Low Self-Esteem: The Silent Killer

I have struggled with low self-esteem my whole life. I can't remember a time when it hasn't been an issue, nor can I lie and say that over time, it's gotten better. If anything, it's been a downward spiral ever since it set in. And anyone who is a fellow fighter with this invisible war within themselves will know that it can make for a very exhausting, lonely way of life. 

Maybe this post is to get it off my chest because it's made quite a blow this last week, or maybe it's to let someone reading this post know that they're not alone in feeling this way but I have to put a disclaimer out there and say that while my posts aim to be inspirational and happy, sometimes they're not because my life is a huge spectrum of highs and lows and I try to share them both in equal measure. Unfortunately, what I am about to share doesn't have a happy ending, it is something that's lived with me since the beginning of time and something that I fear will live with me until I am put to rest in my grave. 

I always have been as introverted as I am now, shy and quiet and unnaturally reserved. But since the age I could read, I have always preferred the company of pages to the company of human beings. I can't tell you if that's why I was a quiet, reserved child, or if books became my escape because I couldn't handle human interaction, but for as long as I can remember, I have craved solitude. 

And yet. 

And yet, school was always good and I loved attending. Popularity never was a thing at those tender ages so despite being quiet, shy and awkward, I had a good group of friends and my academic performance meant that I was nearly always top of my class. 

Secondary school, ironically, were the best years of my life (the awkward teen years of 11-16 weren't as awkward for me as one would expect), more so because I attended an all-girls school. It wasn't a catty, toxic environment and while we had our little cliques, we were also a family unit. I was popular, well-liked and had a strong group of friends; I never felt the need to change myself to fit in. It was also a faith school so we spent our days in religious attire with our hair covered up; the school uniform policy meant that I didn't feel the pressure to dress like this, or do my hair like that and wearing make up was a concept exclusive to adults working adult jobs. 

Peer pressure wasn't a thing; this was the era of Samsung flip-up phones and iPhone 2G (yes, we were still living in those days) so we were barely scraping the surface of social media platforms and the digital age. The level of pressure from society to look or dress a certain way was barely noticeable because we were blissfully boxed away from it. We were just a bunch of awkward, goofy teens messing around, giving teachers hell and having fun, and with whom I made a place in which I belonged.

Outside of school though, I was still going through my "awkward" phase. Or extra-awkward in my case. Family gatherings were excruciatingly painful. There's a huge age gap between my cousins and I so during the teenage years, I was left out of conversations because I was too young to contribute. I was left hanging at the edges just listening in. Stories of university and working life, or topics that I was too young to understand meant that I would spend family events barely saying a word. I was the wallflower, the forgotten family member, the cousin who was easy to bypass in greetings because it didn't matter whether or not I was there.

It made me feel invisible.

It made me feel inadequate. 

It made me feel like my voice doesn't count for anything.

I still feel that way today.

I remember when I was thirteen, I made the conscious decision to wear the hijab. I never got racist or hateful comments from strangers on the street but I did get mocking comments from family members. I took it off. And I like to think that ten years later, twenty three year old me would be strong where thirteen year old me wasn't. But I'm not so sure I would be. 

That's when it hit me that maybe the way I look or dress does matter. That's when it started to matter to me what people thought and said. It heightened my feelings of self-consciousness which were always there, lurking in the background whispering from time to time, but it was around that time that they truly surfaced. Outside of school, my insecurities were starting to build.

They reached their peak when I moved on to college. Only two of my close friends from high school came with me and even then, we rarely saw each other. I was suddenly in unfamiliar territory. I was thrown into an environment where I was no longer surrounded by just girls with whom I shared a common ground. I was no longer bound by the rules of school uniform. I no longer had friends I was comfortable with. My social anxiety rocketed to unhealthy levels. I found it difficult on a social level to "fit in". 

I was hyper-aware that the clothes I pulled out from the back of my wardrobe weren't good enough, hyper-aware that the face looking back at me from the mirror wasn't pretty enough, hyper-aware that my hair wasn't styled with Vogue-like perfection. 

My self-esteem plummetted. 

My academic performance took a tumultuous hit. 

I no longer felt worthy enough.

I hated the way I looked. I hated having photos taken. I hated my smile because my teeth weren't straight. And I couldn't get the thought out of my head that people also hated those things about me.

