Afraid To Be A Woman

[Abendroth]

@RussH I'm not going to lie I read the start of your message and thought I was about to be trolled by someone. But after reading it seems you did mean well haha.

It's more just dressing feminine and happy for me due to my self hate, I can find something to pick on or be very anxious about it in regards to worrying about negative things happening in my life again. I have been raised around men mostly (even my mother was a tomboy and still is to this day) for a good part of my life so I don't know how to use makeup, I can't wear high heels I struggle to balance and walk plus its painful it blows my mind how people can do it all day with those shoes the list goes on.

I have no want to dress showing skin that's not how I work but I see no reason for myself to judge women who wish to as its not my right to judge someone. Thank you for your input however, you meant well. :)

 

[jmni]

This is sort of an interesting subject to me. Femininity is very commercialized and unrealistic much of the time. Women are very over sexualized. Some people think a woman has no worth unless she looks like a Barbie or tv personality.

Something you could do is play with your look at home, but never go out that way. There are tons of tutorials on youtube for makeup and hair. You could buy feminine clothes and take photos of yourself in these get ups. Then you would see yourself as that rather than parade around like that and feel others looking at you.

 

[austint]

My rapist spent the first twenty minutes of court talking about my body and my weight. I appreciate this thread. My mother is anorexic and pushed her expectations onto me. She would follow me around the kitchen and no matter how thin I ever got she would say that at her thinnest she was five pounds less, her thinnest went from 110, to 105, to 100, to 95, to 90. My hair was falling out between keeping her and my ex husband satisfied.

I am not pretty or thin any more. I got shingles from the stress and gained tons of weight from medications and a rape pregnancy and so many other awful things. I am trying to run again like I used to. It is only in the pat month it has stopped being a trigger of him- the notion that even in a court of law my body was his toy. I can run and enjoy it again, but I try to keep my clothes on and often don't run because I am afraid.

I try to be invisible too. I used to wear color and mini skirts and skinny jeans- not because I wanted men's attention, but because I was proud of what my body could do. I smoked cigarettes before and after a few years I could run marathons- my body was a source of pride for all the addictions I had left behind to be a good mother, but he took that from me not just by raping me, but by talking about my body like that in court.

I hope to lose weight, and be an athlete again, and I want to share that with other survivors, but mainly I appreciate your post because it is hard to be ok with being feminine after the trauma. It is so frustrating for the inherent right of enjoying our gender identification is brought into question along with everything else that comes with surviving.

I hope someday to wake up and lace up my sneakers and come home to do my hair and not think twice about it, like it's just routine instead of terrifying.

I hope we all get to take joy in our bodies, I liked to think we are given the gift of using them and expressing so much good with them, not just dirty and bad.

 

[Lady of Longbourn]

This is getting easier.

Lately I find myself doing so much more self-care and I think college was the biggest reason. College gave me a reason to dress in the mornings and do my make up and hair. Once I got used to that, used to my routine and found the make up I like, it was easier to get into clothing and just normal self care.

I take better care of my skin now too, not just hair or makeup. But just I seem to care a bit more about myself.

And then the clothes I buy are getting a lot more expressive. I don't know what changed with me but I am getting into the thoughts that the human body is beautiful, that sexuality is okay and that expressing that is okay.

I don't mean I hit on people and want people to hit on me.

I just feel more comfortable with myself.

I wore a dress last Monday and I plan to wear a dress again tomorrow. It was the first time I wore a dress in years. I didn't actually own one to wear if I wanted too. It was the first time in 6 years I showed my legs in public. I was really nervous but I loved it. I loved it so much I bought two more dresses today.

I really don't know what changed. I don't what happened that I am suddenly so much more at ease with my body, that I see it as remarkable instead of viewing it with hatred. I wish I knew.

Maybe I was always like this, under the abuse, neglect and sexual abuse. Maybe I am finally finding myself.

And then I really want some validation that I am doing the right thing. That all this I am feeling is okay. That I have no reason to feel ashamed.

 

[Promicarus]

@[DLMURL="https://www.myptsd.com/c/members/ayesha.5700/"]Ayesha[/DLMURL]

Bravo, Ayesha! I know we don't know each other, and so therefore, any reassurance I might provide that you're doing the right thing may necessarily be of limited value...but it sounds to me as though you're doing exactly the right thing!

It sounds as though you've begun to "take back your power", ie a sense of control over yourself and your fate, and therefore, to feel adequate in the face of the challenges the world presents...instead of inadequate, as is the sense that we are left with when 'the world' has betrayed us in the form of a trauma that we unable to exert adequate control over, in order to prevent.

...And the way you get that back...that sense of empowerment/control...is only by doing what you yourself have been doing...you earn it, by proving it to yourself...in your case, in terms of venturing out into the world, again, in the form of school, and proving to yourself that you can measure up to its demands.

I wouldn't get hung up on "what why" kinds of questions and analyses--ie "I don't know what changed, I don't know what happened that I am so much more at ease with my body...", etc.

I know that for me, at least, I tend to analyse away any good thing that happens to me...dissect it and scrutinize it until I banish its magic...kind of like pulling a flower apart to find the source of its "flowerness"...you not only don't find it...you just end up with a pile of mush, instead of a flower. :)

I do know, however, that as I gradually do the right things for the right reasons, as far as both my moral compass, as well as valuing myself by my choices...I eventually "round the corner"...and look up and am suddenly living again, rather than just waiting to live, and fearing it. When that corner was rounded, exactly, and why...is of pretty much incidental importance, at best...and even then only in retrospect, maybe for another I'd hope to help along the way, to find the same outcome, as inspiration.

When I get bogged down in the "whys and wherefores", I stop actually living life, and step back, in order to analyze it. And while that's an expected response/reaction from one who has needed to analyze his environment in order to avoid threats, and remain safe...once I've emerged from such a place...those tendencies get between me and the life I hope to lead...rather than being productive.

So glad you've made such strides, and so happy for you!

Be well!