With myself, I am brutal. After nearly a week of this weather, I couldn’t stand myself. “What the hell is the matter with you,” I’d think when I looked in the bathroom mirror, or at my planner, or at my house, or at the bathroomscale. “Pull it together!”
I was about two centimeters away from my bathroom mirror, surveying my flaws, picking at flaking skin and clogged pores, when I heard a little voice say, Why are you picking on me?
I remembered someone who told me that after her divorce, a friend made her pack herself a thermos of hot soup for work, everyday. She said that everytime she open that thermos of steaming, homemade soup, she knew that someone really cared about her: herself.
I had to stop & think about what that would mean. Like most people, I sometimes confuse self-kindness with self-indulgence. Eat the rest of the ice cream. You deserve it. Don’t do your work today. You need a rest. Have another drink. You’ve been so stressed. But that line of thinking is just a crooked path back to self-abuse. Like the “honeymoon” side of the wife-beater. It always smacks you down in the end.
I looked in the bathroommirrorand tried to soften my focus. I needed a shower. I would start there, and deal later with the question of whether or not I had something nice or even clean to wear, after a week of neglecting the laundry. As I stepped into the tub, I again thought about that thermos of soup. Homemade, not from a can. I thought about how I would treat one of my own precious little boys after a hard week.
I pulled back. I was picking on myself. Like the worst schoolyard bully. Sun or no sun, I had to stop being mean, and be better to me.
