Summer has arrived and the
Redefining Disability Awareness Challenge
continues on.
Last time I wrote about my own life with technology:
When It Rains It Pours
This week I get personal, I guess.
***
Q: Are there ways that disability affects your self perception?
A: How do I perceive myself?
Good question.
🙂
Disability definitely influences how I see myself. How could it not?
That’s the key word: “see”. How I see myself when I can not even see myself in a mirror.
I actually wrote a post about this topic last year:
Mirror Image,
where I wrote about how I see myself and the social norms of makeup, beauty, and fashion and my attempts to discover my own norms.
I held my grade eight graduation picture in my hands and stared at my face. I knew that a picture was simply a flat representation of what I was, that I was more than some one-dimensional image in a frame. I couldn’t quite believe that was what I looked like, photographed like though.
I could make out my broad smile and my relatively short haircut that framed my face.
I don’t know why, but I used to silently study the photo, often in my room. I don’t know what I was looking for exactly.
Perhaps I was simply vane.
Okay, maybe not, but I can’t quite describe what I was trying to accomplish by this act.
I remember snippets of what I look like. I have flashes, in my mind, to what I used to see when I would look in the mirror.
Mostly I did not see enough detail to pick myself apart, as so many women do. I saw my face and hair and shoulders in the reflective surface, in a bathroom somewhere, and I did not shy away at the Me looking back.
Women rip apart their physical selves so often and I am not immune to that, not entirely. I wish I were.
Merriam-Webster defines it as: “the idea you have about the kind of person you are”.
I know, logically and in my own heart, that I am a kind, generous, and friendly person. I know I am fun and can be funny from time to time.
Perceptions, however, they aren’t quite so logical I’m afraid. I wish they were because they are able to play tricks on me. These perceptions slip in and, before I know it, I am thinking things about myself that likely are just plain untruths.
Like my exaggerated perception that makeup would make me look like a clown, other strange and incorrect perceptions plague my thoughts.
Both self perception and self esteem are so intermingled. They involve the senses, mostly seeing for people. I go by my other senses to gage ideas about my own body and how I present my best self to the world.
I trace the shape of my nose, my eyebrows, and my skin to look for acne, of which I am happy to be rid of for the most part. The skin that was once covered in bumps as a teenager is mostly smooth now.
I am left with other worries that have replaced the pimples of my youth. I wish I had less of one feature and more of another.
I hate having frizzy hair or rough nails.
How does my face compare to all those of the women who are populating the rest of the world, makeup included?
I could focus on my imperfections all day and it’s not like the mirror is going to help with that or hurt it. The scale would talk to me if I wanted it to, but the only mirror that ever spoke to me was the toy Beauty and the Beast mirror I once had.
Sometimes I think the two cancel each other out somehow, that I should be okay then, but the nagging self-image exaggerations bleed into the good personality traits I know I possess.
The negative brings down any positives I’ve managed to accumulate.
I’m left with doubts that anyone could stand the sight of me, the part they can see and I can not.
I feel my beating heart inside my chest, under my hand, and I know that the good person I am inside is in tact.
If only I could convince myself that I am normal in my outward appearance.
If I could stop the shame that has built up over years then maybe I could be sure my first impressions, of which I am at a constant disadvantage to other people who see. When I meet someone I am strongly aware of the upper hand they have over me, as I try to show what a confident person I am and learn as much as I can about them, other than the exterior things most of us fall back on.
Sometimes I feel I am invisible and the next second I am terrified of how much I stand out.
I don’t know where this all might lead me going forward. My future is as uncertain as anyone’s, but will any of this get easier with age and general wisdom?
I can only hope so, but the perceptions will always exist. What’s a girl to do?
***
May I make a suggestion?
Follow:
The Redefining Disability Awareness Project on Facebook,
to help our little page grow.
🙂
Next week’s question:
Do you see disability as more of an asset or a drawback in your daily life?
Guess we’ll see how I’m feeling in a week.
🙂
Sometimes it depends on the day and my answer may change a dozen times between now and then.
Her Headache 