Long time no speak! As my summer holiday is coming to an end, I'm disappointed to note that I haven't managed to write anything much even if I've had all these weeks off. After all, my goal was to reply to all of my letters, update all of my blogs (in case you didn't know, I also run a travel blog called Emilia on the Road and a couples blog together with my wife called Life According to Em & J), and also get started on a YA book that I've been planning forever. Somehow, though, this summer has just flown by even if I've mostly only been at home with nowhere to go. Big things have happened, too, but I'll save them for one or more blog posts in the future.
Anyway, today I'd like to talk a little bit more about self-esteem. As I've mentioned before, mine is not of the best variety, which is the result of many things including life experiences with family, a previous relationship and school as well as my own personality type. As a result, it's safe to say that I only ever feel confident when I'm completely alone (mostly meaning home alone - if I actually go and do something on my own, I feel anxiety) or if I have someone that is very close to me with me. I'm also highly sensitive as well as an empath, which leads to me aiming to please everyone around me and making sure everyone else is feeling comfortable in their own skin at the expense of my own well-being.
I'm affected by what everyone says and thinks, and so instead of saying what I think, I hide who I am and suffer in silence. It goes without saying that this doesn't feel good. In fact, this is the very reason why I don't like seeing people and prefer being in touch with everyone online. Definitely not on the phone as it leads to the same vicious cycle of pleasing the person I'm talking to as I'm sensing their moods and opinions and functioning according to what I feel is best for them.
I'm also afraid of things before they even happen and exceptionally skillful at conjuring up all kinds of horror scenarios that will happen to me if I talk about my private things. My being afraid of things beforehand also goes for meeting people, especially new people, as the fear leads to anxiety and the anxiety leads to crazy stress and me wanting to cancel the whole thing. The crazy thing here is that I come across as quite sociable because I've developed survival techniques to make it through these stressful situations. Therefore, the person you'll see when you meet me is far, far away from the very stressed out and anxious person that I am inside, even in that moment.
A massive part of the problem is also that I come from a very different world than most people. First of all, I'm an LGBTQ+ individual while the world that I have to function in on a daily basis is pretty much straight. Even if some straight people can be considered allies and I've been blessed with several friends who see sexual minorities as completely natural, most straight people only see the world from their own perspective and through their straight culture experiences. While I recognise the chance that this gives me to educate people on LGBTQ+ things, no one's every-day life should be only about that. I want to just exist as myself and have people understand me without me constantly needing to explain everything to whoever it is that I'm talking to.
People in general have a tendency to misunderstand me and it is one of the reasons that has led to my extremely poor self-esteem. Because there's more of them, they often seem to think that I am the idiot in the situation because I happen to be the only one with different experiences from what they know. This is unbearable to me because I'm quite an emotionally intelligent person and it's degrading that people see me as the dummy in many situations. I have quite big problems with always being "the only one" in many situations, too. There's power in unity, yet for example I'm the only LGBTQ+ individual at my work place so my power is non-existent and my voice is easily silenced, and has constantly been this year, too.
And by the way, being emotionally intelligent seems to be a taboo topic as well as especially where I live, you're supposed to be just average because it seems to be the safest option for everyone. If you voice it that you're intelligent in any way, people will think you're an elitist even if these two things have nothing to do with each other. From my perspective, it's tiring to constantly have to lower myself to someone else's level in conversations and to always have to skip the conversations that I would like to have just because the person I'm talking to has no clue where I'm coming from. I'm not trying to say that I'm the only intelligent person in the village, but the sad truth is that I don't get to see the people I'm able to have intelligent conversations with often enough. Not getting the kind of mental stimulation from socialising that I would need is frustrating to say the least, once again because then just because the people I'm talking to don't understand me, I'm thought of as weird or stupid, which in turn has a direct effect on my self-esteem.
Also, because I don't have any self confidence, I avoid doing the very things that I love the most, including singing, talking about music, and nowadays also writing. It feels like doing these things equals baring my soul completely, and it makes me too vulnerable. I do the same with my private things, and to me, everything is private - my thoughts, my opinions, my feelings, what's going on with me, big life decisions and events. You name it, I'll hide it from you. And yes, my body is private, too, so you're not allowed to touch me when talking to me, for example. I do this because no one ever understands me or even tries to understand me, and I just can't have my heart and soul misunderstood or laughed at.
