Self-Hate and Memory Armor

I hate to admit, I've not done a good job of loving myself.

I have, in fact, hated myself quite deeply. This fact has been hidden from me for much of my life. I didn't even know I hated myself. If someone had asked me, 'how do you feel about yourself?', I probably would have told them that I thought I was alright, that I liked myself, et cetera. Part of me does like myself.

Yet I behave in so many ways, and I experience so many emotions, that would only be possible if I had a profoundly negative view of myself. Breakups and rejection, for example, have always been devastating for me. Even when I am the one doing the breaking or rejecting, I'm still devastated.

Why? Why is this?

Because, as it turns out, I have been living a story in which I am unlovable, in which I am broken and in which someone won't be able to love me in spite of my ticks and inconsistencies.

For if I were living a story in which I was lovable, in which I had a good chance of ending up in a satisfying love affair, then one botched six month relationship or a polite rejection from a friend of a friend wouldn't touch my heart so deeply. Yet those experiences not only touched my heart, they went to its core, they echoed with a personal truth that rang so loudly it lapsed into silence.

These silent narratives, these thoughts that I silently think, have led me to govern myself hatefully.

I've often reflected on the way I treat my friends and family, the compassion I love to show not only to them but to strangers or whoever. Yet I deny this compassion to myself.

On occasion I imagine myself holding myself in my mind's eye. I see the child that I've always been, I see myself being small, being held by myself. I deserve the compassion that I give. Why don't I receive it? Why don't I take it for myself?

When I was seeing my therapist I used to talk to him about the deep sensitivity and fragility that has always followed me. My inner life has always been intense. I've always churned deeply.

Tears have always come to me.

Ohhhhh how embarrassing it was for me. Other kids didn't seem to be overwhelmed by tears the way I was. I recall one kid from preschool, Timmy the crybaby, they called him, who cried quite a lot. Thank god I never acquired such a nick name. Yet I remember feeling relieved that it was him who had received the spotlight for his sensitivity. I was fast. I was other things. Those things could be accentuated and my fragility downplayed.

My fragility was also a point of tension in my family. My sister is not like me. She doesn't succumb to her feelings in the same way I do. They break me. She endures them with greater ease.

I often see myself as tearing at myself from within. I don't think she does.

My fragility hurt me in my love life. I was incapable of expressing myself to my most long-term companion. I was deeply hurt by conflicting desires. I behaved in conflicting ways, and I know I hurt her.

Yet it remains an issue for me that it doesn't remain for them.

For now what I am dealing with is not merely the fragility that is still a part of me, but the scars that have been left by my emotional pains.

To be more precise, lets not call them scars, lets call it armor. Memory armor.

I have been reflecting on memory both generally and in particular (thanks, Bergson).

Memory, in general, is something that accumulates and eventually provides us with habits, biases, and heuristics that we use to navigate the world. I have walked down Broadway in Capitol Hill hundreds of times, and I no longer need to look very carefully about where I am going. I have pulled thousands of shots of espresso and made thousands of lattes, and can now do those things habitually, probably with my eyes closed.

The essential point about memory is this: they unconsciously coalesce into general conclusions and habits that govern our behavior and constrict our perception. Memory eases the burden of seeing by substituting past instances of experience for observation in the present.

Do you look carefully at every tree you pass? Do you look closely at every barista you deal with? Of course not, you fucker, you know damn well what a tree is and what a barista is. You don't need to look at these things because, practically, memory can sufficiently supplant perception.

But what if some of our memories have led us to the wrong conclusions about the thing we are dealing with? What if our past experiences have been incorrectly generalized and we are now incapable of observing the thing in front of us? What if memory has us convinced that we are A when we are actually B?

My memories, I am implying, have provided me with the general conclusion that I am a fragile person, destined to be hurt and run over by the world, never to love or be loved.

How dare I extrapolate such self-hate from my memories! How can one be so hostile and unforgiving of oneself?! What kind of person thinks of oneself in such perverse and distorted ways?

Many of us, I suspect.

But this makes sense in a way. It is armor, protection against the pains of the future.

Love hurt me. Love hurt me deeply. I loved someone so much that I was incapable of disconnecting from them. I couldn't be without them, yet part of me knew I had to be. I tried to pull away, and was always pulled back.

I was not a consistent person then, I am not a consistent person now.

So I took that pain, that experience of love, and I said to myself: 'This reveals your deepest contradictions. This shows you how powerless you are against your own emotions. There is something deeply, deeply wrong here.'

What a lesson to unconsciously learn! Ha!

I took those experiences, I took those memories, and I layered myself in them. I let them harden under years of solitude and smoke. I fought my loneliness as my mentors prescribed. I took my memories and I used them as a blue print for a suit of armor. I guarded myself against those pains.

I recently had an experience where I took that armor off. There are no actual wounds there. I am not a jagged and broken thing.

I am a sensitive human, with an inner life of great intensity, and I will continue to be hurt by the world. I will continue to wear these emotions on my young face and I will continue to hear my voice break and my lips quiver under their weight. I will continue to relish my sobs and my frowns.

But I don't want to be afraid, and I don't want to wear these painful memories like a suit of armor.

I won't allow my anger to step up and supplant my sensitivity.

I have to learn to bear this intensity.

The alternative is hiding. The alternative is a wall of anger. The alternative is putting on a suit of armor built of memory. The alternative is self-hate.

For this intensity will not go away. It will merely swell behind the walls I create until it finds a chink in my armor.