Broken Value

 

I was speaking with someone recently who, at one point in our conversation, just flat out asked me, “do you feel that you have worth the way you are right now?”

My answer was, “no.” I said it easily, with no hesitation; almost nonchalantly, even. Me? Have worth? Of course not? I thought it went without saying…

I have been thinking a lot about why that answer came so easily to me, virtually automatically. My first thought was, “well, just look at me! I’m fat and overweight! Being fat and overweight makes you worth less, i.e., “worthless,” than thin/skinny people because fat is ugly; in other words, being fat means being ugly and no one wants to be either (we all know it, even if we don’t have the courage to admit it!).

I’ve held these beliefs about being fat and worthless my whole life, it would seem. And on the surface, that would be enough to explain why I have felt worthless my whole life, because I’ve been fat my whole life.

But that’s just the surface. Something else has been there my whole life too, but deep; much, much deeper than even I was able to see. It was a feeling, a belief, a profound knowledge that has evaded being known or seen. It’s like an indescribable leviathan, living so deep in the ocean that it’s never been seen, but every so often, evidenced of its existence emerges. It remains unseen, but deeply sensed. And it is just always there. Relentless, tireless, watchful and aware of all that goes on above it. It never sleeps. It never stops. This thing that is powerful enough to move the currents of my life, my behaviors and actions, and yet, stealthy enough to remain “unknown.”

It’s a treacherous journey to dive so deep, but dive I must. This is my journey, to know myself, to know who I am, and what moves me, to know what makes me the way I am. To know what makes me such a problem.

And there it was – the thing that didn’t want to be seen or known, but that I had to enter the dark places of my mind and heart to find. 

I am a problem.

Not just that I have problems, but that I AM a problem. In my mind there is no difference between having problems and being a problem – it is one and the same: If I have a problem, then I AM a problem.

“But why?” I continued to ask myself. My logical brain knows that having a problem and being a problem are not the same thing. “Then why do I see myself as such a problem?”

The answer is equally simple, yet as deeply profound: “Because I am broken.”

It’s hard for me to move past that sentence. It’s hard because it’s true. I believe I am broken. My heart has been broken, my spirit has been broken, my body has been broken, even my mind, in many ways, has been broken. It is a fact that I almost died at birth (asphyxiation in the womb). It’s a fact that I was molested. It is a fact that I felt neglected, judged, and criticized at a very young age. It is a fact that I gained weight, which resulted in being teased, hazed, rejected, ignored, and minimized – for years. I was traumatized in so many ways and those multiple, repeated traumas broke me.

I have felt broken from birth. Everything in my life that happened after, seemed to confirm that I was broken and that I didn’t deserve to be any other way.

You know what else is a fact? That when something in this world is broken, it becomes worthless. We throw it away, because when something is broken it is no longer useful and no longer has value.

The equation I have in my mind is that all the things I am – such as a problem, broken, fat/ugly, etc., equals being worthless.

It’s why I could answer that question so easily and so quickly. 

And it’s why I have such a hard time changing. I tend to resist change because I haven’t found a reason or an argument that is stronger than “broken = worthless.”

I tend to self-sabotage, whether relationships, diet/exercise plans, work, etc. because deep down, I never feel like I’m worth it.

As an example, here’s a loop I often find myself caught in: I want to lose weight in order to feel like I have worth (i.e., when I lose weight, then I’ll be worth something), so I embark on a fat loss/fitness journey, only to very quickly derail my efforts, because as soon as dieting/exercise gets hard (and it’s always hard!), then I give up, or sabotage my effort, because – deep down – I’m not worth it anyway. But then I desperately want to have worth, so I desperately want to lose weight and the cycle continues. 

I get angry when I see how easy health and fitness is for some people. I get angry that they can diet down for a few weeks and look great. I get angry that there are men who are already genetically prone to good health and fitness and pursue that lifestyle, then get on Instagram and give advice, like, “hey, you just gotta eat less and move more and if I can you do it, so can you,” when they’re clearly genetically gifted, and/or already prone to being healthy and active. As my last trainer kept telling me, “it’s just a choice you decide to make.” I hate how simple that makes it sound. I hate it because he’s not wrong, but there are so many other factors, the biggest one being, “do you think you’re worth it?”

Even when some of my previous trainers have been supportive and said, “I believe in you,” I still sabotaged the diet or exercise plan they gave me as a way of saying, “see, I told you I was broken and that you couldn’t help me.” Doing that helps me live in the safety of being right, but also keeps me in the misery of being broken. They all make it sound so easy, or so simple, because it seems to be that way for them. 

