You Gotta be Shitty to Get Better

Well hello there. It's been a hot minute since I have had the mental energy to sit down and put thoughts to fingers so I can type them out. September has had its own run of personal challenges, as can be expected when one is going through a healing journey. I've made a real point of trying to spend less time on social media because I've found that social media doesn't really do a lot for me. There is the aspect of connection that comes with making these posts, from trying to drive some semblance of conversation about hard topics but I've also come to realize that it isn't the best environment for me. Whenever I make a post I seem to hang the value of it on the reach that it has. Which really, I have just over 200 followers on Instagram, less than that on Facebook, so how far are these going to reach? The most important thing for me is still the power of telling my story, of putting myself out there to try and inspire someone else who is struggling to realize that things don't have to stay shitty for ever. To steal a line from Goon, which I believe to be a truly underrated film, "You gotta be shitty to get better." I've been shitty for a long time so it's high time that I start to get better.

This one is a tough one to put together, I've started, stopped re-written, deleted, re-written again at least 5 times so far, just trying to get the words to come out in a way that I am happy with. I don't see myself as much of a perfectionist but I definitely get frustrated when there seems to be a block between what I want to say and how I can get it out in a way that conveys the message I want to convey. Part of this one is hard because it is another deep topic that opens a huge chasm within me and I know it's probably something that many others struggle with, especially because it ties so deeply into the visceral reactions of Post Traumatic Stress. Shame, worthlessness and self hate. I have spent many years believing that I have no self worth outside of my job. I have lost my identity in trying to be a cop and a dad and a husband and this has lead to a deep spiral of self loathing because I believe so deeply that I haven't been successful in any of it.

My lack of self worth, my self hatred, my lack of self-esteem and a general inability to have self compassion has made this healing journey that much harder because it is so hard for me to take a step back and see that I've made progress, or that I've been able to grow myself little bits. All I experience most days is guilt, regret and hatred. I look in the mirror and see a person who couldn't handle what was put in front of him, a person that wasn't able to ask for help sooner, a person that knew things were bad and was too damn stubborn to do what was necessary. I see a person not worthy of love, not worthy of friendship, not worthy of spending money on or investing in. It's a truly vicious cycle that is just exhausting to deal with on a day to day basis. So what are some of the things that its manifested itself in?

 A huge part of it has been my self image and lack of self confidence. I grew up as a tall skinny kid, one who had to wear sweat pants all the time because no company made jeans that would fit my gangly frame. I had to wear baggy shirts because I needed the torso length but didn't have the frame to fill them out. This lead to a serious distortion of my body image. I never went on a date before I turned 20. I was never pursued by anyone through junior high and high school. I didn't have the confidence to put myself out there. As I started to work out more consistently I started putting the pressure on myself to get bigger, not only because I wanted to be a police officer, but because I had that belief that if I got bigger I would be more attractive. I put on over 50 pounds over the course of a couple years and it had no effect on my confidence. If anything it got worse because I started equating my worth with how big I was getting. My girlfriend at the time constantly made comments about her attraction to me was enhanced because I was bigger so I no longer worked out for the purpose of being healthy or for preparing for possible police work, I was trying to get big and stay big so I would still be attractive. Needless to say when the relationship ended the self confidence took a huge hit. Clearly I wasn't big enough or what I was doing wasn't enough. So I stopped trying to get big and now I wanted to get strong. So I started taking huge risks with the weights I was lifting, pushing myself to try and get over the breakup by just getting strong as fuck. Which worked for a couple months until I hurt myself and then progress was lost. The spiral started all over again. Shit, now I'm too slow and out of shape in the wrong way for police work so I reset my thinking and started trying more endurance based training at the expense of strength and size. The thing was I wasn't getting more cut so I just felt like I was losing muscle and this was making the self hatred for my looks even worse. In an age of change, the use of dating apps was just taking off and since I didn't have any self confidence I felt that was the way I would be able to try and find a new relationship. You want to take a person with self confidence and self image issues and make them much worse, try using an app that is solely based on looks to get attention. Trying to avoid looking like a douche I didn't use gym pics but trying to find other suitable pictures was hard to do as well because I didn't and still don't see myself as an attractive person so it just helped perpetuate my self image issues.

This cycle has never really slowed down. I lost a bunch of weight during training at depot, solely because of how freaking busy the days were. My wife cried the first time she saw me during training because I had lost so much weight and she thought I was sick. I fought with myself constantly during that time, spending hundreds of dollars on weight gainers to try and stop myself from getting smaller, I was constantly worried that if I got too small that my wife would lose interest in me and leave. After getting out of training I got back to the gym, trying to regain the lost size. I put close to 30 pounds back on, getting big enough that I had to get bigger shirts so my neck would fit. Getting patches in the arm pits so my sleeves wouldn't just bunch between my shoulders and biceps. I popped buttons off shirts under my bulletproof vest during fights because my shirts were too tight. Yet I looked at myself and it wasn't enough. Or I got too big and lost my ability to have decent cardio so I had to go back the other way so I would be good in a fight. The yo-yoing was incessant, I couldn't be happy in any way with where my body was. I wasn't cut enough, or I was getting too skinny or I wasn't strong enough. Then I would get hurt because I was training too hard while I was exhausted and couldn't recover properly. I'll put it this way now. I fucking hate the gym. It's not a place to go relax, it's not a place to find solace or peace. It just makes me hate myself even more because I can never be happy with myself. I can never be satisfied with where I am at or what I have done. I like a challenge, like doing the 10000 kettlebell swings over a month, or trying Murph for the first time. But when I look at the gym it hasn't been good for my mental health for so many years, its just lead to further self image issues, further self hate, furthering my lack of self compassion or self worth. I've spent so much time focused on my looks, my strength to fight, my size to be able to do my job or be attractive to my wife that now being in the gym makes my stress levels even worse. My anxiety doesn't decrease after a workout, it does nothing to elevate my mood. So its time to get out of the gym for a while, find a new way to take care of myself in a way that doesn't make life more difficult. 

