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Just a couple ideas, if you care enough, and I think you do or you wouldn't be posting. Do something proactive.
Start reading some self help books.
Go on a diet, I recommend reading "Wheat Belly" by William Davis, MD
Go to a beauty salon that features makeovers.
Save up for a good wig and take good care of it.
Do you have a hobby?
Join a group.
Join a church, get some pastoral counseling.
Do volunteer work.
Get some social counseling.
If you are on financial assistance get your social worker to help with counseling or mentoring.
If you do nothing, nothing will change.
If you do something, something will change.
I have invested a whole lot of time, money, and energy into getting into the place where I am now and I absolutely love it. I am also an independent and as self-sufficient person as I can possibly be. Sometimes, I do now wonder if people take my preference in going about my daily life without much need or interest in constant contact with others as being snobbish or maybe even unhappy. I'm neither. I just prefer being alone most of the time.
I could have written that, except that I do have and enjoy random conversations with strangers when I'm out in public. And I'm no beauty, far from it. But I do have a nice smile. Practiced it in front of the mirror. Because without the smile, I have an RBF.
Maybe you do, too, and don't realize it.
But yeah, I prefer being alone most of the time, too. I've had it with people who want to argue about every little detail or whose automatic response to everything is opposition. Life is too short. They can go be unhappy somewhere else.
Oh, I forgot to mention, some people resent independent and self-sufficient people, as weird as that sounds. They think you're saying you don't need anybody else, which they see as an affront. *I* see it as an advantage. I have to know how to do things, fix things, or find someone in a jiffy who can fix it, because I don't have anyone I can depend on.
Status:
"I don't understand. But I don't care, so it works out."
(set 10 days ago)
35,636 posts, read 17,982,736 times
Reputation: 50678
Quote:
Originally Posted by aileesic
They say where I am now: "It's your looks. You don't look or act like other people here," "You're not a "---" person." "What's another good place for you... the desert towns... or Northwest... or the South..."
Or when I was in the Midwest and Southwest: "You look and talk funny. You need to go back where you came from."
This came from both children and adults.
Or when in The South: "Your skin tone is odd. You're not like us. Why are you here? Go back to wherever you came from?"
This comes from everyone - and I mean everyone.
Never yet lived in the East or Northern states but figure those people in those places would be the same. Plus, I am ailing in health and could not handle those climates.
I'm not unhappy with myself or my choice to live where I am now or anywhere I have lived in the past. It has always been the people around me who find something wrong with my being wherever I am at the time.
I'm really struggling to believe this.
I think when you get in a bad place, self-esteem wise, it can seem like everyone is against you where a very small percentage are actually against you.
It would be an interesting exercise for you to write down a list of everyone you come in contact with very frequently - neighbors, family, co-workers, and put a check by their name if they've told you don't belong and you should go back where you came from.
It may seem frequent (I'm not sure what kind of clods you work with) but it's not everyone.
OP, let’s just accept for now that you are odd looking or even quite homely. And black. And wear cheap wigs. And self sufficient. All that. I have met you before. I have seen you at the grocery store. You were in my volunteer orientation class for one of the organizations I volunteer with. You were quiet and didn’t make any special effort to connect with anyone. But you were clean and engaged with our training class; or you were alert on the grocery line and didn’t hold up the works with fishing for your checkbook. I didn’t give you a second thought. I didn’t reach out to you. I apologize! Next time you meet me, a total stranger, I hope you will say a friendly word. When you see a strange looking vegetable in my cart, I invite you to ask me what it is and how its prepared. When you are sitting near me I hope you will smile and ask me why I am here today. Because you are not a mainstream looking person, I probably was a little aloof. Again, I am sorry and I will reach out to somebody who may be you going forward. Because no one at our age should feel unwelcome or misplaced in the community.
If you want to try out a spiritual perspective - imagine that you chose this before you came into this life as a way to teach you lessons you wanted to learn. If this resonates, it can free you from "victim" mode.
For the first one, when I have asked what it is that makes me not so appealing, the response was that I am self-conscious about my looks but then just about everyone I've come across has brought up my looks first thing, and negatively, not in a way that has been helpful, so I don't know how a person would not become conscious of their looks if others keep bringing it up without much reason other than to insult me in some way. Everyone in my life (presently and formerly) has made ongoing jokes about my height, my hair, my face, my feet, and so on. At this stage in my life, I've pretty much decided to curl up into a shell and give up trying anymore, yet continue on with the nagging issue of fighting to stay where I am when so many people around here and everywhere I go seems to want me to be someone I'm not or encourages me to just go away.
Secondly, I've not had any luck at all with retorts. I've had people gang up to the point of threatening my life for speaking my mind and defending myself, so I'm about done with that. As I have previously stated, my personality can't make up for the lack of looks. I'm a social misfit and that's what hurts most.
Maybe you need to stop asking and also I see a lack of boundaries on your part. Have you tried counseling? You don’t have to defend yourself or speak your mind, you walk away the minute they start. I wouldn’t waste 5 seconds with someone who started criticizing my looks, don’t care who they are, I remove myself from their presence. Seriously why would you give these people the right to put you down and then care,?
Just a couple ideas, if you care enough, and I think you do or you wouldn't be posting. Do something proactive.
Start reading some self help books.
Go on a diet, I recommend reading "Wheat Belly" by William Davis, MD
Go to a beauty salon that features makeovers.
Save up for a good wig and take good care of it.
Do you have a hobby?
Join a group.
Join a church, get some pastoral counseling.
Do volunteer work.
Get some social counseling.
If you are on financial assistance get your social worker to help with counseling or mentoring.
If you do nothing, nothing will change.
If you do something, something will change.
Good luck
This is the type of advice I like. I have indeed been working on most of everything you have mentioned here. I've lost almost 20 lbs in the past year (in addition to 10 the previous year).
I do have hobbies, but again, I truly prefer doing things alone - always have. I write and draw, that's it. Those are the two things in life I love most, but people have even criticized me over that because I won't put my energy into creating for other people.
You see, I write and draw for myself, have even made some half-hearted attempts at selling my work, but what I do does not have much value to anyone other than myself.
To continue being completely honest here, I don't see any audience that I would want to attract these days. I just don't mesh with the majority of people, so I'm best at not trying to attract anyone. That's okay by me, yet it makes others angry. I've even been asked why bother writing or drawing if I'm not going to sell it.
I do volunteer work, have joined a group, visited several churches in the area but none of them give me a feeling of a spiritual connection so far. There is one, but so far away and too hard to get to on public transportation, so I watch at home.
I do have a counselor. That always helps, but it was rather sad when another counselor once said to me that my only friends in life would be doctors and therapists (i.e. people paid to be in the same room with me).
Thanks again. Your advice has been helpful, and I plan on looking for that book.
Maybe you need to stop asking and also I see a lack of boundaries on your part. Have you tried counseling? You don’t have to defend yourself or speak your mind, you walk away the minute they start. I wouldn’t waste 5 seconds with someone who started criticizing my looks, don’t care who they are, I remove myself from their presence. Seriously why would you give these people the right to put you down and then care,?
Good points. I guess it's because the people are well-connected in the community and could as very well pull some strings to force me out. That's what a lot of people in my situation ignore when dealing with others. They are so bent on saying their piece or thinking they can just simply remove themselves from the situation, and then find themselves on the streets as they have become the target of retaliation.
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