Reflections on insecurity

I am 0 days old. My life has just begun but there is only a 10% chance of it continuing. My organs are misplaced and my lungs are struggling to function. I am 1 day old. My body is cut open on an operating table as my organs are moved out of my chest cavity and into my abdomen where they should be. My muscle is sewn up. It's touch and go for a while but I am given a chance at life. I lie in an incubator with tubes and lines coming out of multiple areas of my body and I grow. Eventually, I learn to breathe on my own. I become a determined child. At times a bit shy, but always willing to try new things and be involved in the world. My parents call me a miracle, their miracle.

I am 11 years old. A few months into a new school I go through an experience that causes me to doubt my self-worth. Despite being a happy child I lose all memory of being free. I crumble. I begin to focus on the things that people tell me are wrong about myself, and build up a list of things I begin to hate about myself. I can't speak. I am terrified of rejection but it's all I expect so I keep quiet. I am 12 years old. The kids in my class are told to speak to me because I am so painfully lonely. I feel deeply ashamed to be so socially awkward that formal intervention is deemed necessary. Every social interaction fills me with dread. Entering a social setting results in overthinkng before, during, and after. This stays with me into adulthood.

Not a year later I am hit with the panicked realisation that I am queer. Not really a surprise at all but the shock still hits me. I feel at this point that I am doomed. I make the mistake of sharing my feelings with someone who outs me. I didn't realise it was possible to feel so low. The looks on the girls' faces after fill me with embarassment. I become something repulsive and laughable. That's when I decide that I am unlovable.

Time goes on and, instead of life getting better, it somehow manages to get worse. I face the sudden death of my father at 15 years old. That's when time stops. I sink deeper and deeper into myself. I know by now that my identity is a mask. I am crawling in my skin on a daily basis. My friends do not accept me for who I am. I am told that it's not attractive to be masculine. I meet a girl who I start talking to and eventually we admit feelings to each other. She won't meet up with me one-to-one. Two and a half months later we finally see each other again and have our first kiss. Less than a month later and she leaves. I once again believe I can't be loved.

Eventually, my body gives in and I'm met with hospitalisation, followed later by the onset of chronic illness. My body by this point is my enemy, and I feel trapped in every way possible. I fear food for what it will do to my body. Panic attacks become a regular part of my life for the better part of a decade.

Time goes on and I become an adult, but I still believe that there's something wrong with me. That I am unlovable. That something within me is repulsive to others, and this makes my brain fill with sadness and anxiety on a regular basis. The words I say to myself, the names I call myself, are so awful. I am so shamed of myself that I believe I'm not desirable to anyone. So, when someone expresses desire, I accept it even though I am repulsed at the thought of it. I lose myself so deeply that I let someone treat me in a way I could never imagine treating another human being. I let my body be used by someone who I feel no desire for. I'm not living my truth. Even though every fibre of my being feels like screaming and running, I just let it happen.

I am 22 years old now. A nurse sticks a needle in my hip one morning an I officially begin my medical transition. I told myself this would be the beginning of my life, but the first year ends up being one of my most painful yet. As the world shuts down, I lose one family member and then quickly find out I am going to lose another. I realise I never dealt with my grief as a teenager, and now it's all coming to a head. 11 days before she dies I text her to say that i am thinking of her. She replies "I love you son, always have, always will". The text remains on my phone for years. Despite being promised by someone to be loved both in their life and in their death, I still can't seem to believe that I am deserving of this love.

The world opens up again and I go back to class. I show a me to the world that doesn’t reflect my soul. The problem is people don’t even realise. I am open about one aspect although I deeply hate that I have to be. I wish I could hide and blend in, but I don't so I make art about it. Because of this they call me brave, but I know I'm just a coward. And so I beat myself up. I dig the hole deeper and deeper. I stop believing that life can really get any better. I stop believing that I deserve any better. I worry that I will be a nobody for the rest of my life.

I didn't ever believe that I could get what I wanted. Who I wanted. Unrequited love is the queer kid's rite of passage. So I tell everyone that I desire cis men and no one else. I do this because I can't handle rejection and I don't believe I'm worthy of anything else. I am so lonely. I don't know who to open up to or how. My degree is over and I feel I have nothing to show for myself despite my first class honours. I feel inferior to everyone I know and it shows. I spend hours on dating apps talking to cis man after cis man and I don't feel a thing. The messages they send me are disgusting. I am objectified by almost every one of them. They ask what I want from them and I don't know how to answer the question. There is nothing they could give me that I would want.

