My worst enemy

Growing up some people learn a lesson, namely that children can be cruel. I mean I was not majorly bullied back in school, but that was mostly because I tried to fit in a lot. Still I can remember moments when I was mocked. Especially music camp comes to my mind. Every person who slept with me in a room left for another, I was left alone. The kids locked me in my room with a chair under the door knob. I was called names (ok, I mean they actually called me the chemical name for water, but firstly I didn’t understand that back then and secondly they wanted it to be mean, the intention counts there). What I learned then was that words can hurt, but that I was also not going to take crap from every person who needed an outlet for the negativity in their life.

As a “grown up” there are very little people left who I allow enough power and access to my emotions to actually hurt me. I have trusted people but the scenarios in which they betray me, well they are limited I’d say. Still there is someone left who tears me apart on an almost daily basis. This person is a bully of an indepth knowledge of my every weakness that makes it seemingly impossible to get past it. I’m still finding my way out of this abusive relationship, but it’s a really tough call.

Who I’m talking about you ask? The answer is simply, it’s me. I am my worst enemy. I’m rather easy with forgiving others. My own mistakes? I carry them on my back year after year. One example for this stands out over all of the others though. There was this girl that I used to play sports with. I had nothing against here and I remember days in which we even got along fairly well. On the other hand there was this rather bossy girl (she did look innocent but she was rather manipulative), who had a leading position in our team. Both girls did not get along, why doesn’t matter. The bossy girl then decided to hate on the other, somehow convincing the whole rest of the team to join her, me included. We bullied her. Nowadays I cannot even imagine how I was so blind to do such a thing, but I was easy to be manipulated. Eventually the bullied girl quit. To my own luck the story doesn’t end there as this would be a very big shame.

Two or three years after her leaving, the formerly bullied girl and her family joined our church. I kid you not, when I first saw her again I was in desperate search for the deepest darkest hole to hide in and never get back out. Guilt is a terrible emotion, especially when you know that you’ve earned it. Unlike what I expected her to do, she did not blame me, she wasn’t mean to me or anything. Even better, she forgave me very quickly. I remember her sitting on my lap during Sunday school (we are talking about a person who is not even cuddly!). While it was ok for her, it was not for me. It took me years for what she did in weeks. I even remember one evening more than a year ago. Another friend and I had spontaneously spend the day at hers, playing video games. In the evening during the family dinner suddenly her mother said jokingly: “Who would’ve ever thought back in the day that one day you’d be eating at this very table”. I mean we had all talked about it and shared some laughs about my stupidity, but even back then it still had an edge to me, even though I’m mostly ok with it now.

There is a saying that goes: “If you talked to your friends the way you talk to your body, you’d have no friends left at all.” I probably call myself stupid twice a day, ugly probably once. I don’t trust myself. When I think of my goals, the only thing I see stopping myself from achieving them, is me. It’s like I’m constantly trying to fight my own shadow, and I’m losing. It’s a circle of negativity.

If you know this blog then you might’ve understood that I never end a post on a negative note. So there comes my life lesson. I am fighting my shadow when there is absolutely no need for that. There are worse problems than my poor little ego around on the planet. The most effective way to get rid of a shadow is to shine light on it, fight it with happiness and don’t let the negativity get you down. You might think that getting past yourself is impossible, at least you know every single trick of yours, but a shadow is just a pathetic poor and colourless version of you, so move on!

So now that I have successfully cheered myself up I should really write that paper that I’m not going to mess up, just because I failed another paper! I’m better than I was and I’m better than my failure

Cheerio.

Selfie Time

I'm not sure if this is something everyone can relate to, if it's a girl problem or if it's just me who is affected by it, but let me tell you something. Sometimes I look in the mirror not just to check that I don't have any stains on my clothes or to check my face for leftover toothpaste, but in order to really look at me. As a matter of fact I assume that every single person who knows me has probably more of an idea about my face, its shape and generally how I look than I do. Sometimes when I share one of these intense looks with my own reflection it happens that I do not even recognize me anymore. Or maybe that's just the moment where I can truly see all my features unlike those short glimpses I get throughout the day.

Usually when I take a little more time to look at myself I start to see every flaw. I don't have pure skin, there is this scar on my forehead and I think that my face is genuinely not what I consider good looking. Of course there are also things about my body that I dislike, which add up to my vain unhappiness. I mean I know that I could do more for myself and I'd probably look better, I could wear more make-up, use skin care more regularly and dress better, but even though I think about these things doesn't mean that I think I should do them every day.

There are also other days luckily, in which I can't help but compliment myself, like for example the colour of my eyes, for how my hair lies or sometimes a shirt that I bought that suits me. Getting a compliment from a friend is cool and feels nice, but getting one from my harshest critic, me, feels just as good. Sometimes one of these I-kind-of-do-not-dislike-myself-that-much days can lead up to some pampering.

Sometimes I start to paint my nails, just because I can. I do not care on most days, yes, but I can enjoy treating myself with some make-up or nail polish from time to time. It might not end then; sometimes I want to embrace that good feeling even more so I start to look into my wardrobe for the right piece to enhance my beauty. When I found it I look into the mirror again. It's the same person I considered ugly the day before, the very same features, but my perspective has changed. It happens that I spend minutes just standing there, trying to understand why I can feel so different about my own body that has not really changed but just feels different. From time to time I'm done at this point, looking and trying to figure out my own self, but it there are also moments when I move on to another Level.