And that’s what really gets my goat! These “fitness gurus” all seem to have an inherent sense of their self-worth. They don’t doubt themselves. They don’t stay awake at night wondering if they’re worth it. They seem to be born with confidence. They seem to be born just knowing that they have worth, and yes, that makes me angry. It makes me angry that I’m not like them. It makes me angry that they are allowed to have confidence in themselves because they’ve never had anything happen to them that made them feel small, weak, …or broken. I hate that they aren’t broken, but that I am.

Dieting, health, fitness, relationships, etc., are all so much harder when you feel worthless.

All of which, brings me to the million dollar question: “Can that be changed?”

On second thought, maybe that’s not the million dollar question, because for most of my life, the answer has been a resounding “no!”

I guess the question I need to ask myself here is, “can something that is broken also still have worth?”

It might be true that in this world we devalue things that are broken. We esteem them as worthless and only good for being tossed out. But while this rule may hold true for “things,” maybe there is a different rule for people, because people are not things.

It seems to be quite a paradox to me – to live in a world that is in a constant state of change and decay – entropy, we call it. And yet, this constantly breaking down world is full of people who are full of worth, no matter how much they break down.

I do believe we are eternal beings. I do believe we are the spirit children of God, and maybe, as a child of God, I just need to embrace the paradox that people are full of worth, no matter how they are broken. Maybe it’s why the scripture in Doctrine and Covenants [D&C 18:10] says, “the worth of souls is great in the sight of God,” and not, “the worth of things…”.

Other paradoxes might be – yes, I have a body, but my body is not ALL of who I am; yes, I’m fat, but being fat is not ALL of who I am – it may be a condition I’m in, but it’s not WHO I AM; yes, I have problems, but that doesn’t mean that I AM a problem, because my problems are not who I am; yes, I have been broken – repeatedly, but being broken is what’s happened TO ME, it’s not WHO I AM. 

Maybe the hardest paradox to accept is: I can be broken and still have value.

Can I accept that? I think so.

I think about all the people I’ve known, especially those who “have been through what I’ve been through,” and I ask myself, “do I see them as having less value because they are broken?” Truthfully, I do not! In fact, maybe even the opposite. I see those people as having a great deal of value because they are broken. To my way of thinking they are people who need even more love and compassion and friendship and I would never deny them that simply because they are broken. The real question is, can I see myself that way? Can I offer myself that same compassion? Can I see myself as someone who is broken, and yet, still full of worth?

I think have to.

I mean, I think that is the challenge for me – now that I have had this realization, what will I do with it? Okay, maybe this inherent sense of self-worth is not something I was born with (or maybe I was and life beat it out of me!), BUT that doesn’t mean it can’t be learned, right?

There’s another paradox about this world we live in: that even despite the inevitable entropy, this life was meant for growth. And growth can only come from resistance. Maybe I don’t automatically think that I have worth, but I can practice resisting that thought and practice growing new thoughts where I DO have worth, even with having been broken. It seems like that process is really what this world was meant for – to use resistance to grow.

And maybe, just maybe, instead of despairing over how broken I am, for the first time in my life I can feel grateful for being broken, because, in yet another paradoxical way, being broken is how I’ll find my value.

Aftershocks

Sometime in 1984 or 1985, there was an earthquake in Salt Lake City, UT, a city that happens to lie on a major fault line. I would have been 6 or 7 at the time. I don’t remember the earthquake at all – it happened while I was sleeping. Here’s what I do remember.

My eyes opened slowly to a blurry world of darkness and light. My vision cleared just in time to see my mother with a blanket in her hands, spread out in front of her. She was coming down the stairs to the basement bedroom that I and my two older sisters were sleeping in. She was coming down so fast that the blanket flew out to her sides and she looked like a bird, with wings spread, descending to its nest. She wrapped me up in her blanket wings and carried me - and subsequently, my sisters – upstairs to my parent’s bedroom.

Once all of us kids were safely deposited to my parents bed, my dad came in and moved the bed away from being directly under a support beam, in case it came crashing down on top of us during the aftershocks. He went back to the kitchen to listen to the radio for updates.

I was scared, but I didn’t know why. “The earthquake is over, but there may be aftershocks,” I was told. I didn’t know what an earthquake was; I had slept right through it after all. But we waited for aftershocks and I didn’t know what those were either. I was scared because everyone else was scared. I was afraid of not knowing what was happening to us or not knowing what was going to happen to us. So we waited for the aftershocks.