So how does this tie into my mental health struggles? Does having a negative self image have that much of a detrimental impact on my struggles? Well clearly it does because it all ties together. For a long time I haven't seen myself as worthy of happiness. I haven't invested anything in myself for years. I had no hobbies because I didn't see myself as worthy of doing anything for myself. And when I would try something, if I didn't immediately succeed at it I wouldn't keep at it. I tried getting a bow to try archery, figuring it would give me a reason to be outside and I could always benefit from being outside. It didn't work. I had issues sighting the bow in, I had issues with consistency when shooting and I quickly just gave up on it. I wouldn't spend any money on myself for anything because I didn't see myself as worth it. Sure, protein and gym stuff was there but only because it was a necessity when it came to my unhealthy gym habits. 

I had no creative outlet because no matter what I tried I could never see anything of value in what I did. I saw no talent in drawing. I can't take a decent picture to save my life. I never gave myself a chance because I never saw the inherent value of giving myself a chance. I was scared to try anything because I knew that no matter what I did I wouldn't be able to give myself any form of credit for what I did. I was stuck in a loop of don't do anything because you'll never succeed with anything. 

Then there's the identity loss. I based so much of my worth and identity on being a mountie that it became all I had. I would put the pictures on social media in the hopes of getting it noticed and low and behold not much came of it, so I started to feel that much more of a disconnect because I felt like I wasn't worth of being noticed for my efforts...so fuck social media. The negative self image cycle just keeps on spinning just perpetuating my self hate because I just end up thinking that people are annoyed by what they see from me so they don't bother caring. Not a likely explanation but one that my brain crafts because its what I have believed for years.

As my mental health has gotten worse I have fallen further into the depths of self hatred. The guilt, the shame, the blame all piles on myself. I can't give myself a moment of peace to process what has happened because I just blame myself for it all. I can look back and see the trauma I have been through, the shit I have seen, smelt and heard. I can logically process that those things are truly fucked up and aren't things that a human being is meant to be a part of but I can't seem to break through the wall of self depreciation when it comes to where I am at now in my life. I feel weak for not being able to handle things. I feel weak for needing help, I feel weak for crying, I feel guilty for hurting my wife and kids, I blame myself for the state of my life and my marriage. I feel shame for being so angry all the time for so long, I feel shame for the way I treated people that I am supposed to care for. I sit and just let the negative feelings ruminate until I just have nothing else to feel other than the negativity. Then I sit and watch my kids play and feel guilty because I can't seem to feel happy about anything. This god damn cycle just feels impossible to escape. 

During therapy a constant theme is being able to accept what has happened so that I am able to find that self compassion, because true healing can't happen without self compassion. A guilty pleasure that I share with my wife is sitting and watching RuPaul. There's a constant message at the end of each episode "If you can't love yourself then how the hell you gonna love somebody else?" Well shit, that makes sense I guess. How am I going to heal if I can't love myself? How does one start loving them self when they have never really been able to? Where does self compassion come from? Does self-worth develop out of thin air? Clearly not dipshit, don't ask such stupid questions. That would be the answer I would have given myself a few months ago. With a little introspection about self care, the answers are not easy to find but the answers also don't need to be so based in self depreciation and hate.

I have been lucky enough to find a good hobby lately and one that has allowed the creative side of my brain to really get active. Oddly enough I have given myself a lot of self grace when it comes to my beadwork. My first flowers were really not great and I look at them and I can't help but chuckle. Yet I didn't do my usual reaction of quitting. I watched videos, I practiced and I slowly started to get better. I allowed myself to fail, I allowed myself to need to work at it and I have allowed myself to grow. I can accept that things aren't perfect and never will be. There will always be discrepancies in bead work because there are natural imperfections in the beads, there are imperfections in fabrics and really, there are imperfections in my skill set. But I can find progress and in that progress I can find growth. In allowing these skills to develop and in allowing myself the grace to develop those skills I have shown myself that I am worthy of investing in. When I finish a project and feel pride in what I have created I am showing myself that I am worthy of self praise. In taking on more complex projects I am showing that I believe in myself. Then I spend the money on supplies. I've invested more in beads, leathers, furs and threads in these last few months that I have spent on myself in years. If I'm willing to spend the money, especially when you know how much of a cheap fucker I really am, that means a lot. Can it really be that simple? Is beading the same path I need to follow when it comes to learning to love myself? Lets take a moment to be honest, its not really that simple because if it was I'd just snap my fingers and be better. 

There's many many years of shit to sort through, there's many negative mental pathways and compounded problems that I need to unlearn or redirect as I continue along this healing journey. Somewhere along the way I'll find the right tools to break through this wall that I have within myself that prevents me from finding the ability to love myself and find myself worthy of good things in life. If there's one thing that I have seen over these last months it's that I have a capacity to grow still, I'm not meant to stay where I am. I may not believe it yet on a consistent basis because I haven't developed that skill yet but every once in a while there is a glimmer. There is a sliver of light that breaks through and illuminates the depths of darkness and makes me feel like things might eventually be okay. Then it quickly gets stamped out because I still don't feel worthy of happiness or peace but for every one of those glimmers somewhere within me there is progress.

So just remember you gotta be shitty to get better

Heavy