This isn't normal.
This isn't good.
But, this is, in my experience as a 26-year-old woman,
what it feels like to be really, really insecure.
Maybe this is just my experience of it. Maybe no one else on earth feels this way. But it can't hurt to throw it out there.
Whenever I see a girl who is thinner than me, has nicer skin, better hair, a prettier face, a more attractive body, some form of this process begins for me. It starts small, of course, maybe I just become overly aware of the part of my body that this girl's is better than. But if I don't catch it, don't stop it, it grows into this horrible, snarling monster inside me, and the bile begins to boil.
This isn't normal.
Why is it that I focus so intently on comparing what I look like to other people? It could be my best girl friend, a complete stranger on the street, or an actress. I react the same way, time and time again. I used to think it was because I was single, and doomed to singleness for the rest of my life, because there were so many more attractive people in the world that no man would ever lower himself to marry me.
Then I met my husband, Vince, and he showed me that choosing someone to spend your life with wasn't just about being pretty. He loved me because we joked, and talked, and shared pieces of ourselves that we had never been able to share with anyone else. I'm not saying my husband doesn't think I'm pretty, but I am saying he showed me that that shouldn't be the focus of a real relationship.
I thought this would fix me.
It didn't.
I slowly slipped back into this mindset of comparing myself to every girl who passed. I wrote little notes to myself, and asked myself why I wanted to be pretty so badly. The more I talked to myself about it, the more twisted and tangled I got, until I was a mess. So I talked to Vince about it, and he calmed me down, but I couldn't shake that feeling.
Why do I feel so compelled to look a certain way? Why do I feel like I have to meet a particular standard of beauty to be worth something? Why am I a little bit scared, deep down in the irrational, emotional, animal part of me, that if I can't meet that standard Vince will magically stop loving me? Why am I so screwed up in the head?
I wish I could say I came to this conclusion on my own, but I didn't. Vince and I talked about it as we drove to Somerset today.
The easy answer is to say that social media pounds it into our heads that we have to look this way. But why is media that way? Why is it that these ideas and standards drive women to hurt themselves by not eating, to get plastic and silicone implants under their skin, to get fat cells sucked out of one part and pumped into another? Something isn't right about that.
We weren't created to focus on the outside. Our bodies aren't bad. Loving your spouse's body, thinking he or she is beautiful, isn't bad. But focusing on that, letting that inform your decisions, your aspirations, your goals in relationships, isn't good. It isn't normal, because it isn't the way we were meant to be.
If we were meant to base everything on a look, then why would it be so easy to fall in love with someone because of the way you feel when you talk to them? Why would we be able to connect with someone on any kind of deeper level?
I love my husband more than anyone. He's an attractive man. But I didn't decide to spend forever with him because of that. I chose him because when we talk, I feel something stir inside of me that isn't there unless we're sharing ideas, and emotions. When we're communicating in that intimate way, I feel my core reaching out to blend with his. I can only attribute that to God.
God created us to bond with another person based on the things he put inside of us. He created us to reach out to him and communicate and blend with him with all that's inside of us, and on a smaller scale I believe he created us to have human-to-human relationships in that same way.
A girl is "pretty" because that kind of girl is popular during that time, for whatever reason. Right now, it's based quite a bit on what's on television, in music, in magazines, in movies. But that wasn't always the case. My point is, that changes. It shifts and moves slowly over time, so that the desirable female characteristics now may not be desirable anymore in 10 or 20 years. How can it be, if something changes that quickly, that this is what we should strive for in our relationships?
That's what I mean when I say that it isn't normal.
I have a husband who loves me, and who makes sure I know that he loves me every day. I have a husband who isn't so wrapped up in all of this fleeting stuff that he tells me I'm beautiful, but focuses on everything else that he loves. It's really sad that even though I have that, I still feel inadequate for reasons that don't matter.
It's like our entire society has a disorder, where reality is skewed into this bizarro version of how we were meant to be. And even though I know rationally what the truth is, even though I know how unimportant looking like a television model really is, I can't shake it.
I know that God created us to be more than shells,
more than dust.
He created us to explore these ideas,
these hearts,
these connections
without being blinded by things that don't really matter.
It isn't normal to focus our eyes, our energies, on the mist, when the ocean is right beneath it, waiting for us to dive in. I want to focus on the ocean, to dive into substance with only a passing glance for the mist above it, because the mist will only be there a short time before it changes and is gone. But the ocean, even if it changes, will last.
