#insignificant

I'm struggling with deep psychological programing. I, for as long as I can remember, and from nearly every person or media I consumed as a child, have had my appearance judged and found lacking. In so called polite circles, people gossip about so and so having "a face only a mother could love", I failed to have even a face that good. While other kids had parents, aunts, uncles, siblings, cousins, & grandparents who loved them unconditionally, who would build them up, I had only people who thought it the "right thing" to be "honest" about my looks, my voice, my hobbies, my thoughts & feelings. Honesty was never kind or polite, it was vicious, cold & cruel. I grew up in an environment that told me that I was an eyesore & that I should fix it. It being everything about me: my hair, my body, my clothes. Most of which I had little to no control or say over. I developed disordered eating. Anxiety, that sometimes traps me in my home for fear of being seen, because making someone look at me is an afront and a crime. That is what respectability politics, gender expectations, beauty culture, and "fat is a moral failing" have done to me, likely to many others. The people & community that were supposed to help me build a healthy sense of self instead spend my entire childhood destroying it. At least 2 decades of it; of total ego crippling, of lessons on correct behavior, lectures and threats if I didn't conform convincingly enough. It seeped into my skin, wormed into my bones, so that it can ache & gnaw at me like a old injury when the weather changes.