Flash forward to today and the fear of aftershocks has come back to me, though not in a way I would have expected.

In my life, trauma has been like a massive earthquake; it shook up everything in my life and rattled me to my core. I felt powerless, weak and useless. It arrived unexpectedly and overwhelmed everything going on inside me. The actual events were brief, yet their impact would affect me for decades, because of aftershocks. And there were aftershocks. Emotional upheavals that weren’t as intense as full on trauma, but felt just as powerful, just as threatening and left me feeling just as helpless.

My aftershocks come in many forms: fear of not being good enough; fear of being inherently “wrong” or worthless; fear of being a failure and/or a disappointment; being ridiculed, pointed at, laughed at, or singled out in some way; fear of loneliness; fear of being weak and powerless; and so on.

When I feel these aftershocks, I do what anyone should do in an earthquake - I hide, I cover (or mask) and retreat. Only my hiding/covering/retreating includes isolating myself, binging on junk food, fantasizing about perfection/control over my body and my life, watching movies/tv to escape and so forth. 

But this is where my analogy differs because aftershocks – the inner/emotional aftershocks I’m talking about – aren’t really real. I mean, they are real in the sense that they feel real, and create an emotional/behavioral response, but they aren’t real because these emotional aftershocks are not the actual trauma itself. They are phantom traumas – they exist, but have no substance. They are reflections of traumas that ripple through my soul, becoming real, only because I expect them; I wait for them; I fearfully anticipate them…

I felt another aftershock recently during a workout. I was attempting to do a kettle bell down and up, which I’ve done before, but this time, I was flooded with fear. I couldn’t recall all the steps, for some reason. And even when I did, nothing felt right. My arms were giving out. I wasn’t able to lower or lift my core without some pain in my lower back. I couldn’t control my descent and felt like a sack of blubber, crashing into the ground.

And then the “aftershocks” began vibrating through me: “You’re weak. You’re not even strong enough to support your own bodyweight. You’re pathetic and never going to get this. You’re never going to make progress and you’re going to stay fat, weak and stupid your whole life. What made you think you could do this? What made you think you could get better at this? You’re only getting worse. You were able to do this with a 14 kilo kettle bell and now you have to go back to un-weighted? What a loser.”

I wanted to leave. I want to run away and say, “this is such bullsh*t.” I wanted to drive to the nearest fast food place and shove as much crap down my throat as I could stand. I wanted to cry. I wanted someone to hold me and say, “I’m sorry this is hard for you right now, but it’s going to be okay; you’re going to be okay.”

But I stayed and finished my workout. I went home and ate healthy food. Not because I wanted to, but because I recognized the aftershocks. I saw the phantoms rearing their ethereal heads again, only this time I knew they weren’t real. I knew that they would stay as long as I continued to believe in them and right now, it’s the hardest thing in the world not to believe in them. Aftershocks can be like that. They can keep coming and bringing a host of fears and doubts with them, but it is my belief that if I can see them for what they are then I can accept them for what they are, and I can gradually minimize their impact on my life. I can brace for them, or I can embrace them.

Counter-intuitive though it may seem, embracing aftershocks (accepting that they appear as remnants of trauma) helps me to dissolve them, because it means I can see them for what they are – fears of uncertainty, or fear of things that only “might” be true. I get to decide what’s real for me. Maybe I am weak, but that doesn’t mean I always will be. Maybe I am just a big loser, but somehow, I’m still here and I have to think that that makes me a winner on some level.

What I have learned is that I’m not worthless; because no one is worthless. I have worth, because we all have worth. Our worth cannot be changed and it cannot be diminished in any way. Not even by “earthquake” trauma and certainly not by aftershocks. Even though I still deal with aftershocks, I know where they come from and to some extent I know why they’re here. My challenge is not to be afraid of them when they do show up and especially not to waste my life waiting in fearful anticipation for when they’ll appear next.

And who knows, maybe one day, they won’t show up at all.

The "Santa Clause" Trauma

...and no, I'm not talking about the trauma of being forced to sit on a foul-breathed, fat, old stranger's lap while someone gets a photo op out of it...

I'm talking about movies.

It's funny how common it is for a Christmas movie to have the following premise: Child desperately wants something; Child asks Santa for it; Child doesn't get it; Disappointed child "grows up" in that instant and refuses to believe in Santa Clause. (Only to find out years later that he IS real and that their gift was delayed, but just what they needed, when they needed it, whether they recognized it or not... cue sleigh bells for a happy ending!!)