I hate photos of me. I don't mean I dislike pictures of me and my friends, I love them. I just don't like me alone in a photo. There are only two moments when it's ok for me to take a picture of myself. Firstly when my profile picture on facebook is so outdated that I managed to change my hairstyle twice since taking the last one (trust me, that did happen way too often) and secondly when I feel beautiful. As a result I have probably more selfies than you'd expect, but most of them were taken on about six days throughout my entire life.

Let me tell you, giving yourself an ego-selfie-photo shoot is a real joy. Some of my pictures look very very bad so I delete them just after taking, but others are very nice ones too. Don't be embarrassed to pose a little; no one is ever going to see them anyway, unless you decide to share them. Enjoy your own body, feel unashamed. Try out different angles, pull faces or use filters, whatever pleases you. Don't listen to anyone, not even yourself, when they tell you you're worthless or ugly as beauty is in the eye of the beholder. If you dislike cameras as much as I do then face it anyway, you don't want to look at all the beautiful photos of your friends and pretend all of them look incredibly good and you are the ugly duckling. It's not true. And remember, one thing is for sure, a picture says more than a thousand words.

Cheerio.

Don't forget the copyright

So here comes the third part of the series, I hope that after finishing this post you will understand what the title has to do with it.

"You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses the name" (Exodus 20:7)

So firstly let’s talk about some Names that God has. There is a whole list, but I’ll pick out some in order not to write too much. For example we have ‚JEHOVAH-ROHI‘ (Psalm 23:1) ‚The Lord my shepherd‘. This name is beautiful because it shows how much God wants to look for us, how much he cares. Like a Sheppard he doesn’t want any of his flock to get lost. A  second one is ‚JEHOVAH-SHAMMAH‘ (Ezekiel 48:35)‚The Lord who is present‘ which says that, unlike Nietzsche said, God isn’t death, but Nietzsche is instead. And last but not least ‚EL-SHADDAI‘(Genesis 17:1,Psalm 91:1) ‚God Almighty‘, which sums ist up pretty well.

But let’s talk about what the verse really means, because this is really bad for me. It means every time I say something like 'oh my god', or 'holy shit' or anything along those lines, I do wrong, and God can hold me responsible for that. The thing is, I'm not really good at holding back such things, they slip out of my mouth without me even realizing what I just said. God wants us to respect him, respect his holy name. I wouldn't shout 'Oh my Carolina' either, would I? To know his name, to say it out loud, is a privilege and we need to honor him with it, which usually is just really hard.

I thought that this was the end, that I couldn't say more about this part when a different thought hit me. What if God not only wants us to keep his name out of some things, like swearing, but wants to be credited on others? Maybe it's not just we should not misuse it, but on the same time use it when it should be used. In the name of the Lord there is so much, a song says there is freedom, love, acceptance... The list could go on forever. Plus God wants to be involved with us. He is the creator of everything, he made you and me. Is it impossible that he wants to hear a thank you from time to time? He had a lot of work in making this earth, so maybe he wants us to acknowledge what he did. Sure, he doesn't need it, but I don't need compliments either, but still you can make me happy with it. As we saw earlier, his name is more than powerful and so we should stop talking about coincidences or even fortune, because in the end it’s about God’s plan, it’s on his purpose. He should be given the credit for it.

Isn't this part of worship, giving honor to the one who deserves it?  I guess so. For a long time worship to me was just singing, or maybe playing an instrument, but there is much more behind that as I found out in a conversation some weeks ago. Maybe I’ll write about ist in another post, but I guess that we now have finished what I had to say about the third commandment.

Cheerio

Dear Society, screw you

Disclaimer: Society is for me a universal voice, but like a statistic, it isn't one person alone, but the mass of people in the world.

As I already said, I don't have a job, and as a person doing a gap year I should either be working, traveling or doing something useful. Well I obviously don't. So when it comes to meeting an old friend with whom I haven't caught up for a while and I get asked what I'm up to at the moment the situation gets difficult.

Usually I start with the fact that I graduated Highschool (in Switzerland you have to go to school for at least nine years. Going to Highschool and doing twelve years is an option; the other possibility is an on-the-job apprenticeship which is equally accepted). The fact that I graduated and that I am allowed to go to university is on the plus side.

Of course the other person is interested what I study. Taking a year off is ok, people nod in agreement when I say that. After that the worst comes. "So, what do you then? “ That's the moment when I awkwardly stare at my feet but answering is still inevitable. I start with saying that I worked a bit in summer and then I start mumbling about not having a job. People then get that look on their faces, pity mixed with something else, something that makes me feel bad for not being part of the well oiled machine that is society.

Sometimes I don't even know what's worse anymore. Is it the fact that I'm not satisfied with my own life, how I'm living it, or is it that I get those looks every time my friends and sometimes even strangers give me. 

That's not the only place where I and society do not get together. I already said in the post about my believes. I get a marked stupid as soon I say that for me it's obvious that there's a god. I get weird looks from some of my friends because I'm not into science, that I'm more of a philosophy and psychology person. You need to calculate chances to survive these days, but I don't want to, I want to be alive, not just working. I seem always to be a little odd, a little out of place, not very much, not that I'm an outcast, but just not quite right. 

It just seems that we all should be perfect pretty people, just following the same path everybody else already did, not trying, but succeeding in everything we lay our hands on. As if there was no other way of living than 'that one'.

So I decided to ignore what society tells me, and that I want to filter what kind of advice people around me give. They can help, but in the end, we all go through life on our own. I have to get up and look in the mirror, knowing all I'll do today is spending time writing and I'll for sure enjoy that, even though I don't get money from that. It's on me, not on them!