Being Less Of A Bitch...To Myself

I can't stress this strongly enough: I am not a person who has any time for self help shit. I see posts about mindfulness and loving yourself and I cringe/roll eyes/immediately enter the sarcasm zone/scoff loudly/all of the above. I'm sure they're meant with the best of intentions and they do genuinely help people, they are just not for me.

Two things happened on Friday night.

I was in my sickbed, reading blogs and simultaneously glomming series 2 of My Mad Fat Diary.

First things first: blogs. Becks linked to this post from Christa, which I'd missed at the time. Digging back into the mists of time and memory, I actually think this poem was in my GCSE English Lit anthology. No doubt I made some vaguely cringey teenage notes about it at the time.

I read it now and it makes me simultaneously envious and a bit sad. Cos I would love to be able to proclaim

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I’ve got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

Who wouldn't love that level of self-confidence? But I don't have it and I never have had. Can't dance either. I'm always far too self-conscious about who's looking at me. 


Second things second: My Mad Fat Diary. Should you wish to split a bottle of wine with me and fangirl extravagantly about it, I am totally up for that.

Both series of this show have hit me right in the feels but the last episode of series 2 really made me cry. Actual boo-hooing took place. If you haven't seen it and have no idea what I'm on about, the lead character's therapist gets a bit cross with her and says something along the lines of "Close your eyes. Tell me what you don't like about yourself, be honest. Imagine a 10 year old version of yourself. Tell her those things. Tell her she's fat. Tell her she's ugly. Tell her she's an embarassment, because that's what you do every day when you tell yourself that."

He also comes out with such gems as this. I like Kester.

If that piece of advice about the 10 year self had been trotted out to me in some sort of inspirational quote, I'd probably have nodded my head and carried on being mildly horrible to myself. Watching it on screen? It really resonated. Painfully so (hence the messy crying). I am very good at telling my friends not to be so self-critical but shockingly bad at taking my own advice.

You know what? I wouldn't dream of being so cruel to 10 year Alex. She was cool. Mad keen on ponies and books (some things never change), owned a snazzy line in Sweater Shop jumpers, coped well with moving halfway across the country, managed to carry off a massive fringe with a certain amount of innocent panache. She wasn't fat and she wasn't ugly.



I wouldn't even be mean to teenage Alex. Cos although she should have ditched the fringe already and suffered the misfortune of growing up in a time where it was genuinely acceptable to wear an Adidas three stripe tracksuit top with an otherwise normal party outfit, she was cool too. Still being completely pony-mad kept her out of trouble and gave her some of the best friends she'll ever have. I'd give her a hug and tell her not to hide so much.




31 year old Alex is cool too. Even when riddled with cold, wearing no makeup and sporting an inadvertent 80s side ponytail. I should stop being such a bitch to her.

Remember, folks: wanky self help = bad. Poetry and pop culture revelations = good.