Breaking Glass
I became a novelist at the age of 16.
Well, in my mind, I did. I had every intention of finishing and publishing the 200 page Young Adult-Sci Fi-Action-Romance that I began writing at the start of high school. In retrospect, I’m rather glad I didn’t. My “novel” could be summarized by every @DystopiaYA tweet strung together by the hormonal tension of its stereotypical protagonists.
Despite its many flaws, there was an image that stuck with me from that first of many writing failures.
The book opened on a young girl with poor body image and little self confidence (this girl may or may not have been modeled on my teenage self). The only way, at that age, I could describe her feeling and mental state was this: when she looked into the mirror, she saw breaking glass.
Not broken glass. “Broken” is in the past tense. It describes a final state, the aftermath of violence. While broken glass isn’t the same as what it was before, the worst has already happened to it.
“Breaking” glass is stuck, perpetually stuck, in that moment of violence. There is no before or after. Just violence.
And the experience of poor self worth or low self esteem is just that. It’s a constant violence against the self with no seeming beginning or end. You may strain equally to be whole again and to be fully broken. Either would be a relief.
At a certain point, you don’t care. About anything. You just want to stop breaking.
Many years, many therapy sessions, and many self-realizations later, I still think about that girl. She only ever existed in my head, of course. She was a simple fiction, one character in a much larger, if poorly written, story.
But I believe that, at the time, she was really just a part of myself I was struggling to handle. Shortly after high school, I was on the road listening to NPR. I don’t remember the name of the segment or even the name of the guest who was speaking. But they said something I’ll never forget.
“Think about the way you talk to yourself. In your own mind. Would you ever talk to another person that way? You would never say out loud to another person what you say to yourself, because they’d slap you in the face.”
I couldn’t very well slap myself in the face, but that NPR segment ended up being its own wake-up call. I realized that instead of being my own worst critic, I would live a much better life by being my own best advocate. Because, truly, who could advocate for that little girl better than me?
Somehow, thinking of myself as a self-advocate was easier than simply “loving” myself. At that point, I didn’t understand love as a daily, intentional choice. Now, I do, largely as a result of this exercise in self-advocacy.
Understanding the thing that will make your life better and doing that thing are not the same, of course. Like any sort of mindfulness, it’s a daily practice. Daily patience with myself. Daily mercy. And gradually, daily love.
Don’t get me wrong, though. Advocating for yourself doesn’t mean that you can’t acknowledge when you are wrong or feel genuine guilt over your mistakes. If you are truly prioritizing yourself, you need to prioritize your own growth.
Additionally, I want to note that “self care” as a movement has been corporatized beyond recognition. Remember, you don’t need to buy overpriced bath bombs and face masks to take care of your mind and your body. You can if you want to, but fundamentally, self care is a mindset.
Self care is advocating for the fragile parts of yourself, rather than simply waiting for them to shatter.