I am 25. I am in the car with a friend after ranting about the apps and how I hate modern dating. Suddenly, I get the urge to say something that's been on my mind for a few months. "I think I still like women. And non-binary afab people, and trans men. I think they're who I want to date. I think I'd prefer that." My friend's reaction is small, like it's completely normal for me to say this. The floodgates open. I can't hide my truth anymore.

It's the second week of my postgrad degree. I sit down at a table where two of my classmates are trying to study. They greet me and one of them tells me that they both would like to be my friend. The insecure part of me immediately thinks "Is the situation that dire for international students that I'm their first choice?", but I welcome their eagerness. They ask what I am doing that Thursday evening, as they have an event they want to invite me to. I say I will go, but first I have to go to an exhibition opening that my art is in. Without a second thought, they let me know they'll be there. I can't understand why.

Connections enter my life over the span of 5 months in ways I never could have expected. On a December night I tell a friend that I believe myself to be undesirable. She tells me she doesn't understand why I feel this way and that there's no reason for me to. I'm not sure how to process this. I thought I had to feel this way forever.

I go to a club for a friend's birthday and I dance for the first time. I could count on one hand the amount of times I'd been clubbing up to this point. I always stood awkwardly watching everyone else not knowing how to be free, but this time I move my body. My friends have to teach me dance moves which is embarassing (did I mention I am 25?!) but it's okay because I am free in a way I have never been before.

I meet her a few days later. We speak one-to-one briefly. Two days later we meet again. I am in her kitchen and we are talking, just the two of us. I speak two words and she mentions how attractive the saying is. I get chills throughout my body. She suggests I choose the music. I purposefully choose music from sapphic artists, trying to find a connection. On the way to the bar, she asks about my art. I decide to show her my self-portraits. I pretend it's because I want to talk about my passion, but honestly I'm just trying to see what her reaction is to a half-naked photo of my body. It's not subtle at all. Later in the evening, we stand outside talking, and I am almost certain this is what I've been waiting for, but the fear of rejection is overpowering, so she ends up being the one to say it. A few days later, I kiss her for the first time. A full decade to the month that I had my first kiss just further up the street. I give my body to her a week later. My walls come down for the first time.

I'm 26. I'm sitting on the bathroom floor calling myself an ambulance. My intestines scream out in pain. I have to face my fears alone for the first time. I get lucky. Recovery is peaceful. I am lying in a hospital bed. I think of all the shame I've had around my chronically ill body. It's a big source of shame. The scars on my chest and abdomen were the first things about me that made me feel different. They aren't visible most of the time but I worry about judgement when they are noticed. I have lost numerous teeth to no fault of my own. An extreme insecurity that has made me feel even more insecure than I already was. Then I realise that my body has gotten me this far. I survived a lot. It survived a lot. We need to be a team now.

The summer ends and autumn begins. I move into a house with two of my friends, something that I watched others do for years thinking I never could. A school friend is in town the day of the move and comes to see it. We sit in a bar that evening and I wonder why I hated myself all those years despite her support of me. It's like I've been in a forcefield of insecurity that has deflected every sign that these core beliefs I have held all these years might not be true. I never truly understood how fucked up it was to feel this way about myself until now.

I start a new job. I decide that if I want human connection I should ask for it so I message a coworker in the hope of a friendship. I make sure to put myself down in the message, stating my awkwardness. I used to start messages to people I didn't know well with "I'm sorry if this is weird, but...", but I decided to stop this only to end up finding something else self-deprecating to say in its place. She replies by saying that I don't seem awkward to her at all, and suddenly my perception of myself is thrown up in the air. How is it that despite feeling an awkwardness come over my entire body every time I am in a social setting, someone out there doesn't see me that way? I meet someone from my old school in a coffee shop. We talk about our experiences and the ways we perceive ourselves as adults. As she tells me a negative belief about herself, my brain is caught between the urge to say it's not true, and the urge to admit I feel the exact same. I see it clearer: It's not just me who feels this way. And, if I see the lie in her insecurity, maybe that could mean there's a lie in my own. Towards the end of our meeting, she looks me in the eyes and says, "You need to love yourself Charlie". I spend a few days being a little stunned by that comment. Being given permission to do such a thing from someone I knew from the place where I lost the ability to do so was unexpected.

I go over this comment in my head. I've been trying to love myself for the past year. I've made progress, more than the previous 25 years combined, but the fastpaced nature of the first half of this year has caused my brain to struggle to function. My processing is slower. I need time to reflect. I am 26 years old. I have spent 15 of these years feeling like I wasn't good enough. I realise the truth is that I was wrong. I realise the things I put myself down for are qualities I find endearing in other people. I realise that I am good enough, I am lovable, and I am deserving of good things. I look at all of the old versions of me and I decide that I am going to live my life as the person that younger me needed. I am not ashamed anymore.