A while ago I was looking around on YouTube looking for one of my favourite gamer’s latest uploads and I came across this little 8 min video with the caption Jonah Hill on How We Are All ‘Under Construction’ (You can watch the video here).
I liked the sound of that, because I like to think something similar, just not as simple or as well put as Under Construction. I was very surprised to hear Jonah Hill talk about his magazine Inner Children because I had never heard about it.
I must admit that I have never really watched most of the movies Jonah Hill did as a teenager or even in his twenties, but I have seen and loved some of his performances over the last couple of years. Because of this, I was aware that his weight had changed a lot, but I never thought much about it. I grew up in Europe and have never even been to the United States, so I never heard anything about what people said about him anywhere, not even on social media. In all honesty, I was never really on social media in the first place, because I quickly realised that it was even harder for me to understand and be understood online.
My point is that since the video I have been surprised and impressed to hear him speak so freely about his own challenges and insecurities. I assume he is a perfectly neurotypical man, so I didn’t expect to be able to relate. I never expect to be able to relate to neurotypicals any more, and so I am really happy to be reminded that I too must remember not to be too judgemental when it comes to neurotypicals. These things go both ways, and I guess we all sometimes need reminding of that.
In the YouTube video he said: “I really believe everyone has a snapshot of themselves from a time when they were young that they’re ashamed of. For me, it’s that 14-year-old overweight and unattractive kid who felt ugly to the world, who listened to hip hop and wanted so badly to be accepted by this community of skaters.” (you can read the full text on Jonah Hill’s instagram account here)
I thought long and hard about that statement, because somehow it felt overly simplified for me. I am not ashamed of one moment in my life, but every moment of the last 20 years of my life. For a long time, I thought about how many bad experiences have coloured my life and how it would be impossible to choose a single moment in my life that I am more ashamed of than any other. Then, suddenly, I realised something and then I knew my snapshot.
When I was young I was a lonely nerd, the kid in the corner hiding behind a book or the kid who spend the weekends gaming alone. For years my best friend were characters from books and my favourite version of myself was the one I had created in whatever RPG I was currently playing. I didn’t care that people said I was stupid or bullied me, I had gotten too used to it. I couldn’t even imagine my life without it any more, which might be one of the reasons I turned to RPGs as a way of recreating who I was in a new world.
When I turned 16 I had never been drunk, I had never had proper friends, I had never been in love and I had never felt that I was lonely. I was alone most of the time and I enjoyed it that way. Then, I finished basic schooling in my country and entered our equivalent of high school and halfway through I dropped out and moved almost to the opposite side of the country, feeling I couldn’t get far enough away.
In high school it became horribly apparent that I couldn’t handle the social aspects at all. I couldn’t communicate, not in classes or outside of them. I have felt worse before, far worse in fact, and no doubt the darkest hours of my life came after that period of time. In that respect, I was surprised when I realised that the 16-year-old girl turned out to be my snapshot, but there is a very good reason for that.
It was over the course of the following years that I became truly depressed and suicidal. It is something I have fought against the last 15 years of my life and to a degree, might never really get over. I was medicated for the first time when I was 16 as well, one of the more traumatic experiences in my young life, and in the years after I was the victim of such abuse no man or woman should ever go through. So, why is it that my snapshot is not from one of the shameful and painful experiences I had before or later in my life?
When I look in the mirror today I still see the nerdy looking, unfashionable and ugly girl who for the first time desperately wanted someone to let her in but was doomed to forever look in from outside the window.
I experienced my first crush when I was 16, it was pure and all in my head, not something meant for the real world. When it became more real, it became confusing and ugly and I walked away feeling like love was a lie. Not because of the other person, but because of me. I had made it ugly. Everything that happened over the next many years did nothing but make me believe more firmly in that.
I don’t think like that now. I don’t focus on who I am, but choose to focus on who I want to be. I try to grow and change, so that I can become a better me, a happier me and a me who can feel beautiful. I never felt beautiful and I always felt a little angry and hurt if someone would tell me I was. I knew it was lie and I hated that someone, especially if it was someone who was supposed to care about me, would lie so brazenly to my face.
A few years ago, after getting out of several toxic relationships in succession, I started having major acne problems. Not just a little, but the kind of acne that makes your face look like a giant, red moon crater. I have never struggled so much with products, diet and exercise in my attempts to rid myself of the painful reminder that I was indeed never to be beautiful. I thought that I would never be beautiful on the inside, so perhaps I could at least be beautiful on the outside and then someone would want to be friends with me. It was silly, right?
I still struggle with acne, and I was sure nothing else had ever made me feel so insecure about my appearance before. Well, that was before I ever thought about the Jonah Hill snapshot. Before I was 16 I had no acne, I was tall and dangly, strange curly hair like a pine tree and I had never thought of myself as ugly before. Why? Because it had never been relevant. I had never wanted anyone to like me before.
When I realised that the person I see in the mirror is still that 16-year-old me and not the 31-year-old me, I felt like laughing. How silly it is of me to still see someone in the mirror that I can barely remember ever being?
I still see that girl in the mirror and I have no idea how to not see that girl. I feel different, stronger and on a path towards happiness now, so it just didn’t occur to me that my image of myself had not changed for 15 years. I think realising that I still see her made me feel better. It doesn’t change the fact that I feel ugly when I look in the mirror, but now at least I understand that I am not really seeing me.
I have wanted to feel beautiful, and not look beautiful, for years now. I thought I was just having a hard time finding beauty within me, but I don’t think so. I can’t feel beautiful before I let go of the snapshot inside of me of the girl I used to be.
Every time I look at myself and feel ugly now, I tell that 16-year-old girl in the mirror that we don’t need each other any more. I have moved on and it’s time she moves on too.
