“You may think that he’s a demolition expert (breakaway!)
When he’s finished with your self-esteem (breakaway!)”
George Ezra, “Breakaway”
It is so quiet that all I can hear is my heart beating. One, two, one, two, one, two. I count the beats in a quasi-attempt at meditation, feeling vaguely reassured by the thought that I am alive. It’s 4 o’clock in the morning, not an uncommon time for anxious thoughts to find their groove and jolt me out of my sleep. Hundreds of human experiences start to crowd in on me. Precise moments, inflection points, when someone’s self-worth is chipped away at or demolished outright. These moments bubble up like hot lava bursting through the surface, cascading into a scalding red river. Each bubble increases the pain in my chest, nudging it up a notch. The lava is overflowing. The army tasked to demolish self-worth is gathering pace.
Conversations I’ve had with friends and the dozens of interviews I have conducted over the last few months mesh together with my own experiences. All those moments when a hammer blow to someone’s self-worth leaves them winded, breathless, gasping for air, feeling profoundly “less than”, appear frantically before my eyes. My own pain is swept into the stream, becoming barely distinguishable from the intense pain of others. I am propelled to write. I choke on the absorbed sorrow that fills me but let these collected moments flow through me, knowing that no stream of lava bubbles up forever. The volcano will always quieten down. As long as we let its destructive power flow out…
xxx
That moment at the age of eleven when you receive a signed letter from all your girl friends at school telling you that you are fat and ugly and that they no longer want to be friends with you. Your self-worth is cancelled out by the signatures you see on that piece of paper. Signatures that determine your fate as an outcast. This letter is lodged in your memory forever.
xxx
That moment when your husband is strangling you, his raging hands lifting your body off the ground. Your feet dangle meaninglessly, deprived of their primary purpose of keeping you grounded; the radiator against which you are pressed is denting painfully into your back. Your self-worth has dissolved under his angry gaze. You look pleadingly into his eyes and pray that he will be merciful towards you. You feel utterly worthless. He lets go of you. Your body slumps to the floor, along with your dignity and self-respect.
xxx
That moment at school breaktime when your friends tell you to pick that banana peel up off the ground because you are brown. Your self-worth slips on that banana skin and crashes on the concrete. Your dignity dissolves in teenage giggles. Hearing teenage laughter reminds you of your shame for years to come.
xxx
That moment when you tell your lover that you do not wish to have sex with him, but he assures you that you do. Your self-worth collapses under the rhythmic motion of his thrusting body inside yours. You dissociate from your body. You watch yourself and him from the side of the room, as if this is happening to someone else. It is easier that way. The room is dark. Later, you put your clothes back on and look for your self-worth, but you can’t find it. It has disappeared, under the bed, perhaps. But you need to get out. You leave it behind.
xxx
That moment when your classmate asks you lightly how the hell you ended up in this high achieving group. Your self-worth cracks under the weight of their judgement. You wonder how smart you really are. You reassure yourself and patch up your self-belief before you hear it from another classmate. And then another. You start questioning how sharp you are more frequently, despite your good grades. Your self-worth cracks a bit more each time.
xxx
That moment when you see the big suitcase in the middle of the living room floor, grimly reminding you that your husband is leaving you, that he no longer loves you. As the suitcase is wheeled off, your self-worth is wheeled off in it. The two-bedroom flat becomes awfully big and terribly quiet. You admire yet again your father’s intelligence and his unparalleled ability to accurately predict the future: he has told you many times in no uncertain terms that you would be unable to keep a man because your personality is warped. He is right.
xxx
You chase lost suitcases for years to recuperate your self-worth, but you find it somewhere completely different. You realise that it was inside you all along and that you needed to kiss it better...for a long time. You know that it will forever be fluid, like a mixed ocean tide, rising and falling to different levels at different times, but forever there, anchored inside you.
“I’ve been waiting for you
To come around and tell me the truth
About everything that you’re going through
My girl, you’ve got nothing to lose
Cold nights and the Sunday mornings
On your way and out of the gray
I’ve got time. I’ve got love
Got confidence you’ll rise above”
George Ezra, “Hold my Girl”
