The day I decided looks wouldn’t cut it.
(I am so undecided about posting this particular blog here amongst you vicious piranhas. Done it twice and deleted it immediately. Oh well. Let’s see.)
I was about eleven years old. The local high school was having a beauty contest for kids and we were allowed in our age group. To this day I cannot remember what on earth made me do it. It is unlikely that I really thought anything about it other than that it was an adventure. I was still making bombs with my brother and setting fire to empty plots at that stage. Or playing with Cindy dolls. Yet, there I was, dressed in a red, white and blue frock, off to the beauty pageant. I dragged my best friend Sharon along too.
My dad spoke to me beforehand. He said: ‘I may be biased but I think you are the most beautiful girl in the world.’ Armed with these words I went, feeling positive after all, dad was still on his god-like pedestal in those days. If he said I was beautiful then I must be.
My gran had bought me the frock. A word I detest, but it really, honestly and truly was one. We all lined up off stage, after handing in our names and been given instructions. We were to walk out of the furthest wing, across the stage, to the front and then down the steps where we would wait and watch the others.
I did my thing, smiling cheerfully, walking in my best way. My mom was big on posture so I knew I had that right. Sharon joined me shortly after, flicking her usually blonde, but now green from the chlorine, hair happily.
We watched the other girls all pretty much as confident and yet awkward as us. Then on walked Samantha.
At eleven years old, that girl slinked. She tossed her hair and gave a very un-childlike swivel of her hips. She was in a gold dress. Her brown skin sort of glowing. Her hair all streaked from lots of days in the summer sun. I was milk-bottle white. I have a skin that has never and will never develop an adequate tan. She was 11, but she was sexy.
Samantha won. Of course she did.
That afternoon I sat at home and looked at myself in the mirror and decided, emphatically, that I was plain. I never once thought again that I was attractive or beautiful. Instead I got caught up in being thinner. Maybe that would make the difference. It didn’t, instead my mom threatened to put me in hospital if I didn’t start eating and stop weighing myself 15 20 times a day.
So I just got more and more heady. And weirder. The kid with the spiky hair and black clothes? That was me. The odd one. Somewhat extreme huh? I didn’t win. So what? It wasn’t even like I cared in the first place. I must have been kind of nuts back then even to have taken it the way I did.
I always knew my brain functioned so I took refuge in that.
I have very unusually blue eyes. I was about 18 before I even realized it. I also realize now that I am in fact attractive. It’s only been the past couple of years that I have been able to look at a photo of myself without wanting to destroy it. I have never, since that day, compared how I look with anyone else.
People tell me I am looking great. So I have chosen to just believe them. I can’t see it. Genuinely. I can post my pic up on blog now without feeling like some sort of troll. I have a close friend who I trust that tells me I look good on any given day. I know I dress well. I have good taste and I buy good clothes.
So, what happened? I didn’t suddenly get beautiful. I just became a lot more comfortable in my skin. This is who I am. This is what I look like. It’s called having a sense of self and some modicum of self-esteem. I still have off days. When I look in the mirror and don’t want to do the day. I still feel fat, so I need the scales to reassure me.
I had forgotten that stupid little beauty competition until I watched Little Miss Sunshine. What an impact it had on me though.
An agnostic alcoholic catholic….
I get quite a bit of flak for this Catholic thing. So I thought I would have a stab at explaining why it is not at conflict with me based on the way Alcoholics Anonymous works, and has been working for me for more than four years. AA is not allied with any religion, sect or denomination. It is based on spiritual principles. It always intrigues me that people can be so judgmental over a Church and teachings I get blah bah, sin in the week and confess on Sunday blah blah- hypocrites blah blah- People are the problem not the church. Which is why all churches are designed around forgiveness. Forgiveness has been integral to my recovery from alcoholism. I take nothing from the church that I cannot reconcile to what I have learned and experienced in AA. By the way, there are people who come to AA and after a while get judgmental about how there are people who are not perfect- We are a bunch of ex-drunks, how perfect can we be expected to be? So how is it that the Catholic Church could teach stuff in line with something that saves a bunch of drunks?
The twelve steps of AA are designed with one purpose in mind: they lead you to a spiritual awakening. Nothing more, nothing less. It’s a tried and tested formula. These are not easy steps. When you are a fucked up drunk, this process is quite damn hard.
Here are the twelve steps within my own context:
1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol–that our lives had become unmanageable. (so this was my life. Unmanageable. Emotionally anyway)
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. ( it took no great wisdom to accept that I could not get sober on my own, or even control my drinking. So, to start with my higher power was the fellowship of AA itself)
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him. (my understanding of God was limited at this time. God and higher power are easily substituted, so I just did what the group told me. AA works for all people, whether agnostic, atheist, hindu, jewish, muslim we do not proscribe any particular God.)
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. (I did this. It’s very similar to preparing for confession. It’s a list of resentments, which are then examined and the root cause found. For me the root cause was fear of some sort)
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. (tada confession in a nutshell. I didn’t do the first step five with a priest. I did it with another AA member. Those things left me as a result of confessing them. As in GONE. Another person had kept on liking me despite my shit. The burden of this stuff was gone. I laugh when people get all twitchy about the priest being able to see them. I don’t care. The freedom experienced when you do confess your defects/sins whatever is so freeing I could tell anyone and experience the same thing)
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character. (this stuff hurt me. I needed to ‘go forth and sin no more’. By the time I reached this step first time round, I had some vague and nebulous understanding of God as an imaginary friend. I don’t see this as being problematic. The Catholic teaching of sin is just another way for me to see the defects. However, if I use the word sin in an AA meeting I will be in trouble. We use the word ‘defects’)
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings. (easy huh? When you can see the stuff that hurts you, why not ask God to take it away? I find that if I don’t ask God, I get worse, not better. Will power fails me.)
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all. (this is difficult. I needed help. I had a lot of ex-lovers listed but my sponsor told me that my behavior towards them was done with their full knowledge we were consenting adults.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it. (this is a daily practice. A look over my day- what did I do that was not pleasant. Where was my selfishness or defects of character running rampant? Thank God for cellphones. I make a lot of last minute apologies via sms. It’s not so bad anymore, but I need to do the step every single day)
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out. (this means different things for different people. I know some folk who don’t pray, they only meditate. Me, I am a prayer. I like praying. My meditation takes the form of reading spiritual books like AA’s daily reflections or something.)
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs. (this is service. Vital in life.)
The key word in step 11 is SOUGHT. I am an agnostic. But if I am not seeking then I am being an idle bugger. Then I am waiting for God to step in and say ‘hello Miss Chasu, God here.’ What are the chances? I have to seek. I see no other purpose really.
