Insecurity

I've definitely been meaning to do this one for a while, because everyone knows that it's hard to feel good about yourself if you don't feel good in general. So how do you gain confidence while living with a chronic illness? Or is that even possible?

My insecurities started really early with my prednisone face. I am still surprised sometimes when I see pictures of myself and my face ISN'T round, because I have thoroughly ingrained the idea of myself as "chubby-cheeked." And when you are insecure about your face, everything else goes downhill.

The next thing I got insecure about was my hair which, in my recollection, got gross pretty shortly after I was diagnosed, but that also corresponded with puberty (I know, the timing was just fantastic, wasn't it?) so that was probably to blame more than the lupus. Regardless, I had thick, long, wavy hair until about fifth grade when it frizzed out, yo. And thick, frizzy, unmanageable hair SUCKS when you are entering middle school and suddenly all the "mature" girls have really luscious locks. More than my face, I have always managed to associate good hair with maturity (because I never knew how to handle my hair and somehow I figured that was just a lack of maturity on my part? What?) and therefore often feel inferior to everyone around me.

And of course, I feel heavy all the time, and that leads to my wearing baggy clothes even though I KNOW I am pretty small.

All of this stems from, I think, the fact that I am hyper-aware of my body almost all the time. My body isn't particularly convenient for me; I often feel I am lugging it around. It pulls me down even when my brain is alert and wanting to be productive, and I cannot ignore it because it forces itself on me through various discomforts and pains. I feel heavy because I am stiff and it takes more effort than it should to move, as though I am carrying a bigger weight than I really am.


Okay so how can we handle these physical anxieties? Since we want to go out and feel good about ourselves and seduce people with our wits, charms, and beauties, how can we ignore the fact that everything we are feeling points to "gross"?

One of my friends has told me multiple times "the days when you feel the fattest are when you should dress the sluttiest." Taking the spirit of the comment, I have been working on getting rid of my middle/high school wardrobe: I've scaled my tee shirt size down a little, then too much, then up again so that I am comfortable but also do not look like I am wearing a sack. This has the added benefit of making me appear as though I am comfortable with myself, even when I am not.

I started dying my hair in 10th grade, and that has helped my self-esteem a lot, because there's something I have some measure of control over. I also found a hairdresser who can thin my hair out a lot without making it look stringy.

And for my face, I leave it alone. I don't wear make-up because that's just another thing attracting my own attention to my own face, which is never a good plan. I think it all comes down to tricking myself.


This feels like a very superficial blog post but I think that in a world where we are ALL insecure and we ALL feel fat and we're ALL always having bad hair days, it can help to break down a little the reasons why because that is the best way (for me?) to try and counteract it. Anyway, whatever we say when we're feeling high and mighty, we all want to look nice, at least to ourselves.