Ask Polly: How Do I Stop Punishing Myself For Being Human?

Dearest Polly,

I’ve followed, excerpted, and re-read you since The Awl. The unholy mess, the broken heart, The Shit We Carry, the sharp disgrace, the radish, the volcano, the vulnerable fuck-all anthem of being here. The personality, frantically turning tricks. The well-phrased raw nerve prized for one’s way with words, verbal wizardry, well-placed authenticity in service of being emotionally validated. Grief, death, redemption, screaming growth. I’m picking up what you’re laying down, furious Fury Polly.

I’m 34 tomorrow. It’s a good life. I am loved, I’m in therapy, I have callings and passions and the scary belief that I’m getting brave enough to live them, braver all the time.

Here’s my question: How do we stop punishing ourselves for being human? Where does self knowledge and (dare I say) spiritual growth and the love that stays — where does it start transforming the big old shit? How do we stop doing this shame circuit that kept us afloat but never taught us how to fucking swim??

To be specific: I’ve got 20+ years of highly functional anorexia under my belt. So relentlessly functional that I just admitted about a year ago that I’ve never learned how not to punish myself for being left by people. Mostly men. That this body shit is my baseline, runs my life, is the thing that is determined for me to be small.

It’s not just a body shit question though. To be a woman in this culture is to have utilized a lot of toxic collective language to hurt ourselves. This is a symptom, and I know how to live with it. But I don’t know how to thrive.

What to do when you’re smart and awake, but can’t hack the damage? How do you reach the parts that don’t respond to words and fuck yeah vulnerability anthems?

How do I make peace with being so goddamn left? How do I forgive that little girl for still being so needy and broken? What makes self love, and what makes it penetrate enough to be ok?

Rock Bottom Never Hit

Dear Rock Bottom Never Hit,

First of all, you’re rushing straight to the center of things, and that’s a good sign. You know what’s at stake here, and you also know that your salvation lies in making some crucial internal shift. You acknowledge that our culture is deeply fucked, but you also know that it’s up to you to make an important adjustment and start processing the world in new ways that don’t include punishing yourself just for existing, or making yourself smaller just so you might feel comfortable taking up a teensy, tiny bit of space — over here, in the corner, where no one is looking.

I’ve never loved the idea of self-love because, as a fundamentally proud and arrogant (but insecure!) human being, I’ve always been a little afraid of the idea of loving myself. That always sounded a little gross to me. And yet, every few years I’ve discovered — like so many other people! — that, for whatever reason, my default resting state is conflicted. I’m at war with myself, by nature. I feel a lot of shame. And the only real exit from the unnerving, angry, frustrated cycling of that is self-acceptance. But even self-acceptance sounds wrong! It sounds like “begrudgingly putting up with what a fuck-up I am.”

I also had this needy little girl problem you describe. The needy little girl still wanted too much for years — from men, from my mother, from my friends. I didn’t understand why she was so relentless. But I also really, truly craved reassurance and support and love from someone else — the kind of love that takes all of your lumpy wrongness and says “All of this is just fine, it’s great, I will love this forever and ever and ever!”

Personally, I think it’s highly embarrassing and also totally OK to ask for that kind of love out loud from another person. But you also have to know that very few people are 100% willing to give it to you, particularly if you don’t seem to truly believe that you’re worthy of it yet.

So this is where you start: You resolve to do this for yourself. You resolve to say, “It’s OK that I am so fucking needy. It’s natural and real and it’s just who I am, really. Lots of people are like me. Lots of people feel this way.” Then you picture your terrible needy self and instead of saying I WILL LOVE HER (which is a little hard to do, honestly) or SOMEONE WILL LOVE HER (which borders on a kind of ego fantasy that’s inherently escapist) instead you say “I have compassion for this needy little girl.”

Compassion. You will make room for her. You will observe her angry flailing and have empathy for it. You will commit to standing up for her, because she’s never going to leave. She’s always here. Why? How did you get her, anyway? Why will she be here even when you’re very old and you should feel much stronger and more sure of yourself? I don’t fucking know, but she’ll be here, trust me.

Part of your struggle lies in understanding and accepting that some basic troubled seas won’t turn calm no matter how great everything in your life becomes. The truly strange thing, though, is that once you stop asking other people to love that needy little girl and you treat her with true, abiding compassion all by yourself, and you let her take up a little space in your heart, she’ll bring you some pretty amazing gifts. She’ll make you see other people through compassionate eyes. You will be able to put other people first more often than you can manage right now. You’ll start to become a generous person — generous to the core. You’re already probably on that path, but you’ll feel that way much more often.

She’ll help you to feel more passionately. Instead of doing these intellectual mind puzzles all the time, moving a little Rubik’s Cube around in your head all day long, you’ll simply walk around feeling your feelings without trying to fight them. Your shame will be replaced by a deep sense of peace (a lot of the time, anyway!). When you feel jittery and unlovable, you will remind yourself, “I am worthy, exactly as I am right now. I can take up space. I don’t need to change a thing.”

It’s sad, isn’t it, how many girls and women land in the same place? We don’t even feel like we deserve to whine about it. We don’t even feel like we deserve to love ourselves. But we can feel compassion for how long we’ve been in this state, conflicted and neurotic, wondering when we can stop pushing on walls, wondering when we’ll find the secret trap door to a calmer, better, happier life.

There is no trap door, no secret passageway. You just have to look with clear eyes at who you are right now: Totally strange and imperfect and real. Nasty and angry and confused and worried and misshapen and fucked to the core and hopelessly sublime. You get to move forward from here exactly like this. You don’t have to be smaller or more brilliant or smoother or prettier. You can just be what you are. You wake up in the morning and say, “I won’t try so hard today. I will let myself be who I am. I don’t have to fix anything.”

People will leave again. Rejection is everywhere. By having some compassion for your current state of being (without expecting more), by having some appreciation and even love for your imperfect present, by refusing to twist yourself into a pretzel for approval that never comes, you will not leave yourself again. As long as you don’t abandon yourself, as long as you tell yourself, “I am with you, as you are right now, no matter what,” then you can’t get left again, not really. You might be alone but you will not be left behind. “I am still here,” you will say. “I will always be here. You have nothing to be afraid of.”

You don’t have to return to the same old stories that only serve to stoke your longing and your melancholy. No one has seen you clearly yet, that’s all. Some people can’t see much, even when they try. See yourself clearly. That’s all there is. Look at yourself with clear eyes, without demanding more, without asking for improvements. Look with clear eyes and say, “This is how I am.” Feel that in your heart. This is how you’re going to live from now on. Something in the air is shifting. You deserve to feel this good from now on.

Polly

Heather Havrilesky, author of The Cut’s Ask Polly and the new book How to Be a Person in the World (out from Doubleday on July 12th), will be answering your questions on Medium all week. Submit questions here and check back for a reply from July 9 to July 15th.