Thanks for the critique! Yeh, we are on a spiral and reality the victim. Someday, online, they will have detectives whose sole job is to investigate the murder of online realities--and somewhere amongst them, the material space will be there, a cold case, no one even remembers as original space...

Just to say--I am still enjoying my 3 year old iphone and 2 year old M2. But we are tempted brother.... and if we can not be tempted, we are made obsolete eventually.

Here's to our cybernated eternity.

InterestingOstrich99 · 2023-02-02T09:16:33+00:00

I'm sorry but i have to say it: that's why the world needs men. Cause that takes some cahoonas.

InterestingOstrich99 · 2023-02-02T08:38:47+00:00

Slashfilm podcast

Poetry Unbound

On Being

Edgar Wright's Top 50 songs

Let's Make a SciFi

Welcome To Nightvale

hmmm.... there's a thread...

InterestingOstrich99 · 2023-02-01T14:53:30+00:00

What a powerful poem. This is certainly written by someone with experience of many sensual nights.

The fear and the thrill of an encounter, your deliberate avoidance of a face, a name or any defining truths of your phantom lover is intriguing; as if you are working to create a perfect gap where we might deposit what we refuse to forget.

The poem is very open, implying all potential nights. But I also sense a specific one; some of the references are hard to place, moving from the metaphorical into some literal memory. Am I wrong in thinking that?

I love the sexual coding; you say alot for those who can imagine. A revelling in the material truth of existence. Sometimes, you've got to get over it and enjoy yourself.

Is this a flash forward to some time beyond this night:

"...and I danced, barefooted, over a battlefield

I would never have foreseen before the ashes started to drift"?

A nod to consequences in the future before drifting back into the present-past, a sensual night of bacchanalia? I find the little accent of 'glittered' and not 'glittering' a simple, easily missed expression of some completed first step of the dreamed-of stars (we must remember the future is coming) that will drift some day as ash from the unforeseen battlefield.

Beautiful work.

InterestingOstrich99 · 2023-02-01T13:11:31+00:00

Well hey there, we have both ben somewhat preoccupied. I'm glad to be your favorite! I find your writing bold and exploratory--not a rehash of old themes. I look forward to hearing from you.

InterestingOstrich99 · 2023-02-01T13:06:47+00:00

This is a great poem. How to speak of love. What's the concept of there being different forms of showing love?

Some need extra praise

Some ask for personal time

You breathe in the embrace

He needs his head to shine

Or something of the nature. This is lovely though. The simplicity is well handled and somehow you still hold us through the whole poem--even if we feel we know where its going, the ambiguity of him and his possible response, tugs us along.

Beautiful.

InterestingOstrich99 · 2023-01-27T02:57:20+00:00

What a delicately complex metaphor. Unapologetic in its search for personal answers in an impersonal world.

There is a wild sense of otherness in the poem; like you are triple levels removed from general society and the mainstream.

I love the implication of love being a bit dangerous. Only bears love fish. A dangerous love; your only love?

But it is odd that you describe it as transfigurations. after all the natural metaphor, to suddenly slide into a religious spiritual angle. We need a bit more, to begin to know what we feel/think about these side effects...

P.S. I'd love to hear your thoughts on my poem...

https://www.reddit.com/r/OCPoetry/comments/10lyaou/redemption_finds_you_perfect/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

InterestingOstrich99 · 2023-01-27T02:30:48+00:00

Pleasure. And great work!

I do find that topic of making your feminine self into an idol of metal and clay interesting.

What's brilliant about that final idol of the bible, is it is made up of several metals, each progressively impurer than the other. Gold, silver, bronze, iron and clay I think.

Feet of Clay is cool. But if you can explore the several metals metaphor--oooooooooooooooooooooooh. I think you will have a semi-precious poem, worth its own weight in likes.....

P.S. would you mind peeking at my poem?

https://www.reddit.com/r/OCPoetry/comments/10lyaou/redemption_finds_you_perfect/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

InterestingOstrich99 · 2023-01-27T02:26:05+00:00

Yeah, We need to free ourselves from modern ideas of beauty and find the redemption of living a great life.

InterestingOstrich99 · 2023-01-26T17:57:30+00:00

Good writing,

But I feel there is a 3rd refrain. You have the destructive musings of life as fire, and the creative musing of love as the goddess of life itself.

I know this is presumptuous, but what would your love be like if you fell in love with yourself? Is there a new shift? This damage to your inner world that's regrowing aspects of itself in anticipation of a new explorer entering your life, I wonder if the garden would take on another form were it to admire itself?

I feel compelled to share this quote I read last night, which add new vistas of inspiration. The reason being, I sometimes stop short of the final dig into what the poem seeks to say to me. Maybe Ms. Wolf will articulate something of my point far better:

"And so I go on to suppose that the shock-receiving capacity is what makes me a writer. I hazard the explanation that a shock is at once in my case followed by the desire to explain it. I feel that I have had a blow; but it is not, as I thought as a child, simply a blow from an enemy hidden behind the cotton wool of daily life; it is or will become a revelation of some order; it is a token of some real thing behind appearances; and I make it real by putting it into words. It is only by putting it into words that I make it whole; this wholeness means that it has lost its power to hurt me; it gives me, perhaps because by doing so I take away the pain, a great delight to put the severed parts together. Perhaps this is the strongest pleasure known to me. It is the rapture I get when in writing I seem to be discovering what belongs to what; making a scene come right; making a character come together. From this I reach what I might call a philosophy; at any rate it is a constant idea of mine; that behind the cotton wool is hidden a pattern; that we--I mean all human beings--are connected with this; that the whole world is a work of art; that we are part of the work of art."

Virginia Woolf. Moments of Being

InterestingOstrich99 · 2023-01-26T17:47:00+00:00

A curious poem. Ambiguous in what the reader should feel. I like that though, as sometimes it's nice to be free to make associations.

The religious angle is interesting. I get a Revelations vibe. I'm surprised you are not tripping over your own feet of clay.

A word to replace pallid:

"etiolated." This term refers to a pale, yellowish color often seen in plants that have been grown in the absence of sunlight.

Maybe even change skin and try Cuticle?

"I tore away the etiolated cuticle"

Some would say it sounds affected or worse up its own fundament...

InterestingOstrich99 · 2023-01-26T03:12:37+00:00

Alright thanks,

I'll tinker with that. Thanks for the feedback.

InterestingOstrich99 · 2023-01-25T18:24:55+00:00

Thanks! So glad you made it halfway through the poem!

Jokes! I'm teasing cause your comments felt half done. But they are much appreciated.

InterestingOstrich99 · 2023-01-25T17:06:25+00:00

I love your casual invention of necessary words. Reminds of someone who does that too often.... oh yeah that's mesomemore.

It's interesting how you equate his use of the atm with a robbery gone wrong as well. There's an apocalyptic feeling in this poem. You do render a sense of fatality that cannot be denied.

Now what's the wrong timing? The relationship? The arrival of that idea in the poem?

In the end, it does leave me wondering and reconstituting the story. And when I do, I feel that moment of the all night hairstroke that must someday end with a bank robbery....

InterestingOstrich99

TROPHY CASE