UGLINESS… CAN YOU DEAL WITH IT?
I talked to the driver of the community van. I asked if it was okay with him that I wanted to go shopping tomorrow because I was low on groceries. And I said my only concern wasn’t whether I can get in and out of the van but that I do look like a Frankenstein monster… my face, the visible parts of me. I didn’t know if it would be okay with him because I thought I would look scary to the other old people in the van. He said it didn’t bother him. I said yes but…
I realized where my question came from… from some 50 years ago…
In Hungary in the subway, at the endpoints of the escalator, there is a sign that says, “If you suffer from an ugly skin disease, please do not take the escalator.” I always heard that it was talking to me, that I should not take the escalator.
I never had anything wrong with my face but I heard that I’m disgusting and I make people want to throw up.
Why? I don’t know but when I was three and a half, and my mother called me a whore I was like a three and a half! What’s wrong with a 3 1/2 ? In a 3 1/2 year old’s world, the word “dirty” is the word that expresses that for me. No one ever told me I was a bad girl, so I was dirty. Not to mention the fact I’m Jewish and was called “dirty Jew.” 1
My ultimate flaw, in my mind, the word, is dirty… but dirty is outside.
But if you really look, you can be ugly inside. You can have an experience that it is visible, that it has, somehow, transferred to your outside and that’s unbearable… because we all have thoughts that are ugly (some more than others), intentions, impulses, cravings, sexual, anger or any other impulses, like greed. Everybody. No exceptions.
I’m reading book, a series of sci-fi books where the main character has ESP–he can read minds. He experiences being a pariah, like somebody with leprosy. People don’t want to be close to him because they don’t want their minds read. Because they know they are ugly inside. Without making too big a leap, obviously I experienced ugliness inside. Because when I looked in the mirror years ago, there was nothing wrong with me and yet that subway sign about having the disgusting skin disease applied to me, at least in my world. Today when I remembered this, I started to sob.
This was very significant and interesting. I hadn’t remembered this piece about myself. But I have been noticing more and more to what degree people hate themselves. and to what degree people are trying to cover up their inner pimples.
One of the things that I do is bring it out into the open. They call that “being authentic about your inauthenticity”–at least that’s how Werner Erhard says it in his video. I am trying to live like that so that I don’t have see that escalator sign and suddenly not take the escalator… or stay inside… or not go shopping.
The story of ugly the cat is here –> https://mavensophie.com/story-of-ugly-the-cat/ on my other site.
- remember that all emotions are marker feelings… for you it is the word bad, or the word wrong triggers the same devastating feeling as dirty triggers for me… cultural difference only
