What do you fear the most? Spiders, Ghosts, or Zombies?
My fear is being alone. Yes, I agree. It’s common for us to be scared to be alone in a dark alley or an empty apartment. My fear is being alone emotionally.
When I was a small kid, I used to often compare myself to my siblings and felt a bit different from them physically and emotionally. Especially during childhood, I was more often sick and my siblings used to make fun of me saying that the hospital is my home. The feeling of being different or as I used to call “Weird” got stronger the day I was diagnosed as epileptic when I was 6 years old.
I often questioned myself, why I’m different from my siblings who have a perfectly healthy life. My parents didn’t allow me to go anywhere without them following me due to my being epileptic and I never got to spend a day or night outs with anyone. My parents used to drop me off and pick me up from college every day. My friends and some teachers also made fun of me saying I cannot do anything by myself.
Every time I got a seizure, which usually happens once a few years I felt like a big piece of my self-confidence goes missing and I started not liking myself. Also felt very uneasy spending time alone. Sometimes when some stranger looks at me, I felt like they’re making fun of me. I felt so sad and uncomfortable.
I wasn’t very lucky when it comes to relationships or love life. When I’m in a relationship, I love my partner so selflessly therefore I even tolerate the abuse from him because I don’t want to be alone. After years and years of cheating and heartaches, I started wondering where I go wrong.
Then I realized that I don’t love myself and don’t like spending time alone. I get attached to people as soon as they show a drop of compassion toward me. Even at this moment, I’m eagerly waiting for a warm hug from my unknown lover. I’ve gotten used to loving someone else than loving me for years and now I’m in a situation where I cannot find a way to start loving myself. I know that when I don’t love myself, how can I expect someone else to love me?
I wish I have an answer or a piece of advice to give you on how to overcome self-hatred. I started my fight against self-hatred by understanding my flaws and accepting my imperfections. I’m fighting with this feeling even at this moment and I started writing this to whoever wants to read since I feel much better expressing myself to someone unknown. I try to do random things alone such as visiting some random coffee shop, roaming on unknown roads and shopping alone to overcome my fear of being alone.
Being different, misunderstood or weird isn’t bad at all. We all have our battles and demons in our life. We all have our ways of overcoming our fears. This is my way of helping myself to heal.
I hope that you find your way too.