I also avoid trying to learn the skills that I'd like to have, including digital skills such as using cameras and doing photo and video editing, building a pretty website, having a YouTube channel or having my own company, because I just don't know how I could learn on my own (I need a teacher, YouTube tutorials are not enough) and I feel like I don't deserve all the expensive gadgets and software you'd need to have to be able to do these things. In general I feel quite worthless and feel like it's stupid to even dream of having a YouTube channel or a blog that anyone actually reads. Somehow all the 20-somethings of the world seem to possess these gadgets and skills as well as the confidence to match them - what's in their water?!
There's a TV show here called Vain elämää where several well-known musicians get together for a week. Each one of them gets their own day when the other musicians perform their (as in the person whose day it is) songs for them and everyone celebrates the one whose day it is and talks about their life events and stories behind the songs. Whenever I watch it, I can identify with the artists as they seem to be people like me with very sensitive personalities, periods of depression, the need to create touching art...And those who watch this TV show here love it! They love the artists in the show, they love crying with them and experiencing artistic personalities through a TV show. However, it seems that it's only okay to be a person like that if you're famous. If you're just a regular somebody like me, you're considered weird, stupid or an outsider because you don't conform to normative values, thoughts or experiences. It's sad!
I'm not really happy or pleased with anything I do or try to produce. I'm not a visual person, but the world around me is, especially nowadays with Instagram and YouTube, and it gets to me that my pictures aren't what I'd want them to be. Some people might disagree, but once again it's about how I feel, and I don't feel like I have any skills and then end up posting things I don't like myself.
Talking about esthetics, I also genuinely think that I'm super ugly. I don't like seeing myself in a picture because I think it's shocking to realise time and time again that that is actually my face and that people can see it every day. I think I'm one of the ugliest people you'll ever see, and it doesn't help that the world is all about posting your face here and there, posing, and gaining followers through your appearances or visual skills. So yes, Instagram does get to me. And with the ugliness, it doesn't help if people say "you're not ugly" or "your pictures are good". It doesn't really matter what other people think with these things if it's not what I think myself. Isn't it interesting how with anything negative, it's so easy to be affected by what others say while with anything positive, it's simply impossible? These feelings come partly from my childhood and partly from my own personality. No one has ever told me I'm pretty or encouraged me in anything appearance-related that I've tried in the past. Instead, the focus has been on "you're ugly, why did you do that?" and "you should exercise" and "why are you wearing those ugly clothes" and "your braces are ugly" and "you don't need those ugly glasses". These are things I've had to listen to as a child and unfortunately they've remained edged upon my memory all too vividly. People really are mean and they don't understand the harm their words can cause in a sensitive person.
As for work, I'm liked as a teacher, but the thing is that's not who I really am, it' a role. I'm extremely good at hiding who I really am. Then I go home and feel absolutely miserable. Teaching is such an exhausting job for a person like me. I don't enjoy going to work, and teachers are a particularly normative bunch that I don't identify at all with, especially class teachers (thankfully I'm a subject teacher!). In addition, my work environment has changed into one with no personal privacy, which makes me suffer so, so, so much. My self-esteem is not good enough to be team teaching groups of 46 on a daily basis, and it shouldn't have to be. We're different, and all kinds of people should be allowed to exist in this world as themselves. Work takes up a massive chunk of my day every day when I'm not on holiday and it's not good for my mental well-being that it's an environment that makes me feel horrible about myself.
So yeah, this post doesn't really have a conclusion as I don't know what to do with these things. I think what I should do, though, is keep pushing to be a little bit braver every day, and to make a To Do list for myself for every day so as not to avoid doing the things that I'd like to be doing. At the moment, I'm really suffering with my self-esteem issues and feel quite helpless as to how to break out of this vicious cycle of not doing anything and just watching other people do the things I'd like to achieve in my life as well. Therefore, as scary as it is, I will try to start being active with this blog and hopefully I'll manage to develop a routine with it.
If you got all the way down here, thanks for listening! Talk to you again soon!