Which leads me to this question - what do you do when someone hurts you by what they DIDN'T do?

As in the case of so many Christmas movies, when a child does not receive what they expect to receive, it can be traumatic. It can shape that child's experience of the world and their fundamental beliefs about themselves in the world. This is especially true when the child has done all they know how to do to get their desire, even if all they know how to do is have hope, faith and belief.

I guess what I'm talking about here is a little more serious than a Christmas movie, but it's the principle of the analogy that I'm going for here.

How does a child grow up to believe in herself/himself when the actions of their own parent(s) say, "you aren't worth my time..."? A child naturally believes in the superiority of their own parents; even sees them as "god-like," in a way. Developmentally, a child doesn't have a mature sense of attribution of cause and effect. In essence they, themselves, are the cause of everything. For example, it's ridiculously common for a child to blame themselves for their parents divorce. For the child, there is no other possibility.

I think that could explain why so many people hurt themselves. And hurt could be anything from negative self-talk to actual physical harm, leading up to suicide. It could explain why some people have a hard time believing in themselves. Or why change is so hard for some people - their own parent(s) taught them that they aren't worth it.

While both of my parents were loving, or at least, did their best to be, my mom often served as an active critical influence (there are loads of reason's why, which I won't go in to...), and that has it's own type of trauma associated with it, but my dad was absent. It's not ironic that I write this today. Today is the anniversary of my dad's death, March 11, 2007. As I write this, I miss him, but I am also realizing that I've been "missing him" since childhood. He was kind; he was gentle; he never yelled or got violent - and I absolutely love and honor him for that. But I have more memories of seeing his back than his face. I have more memories of him retreating, or walking away, than I do of him coming toward me. I realized just today, while I was thinking about him, that I think I was able to let him go when my parents got divorced when I was 14 and I was able to let him go when he passed away 8 years ago when he died, because I had already had to let him go as a child - because he wasn't really there to begin with; at least, he just wasn't "present."

You can be in the same room as someone and say that you're "with" them, but if you aren't giving them your attention, you aren't really "with" them. You're near them - that's all. There were loads of times when my dad would come home on a Saturday evening and I would find out that he'd been out metal detecting, or rock hunting, or fishing, or whatever, and I'd think, "why didn't he take me with him?" I learned early on that my dad liked being alone. In fact, in those rare times when he did take me with him, I always felt like he didn't want me along. I knew that he'd rather be alone and that he had brought me along out of obligation. No child likes to feel that they're a duty.

I talked with him about that before he died and what he told me blew me away. He said he loved being with me, but he felt that I never wanted to be around him! Here we both were, thinking that the other didn't want the other around. As an adult, with a more mature sense of cause of effect, I can look back and see that he liked to be alone because that was what he knew. His own siblings had alienated him and I don't think he ever dealt with that resentment. But he learned to function in the world alone. I see now that his "absence" was just his own loneliness, but for me, as a child, I didn't see that - I couldn't see that. All I could see was that he pulled away from me because I wasn't enough to keep his attention. That was my "I don't believe in Santa Clause moment." But, what I really mean is, that was my "I don't believe in myself," moment. How could I believe in myself, when I wasn't even good enough for my own father's attention?

What happens to a kid with a fearful/critical mother, a present, but "absent" father - and don't forget to throw in some traumatic molestation for good measure? You get a kid who isn't able to see his own worth. You get a kid who thinks very little of himself. You get a kid who doesn't know why he's here or what his purpose in life is. You get a kid who gets involved in lots of addictions and self-defeating/self-harm behaviors. You get a kid who gets anxiety and depression, because he doesn't believe that he's worth being happy, or deserving of it. You get a kid who will do almost anything to avoid the pain of being himself.

I may not believe in Santa Clause, but I am starting to think it's a Christmas miracle that I'm still here...

Here is my plea to fathers: Please pay attention to your children! Please don't just be in the same room with them, give them your undivided attention!! Be interested in them. Ask them to share their thoughts and feelings and then listen/accept without judgment or criticism. Ask them what their interests are, or what their hopes and fears are. Put your arm around them and tell them they are loved. No, more than that, tell them that they are precious to you; that they are important to you and that you are proud of them. Console them when they are scared or lonely. Tell them that they are okay and that everything will be okay. Hug them tightly.

Just to be clear - I do love my father and I miss him terribly! But the disappointment I feel is real and I know that it will just take time to work that out. I look forward to the day when I can think of all the good my father did for me and not feel the hurt anymore.