1/29/2020 Nick Cave - The Red Hand Files - Issue #65 - I feel very bad about myself, I cannot
I cannot see anything positive in my body, I hate to look at myself in the mirror and it makes me suffer a lot. I feel …
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ISSUE #65 / OCTOBER 2019
I feel very bad about myself, I cannot see anything positive in my body, I
hate to look at myself in the mirror and it makes me suffer a lot. I feel
like everyone is better than me, even though I did very important things
for being just 16 years old. How should I behave? What should I do for
myself? Thank you for the possible answer.
BARBARA, ROME, ITALY
Dear Barbara,
Thank you so much for entrusting me with such a courageous and
heartfelt question. I took the liberty of discussing it with a
number of my female friends and there was not one among them that
was not greatly affected by your honesty and that did not
understand exactly what you were talking about. It seems that you
are not alone in finding the mirror your enemy, but you are
unique in being so open and truthful about your relation to it.
For me, the question took me back to my adolescence and the
troubled relationship I had with my own reflected image, and
those nightmarish teenage years lived inside the pitiless mirror.
I’m afraid to say this constant self-evaluation does not
significantly decrease as you grow older, however it does become
more manageable. I live mostly in hotels these days, and as I
cautiously enter a different bathroom each night, with its angled
mirrors and merciless lighting, I stand before the mirror at my
most defenceless and exposed, and watch it do its worst. I often
wonder how much accumulated misery a hotel mirror contains as it
reflects back at us what appears to be our essential self. But,
of course, what the mirror projects is not our true self at all
but only our reflected outer-shell. What is virtually impossible
to see within a mirror is that the very essence of our humanness,
our vulnerability and fragility, is the most beautiful thing we
possess.
Yet, when we are young that vulnerability can appear to us as
shame or weakness, as we attempt to brace ourselves against what
we may see as a brutal, unforgiving and judgemental world. But
those who have no awareness of their own fragility, who present
(https://www.theredhandfiles.com/how-should-i-behave/)
themselves as overconfident, armoured-up and invulnerable,
PAINTING BY ALEKSANDRA WALISZEWSKA sacrifice the essence of what makes them both human and
beautiful.
Vulnerability is the very thing that permits us to connect with
each other, to recognise in others the same discomfort they have
with themselves and with their place in the world. Vulnerability
is the engine of compassion, and can be a superpower, a special
vision that allows us to see the quivering, wounded inner world
that most of us possess.
Barbara, I am happy to hear that you have done important things
as a 16 year old, because it is often what we do that moves our
attention away from what we think we are, or the way that we
think we look. The note of pride in your words could be the very
thing that escorts you home, where you fall back through the
reflected surface of your body, into your authentic self. Your
pain-filled question holds great hope because in order to connect
meaningfully with the world we need to have some understanding of
its innate tragedy. Paradoxically, the fragility of your question
is its immense strength and says something very profound about
you as a person; something very beautiful shines through its
unhappy words. That body that you ‘can’t see anything positive
in’ holds within it an unusually courageous, honest and
intelligent heart. Your question is a testament to your
specialness, and by asking it you have touched us all.
Finally, you asked what you could do, how to behave. Please, take
care of yourself. Seek out beautiful things, inspirations,
connections and validating friends. Perhaps you could keep a
journal and write stuff down. The written word can put to rest
many imagined demons. Identify things that concern you in the
world and make incremental efforts to remedy them. At all costs,
try to cultivate a sense of humour. See things through that
courageous heart of yours. Be merciful to yourself. Be kind to
yourself. Be kind.
With love, Nick
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