It came to a point where I couldn't eat in public because I was afraid people would judge me for the way I eat. Which sounds stupid, I know. Believe me, I know. But it's a crippling thought that haunts me to this very day. I still struggle with eating in public places.

Someone made a comment about how my voice sounds. A throwaway comment, but God did it hurt. I have never recorded my voice nor heard it back on past recordings since. When I talk to people, even today, I wonder how it's sounding, the thought like needle points on nerve-endings. I have an irrational fear of how anyone will want to spend the rest of their life with me when they have to hear that voice for as long as they live.

Walking by myself in public became insanely difficult. I had this sense that the eyes of everyone in my vicinity were trained on my back like watchful daggers, accusing, critical, judging, nit-picking..taking out the flaws in my clothes and hair and the way I walk. I still can't walk alone in town or up a street without my throat constricting with that self-conscious panic. I struggle to breathe and I have to count my breaths, in through the nose and out through the mouth, to regain some sense of clarity and control.

I couldn't take a compliment. They almost felt mocking or sarcastic, or comments made out of pity. I still don't believe compliments that come my way today.

I felt raw, exposed in a way that I hadn't felt before. I was vulnerable in ways that were almost painful. And when someone tells a seventeen girl that they're beautiful at the height of suffocating low self-worth, they'll believe it. I did. I was searching high and low for validation, for some sort of approval from society that I was good enough...I was clutching at straws to keep me from falling off and when I caught sight of one, I latched on and held tight. It triggered a horrible couple of years that followed, a toxic, poisonous time period in which I was draining some sense of self-worth from an unworthy vessel. It left me feeling empty and more worthless than ever before. It was a downward spiral I couldn't escape.

My falling grades meant that I'd lost respect from my family, a respect I'd earned at sixteen and quickly lost. It's shallow and twisted, but it's the way in which my world works. It intensified my feeling of worthlessness, compounded my low self-esteem and nailed it hard into the ground six feet under.

I'm now twenty three, those years long behind me but my low self worth is still very much with me.

I no longer hate the way I look; I had private dental treatment to fix my teeth, I manage to get my hair to co-operate five days out of seven (and on the other two days, I can find it in me to not give a shit) and I've stopped comparing myself to impossibly beautiful women because society's standards of beauty will always, always mean that I'm not pretty enough. I don't aspire to such superficial definitions of beauty. I'll upload my selfies on social media and although my flaws register in my mind, I am also aware that those flaws make me human.

No, my sense self-loathing runs much deeper. It is the idea that I am not good enough and by that, I mean me - me, myself and I - the little things that make me me are not good enough. All the ways in which I am not good enough for certain people makes me feel like I am not good enough for myself. It makes me feel unbearably inadequate. 

Believe me, I remind myself of my inadequacies time and time again, my personal failures grating against me enough to make me want to crawl out of my own skin. It is a corrosive beast. It is ingrained in the back of my mind. I run myself over with a toothcomb more times than I can count, totting up all the ways in which I am not good enough or my life is simply not enough until it drums itself against my skull incessantly. 

I don't value the person that I am. 

Nor am I convinced by her.

And I don't need the rest of the world to remind me too.

I have had enough comments along the way to justify why I see myself in such a negative light. I can't not care about the things people say though what's truly ironic is that those who triggered it and made sure the bullet remained embedded in my skin for all time to come are the ones who wonder why I suffer from low self-esteem. Let me tell you this - it is impossible to break out of  the chains that other people have shackled you in.

They have made me feel like I am not good enough enough times that I believe it. 

And I wonder if low self-esteem is something that fades with time, or if you just get better at hiding it.

I wonder if I'll look back in five, ten years time and write a post on how I did break out of it. If I'll ever reach a place where I can stop counting all the ways in which I'm not good enough and start finding the ways in which I am, if one day I can tell myself that "I am enough" and surround myself with people who see that too. 

Or if I'll still be fighting myself, hating the ways in which I feel like I have failed, hating the ways in which I don't feel like a worthy individual. If I will still be wondering how phrases such as "don't care about what other people say" and "you're smart and beautiful, you have no reason to have low self-esteem" mean absolutely nothing because they are mere words, they are just words, and yet when someone makes a seemingly harmless comment that hits you right at the core, it destroys you just that little bit more.