I once read a poem by Fatima Shaikh and it broke my heart, it goes,
“She committed suicide, not by cutting her wrist, or dived to drown, or by hanging her self. But she killed her inner being, her heart, her soul, her dreams, her passion, her desire, because all she wanted was to kill her… but now she is living with more pain than what death causes. So here she is a breathing dead.” The truth is, we don’t need bullshit posts on how to be happy or how to have a great life and how to be confident because the agonizing reality is that the only thing keeping you from feeling or being your best self is YOU. We all do it to ourselves, we all get caught up in our own heads and concoct these ideals of who we are based on our perception of other peoples’ opinions of who we should be; the moment you start comparing yourself to another person, you are already a step closer to falling down the rabbit hole of self-pity, victimization, and the inevitable consequence of antelophobia. Etymologically, antelophobia is the fear of being imperfect. Imagine everything you want in life; all your dreams are anthropomorphised and standing before you in a line but the only thing between you and reaching them is your reflection screaming and echoing your own darkest thoughts of your lack of self-worth. It isn’t touching you, it isn’t pushing you back, it’s just there telling you everything you think about yourself. What do you do? Is this not what we do to ourselves every day? As I analyse Fatima’s poem I’m able to grasp the deeper story within, no, she isn’t Gothic, no, she isn’t literally suicidal, and no, she didn’t mean to ‘kill’ her inner being. Fatima in this poem is crying out for help, all she wanted was to silence the voice in her head, or as I personified it, her reflection that stood before her. So how do we silence that voice? Honestly, I’ve never silenced my inner demons. You have a choice to either let it consume you or you can channel that pain and doubt into motivation, determination and perseverance. You can be crushed by your fears or crush the world with your fears. As a child I struggled with my self-esteem and confidence, I’d be in a room and feel invisible, all this unexplainable anxiety would arise suddenly as I am approached, and I had no idea how to deal with that. For a long time, I distanced myself from others in an effort to shield myself because I genuinely believed I wasn’t worthy, sometimes that was the voice in my head or the voice of others around me constantly reminding me what I already knew. As I grew older I learnt to deal with that on my own through daily positive affirmations; On my work board and walls all around my room I made notes telling myself, “you are good enough, you are beautiful, the gospel proverb- you can do all things, do not let your voice be silenced, I’m proud of you etc.” Eventually my confidence grew; you were able to feel my aura as I walked into a room. But, that didn’t happen over-night. The expectations I had for myself needed to be altered, you have to realize that you can’t be someone who has it all instantly; additionally, I had to stop allowing others’ expectations of what I should be from suffocating me. It all begins with self-examination, growth and awareness; when you know who you are and what you want, there’s nothing that can shake that, but if you don’t prioritize the expectations of what you want now vs what you want in the future you will become easily flustered, you will take on more than you can handle and ultimately self-destruct. Learn to break things up into small tasks and reward yourself as you glide through the timeline of accomplishing your goals. Life is like a ladder, you have to take it one step at a time because if you try to skip steps you may slip and fall to the ground. I learnt to celebrate little accomplishments as much as I celebrated the big ones and in doing so I raised my confidence. We all feel good and happy when we win, we’re all proud of ourselves, use that to further provoke you and thrust you towards bigger and greater things. There are times, however, where you’re not always going to win or succeed instantly; you have to learn how to take a loss like a champ, analyse why you lost, what you could’ve done better and then get back up and try again! Don’t let your losses defeat you. The moment you hold on to it or let it get to your head you will spiral out of control again. You have to condition yourself to look judgement and failure in the eyes and say that you are not giving up and you are going to try again. Conditioning is more than simply how you think but it’s learning how to react and feel when bad things happen. You have to condition yourself to be emotionally intelligent; find a safe space and let it out, but don’t act on your emotions until you are calm and of a sound mind. What really helped me was documenting my trials and frustrations in a journal, it allowed me to get personal with my feelings and be vulnerable without the fear of disclosure. Lastly, you have to accept that antelophobia is not a problem. There is nothing wrong with you because of it. The truth is, trying to silence it or fix yourself is only going to feed and magnify that voice because you are now cognizant that it is a problem. The moment you stop envisioning it as an obstacle but rather yourself crying out for help, or love, or support,- is only then will you defeat that voice.
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AuthorKarina Samaroo Archives
September 2019
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