Catch-22

I feel so bad. So lonely and... impossible. I never go out. Don’t see my friends anymore, don’t take part in this world. This beautiful, beautiful world… It started in my early teens. I’ve always cared a great deal about how I look and about performing my very best. I saw perfectionism as an admirable trait and something to be proud of. Surely the demand for the highest standard of excellence is well called for – and honorable, yes? Today I know better. (all fear!) I don’t shave anymore. It doesn’t make it any better, it just spreads even more. I have hair on my thighs, buttocks, toes, stomach, nipples, chin, lip…. Feel so inhuman now. Who can love me like this? I use tweezers for my face. Won’t let anybody see the actuality of it. I think I have a skin disease. For the longest time I would blame my bad skin on my obsessive picking, my face full of red marks and bloody wounds… Sure, undoubtedly self-made. But I’ve noticed, at times when I don’t touch my face too much, that inflammations occur spontaneously. After fifteen years it doesn’t take much for a new scar to set. Must have up to a hundred now… My skin is dry and sensitive, uneven, blotchy, wrinkly even! And I’m only twenty-eight years old… I NEVER go out. Have broken ties with all the people I once knew. Can’t have them see me like this. So ashamed… And the worst part is there is nothing to do about it. I know I’ll never be free from this. Why do I live? Why do I go on? How do I do it? I don’t. I don’t live – I hide. I don’t develop normally. I’m all knotted and twisted up. But inside of me there is another life happening… one that is very different from the one lived on the outside. In my solitude I have found new ways to explore life, far away from society. Without interaction with the outside world I have created my own world, free from restrictions and dogma. After years behind closed doors I don’t have much ego left. (How can one define oneself without external objects to measure oneself against?) What's happened is I‘ve torn down layer after layer, facade after facade. Without any new impressions I have been left to deal with what is there. What is actually there. After months, days and years in silence… I haven’t had any other choice but to face myself. And, to my surprise, I found............ that there is nothing wrong with me. ?????!!!!!! I found..... that I love myself (soooo much). But who else will love me like this? :-( Broken. Whole. Broken. Whole?