Part#2 – The Big Hope for True Luurve

GEE’S TOP 5 TIPS

#1 Every morning, look in the mirror, pucker up like Marilyn Monroe, blow kisses and say, I LOVE YOU, I LOVE YOU, I LOVE YOU.

#2 Find and hug a banker as part of your forgiveness programme. If you can forgive others you’re half way towards loving yourself.

#3 Eat your food as slowly as possible, as you VISUALISE yourself feeling beautiful. It can help with weight loss too. You’ll eat less.

#4 Hang around a street corner and drop your handkerchief for an attractive prospective to pick up, until you bag a date.

#5 By the third date, aooooooooorh after every uncomfortable truth you unveil about yourself…if he/she is still with you at the end, keep ’em.

If you ever happen to do #5, let me know if he/she stuck around…

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Love can certainly be in the air, the universal kind, Bob Marley style – one love and all that. Those precious moments where you see the beauty in everyone and everything, even a fat cow.

But if you see yourself as a fat cow, then there’s a problem, especially, if like me, you’re searching for the luurve of your life, MR WHO? Termed as such because I don’t know who he is…yet? While the universal kinda love I’ve felt on many an occasion, love has been missing for a mighty long spell as far as a partner goes. As for loving myself, it only started to filter through my veins since June 2015, I’d say.

I used to be fat, not a cow though, up until about 17. Lost lots of weight at the gym, running, but was left with stretch marks, my big girl evidence which contributed to my lack of self-love. I transformed into a skinny cow, as many women would outright call me, but that didn’t mean I could lose my stretch marks or wonky hip.

Rewind further, from 4-12 years old, I was bullied for being the only Indian girl in my class. I liked Mars Bars back then, but didn’t like to be called one. If it wasn’t brown name calling, I would play the least desired role in play families – the pet dog. At least I was being included. Sometimes I wasn’t.

Loving yourself isn’t something you really think or would admit to caring about when you have a job that sounds impressive, your own property and a good-looking partner. Even if you’re unhappy, you keep up appearances because that’s part of our human habit. It’s natural to want to be accepted by society, our peers, friends and so on, but it should never be at the expense of being true to yourself.

Only when I lost my contracts to the 2008 recession and my relationship ended within 100 days of my beloved father’s death did my inadequacies begin to crop up all over the place. Several months later, the thunderbolt of all thunders cracked me open, my Spiritual Emergency, What? unveiling all my toxic mental clutter that I needed to dump at the junkyard.

My biggest enemy was unleashed. A hideous looking creature like Quasimodo, the Hunchback of Notre Dame. Just replace the hunchback with a wonky hip instead. It dawned on me that I didn’t love myself. In fact I’d go as far as saying I had an intense dislike for who I was.

The ogre within me became a giant, verbally punching and vomiting its negative chatter on any remaining esteem. It was difficult to see or be grateful for what I still had. My supportive family for one. I was reduced to 3ft tall and would’ve shrunk further had it not been for that Unknown Force.

I know I’ve said it umpteen times over, but that Unknown Force picked me up from the pits and kept me trooping through my spiritual and mental turbulence until I reached the light side in 2011.

It took a few years, but I’m standing firm and have dwarfed my ogre-self, which is kept at a safe distance. At 39 and 1/2 I feel okay about approaching 40, even great sometimes, as long as I keep remaining true to myself – I’ve been blessed with young skin for one. What irks me though, is when I’m reduced to a teenager when a fat pimple or two emerges for the world to see. Oh woes me!

For a while now, that Unknown Force keeps pushing the feeling that ogre-self needs to be loved too. How? If I allow it to get too close, those verbal punches hurt. Thankfully, I can block them well these days and am an expert at cleaning up verbal vomit…just about.

It doesn’t seem to want to transform and be that part of me who believes it’s possible to grow I caN, as it stands, into an all-resounding I CAN. I CAN, not only being my desire to anchor my self-belief to fulfil my film project but anchor belief that I CAN have a loving and fulfilling relationship with MR WHO?

…that would mean to say that my ogre-self still believes it can’t have a fulfilling and loving relationship. Are you kidding me? Two fingers up to that.

Writing is a lone wolf pursuit, and I’ve never really been one for meeting guys in the usual places, even when I worked at a large office and was out and about town, so I’ve been switched on an off to on-line dating over the years.

At my blossoming age, many of my friends are married and have children, so social get-togethers are about catching up when they can get away from their families, rather than focussed on a night out when everyone’s in the mood to mingle. Even so, many men in my age bracket are settled down or with someone.

Pffrrgghhh…eight years on. Eight years, I can’t believe it, and I’m still single. I appreciate singledom-ness, but as I write that number, it’s still uncomfortable to admit. I need to keep pushing past my comfort zones and zap my uncomfort. It’s the way forward, all the way.

I’m drawn back to a few years ago when I’d tune into my sixth sense or intuition. It’s tricky to verbalise what was felt, but here goes.

“Work on your self-belief first.”

“Concentrate on your film project and music.”

“It’s destiny, only one person for you.”

It feels strange to recall that.

I had already intuited that this film journey was a longer than average one – after all I was starting from scratch on all fronts, but I didn’t give in to the idea that the lack of love in my life may be a longer than average one too. My hunches have been wrong in the past and I wanted it to be the case now.

I want to add here, it’s easy for me to be on my own. I enjoy my own company as that’s when I’m at my creative best, but I’m an extrovert at heart, what with my PR and marketing history, and life’s about love and sharing.

I continued to sought out MR WHO?…but to no avail.

The dates would roll in. Fun and pleasant times. Meaningful connections. A boost in confidence. Some pain or disappointment when it would lead to nowhere for one reason or another. I’d take a break, get my head back into films, writing, my hobbies – my great joys – and then return to dating for another go.

By the way, there’s no bloke bashing to be committed here – I’m not one to expose other people, regardless. Every Mr Not You and Mr Let’s Be Mates, I’ve met, has taught me something about myself, even if it’s as small as helping me find the exit door as swiftly and politely as possible. To all of them, a big warm-ish thank you for contributing to showing me myself in various lights – the good, the bad and the ugly ogre-self.

Mr Back Then, the relationship around the time of my Spiritual Emergency, perhaps unleashed the ugliest of my ogre-self. And without disclosing the details, the bottom line was, he had an intense dislike for himself too.

I had drawn someone into my life who matched my own lack of self-worth. Two ogres who couldn’t love themselves, so how could they possibly connect to and love another the way one should be loved? He rejected me in the end. It was the greatest blessing, as we’d never have been happy together.

Despite the pain and hurt that was caused from that relationship, I never gave up on luurve. Yet, I still carried the deep wound of rejection – a wound, I didn’t realise, travelled back to when I was bullied and rejected by my childhood peers – add to that the burden of healing my spiritual emergency. Who on earth was going to accept me as I am?

As I have come to realise, it’s not about being accepted by another, but accepting myself as I am, with all my idiosyncratic quirks and kookiness.

Let’s face it, everyone burps and farts. Everyone has dribbled on their pillow when sleeping. Everyone has faced some adversity at some point, which has given their mind a rollicking. As the experts say, it’s those who chose to face and overcome them who conquer themselves. I believe them.

Once I emerged into the light in 2011, thanks to the Unknown Force, I felt less and less a victim of my circumstances. My then darkness, inspired each of my screenplays, but I needed to take control of my new self and journey my story towards a happy and empowered ending.

As my self worth inched taller, so would the quality of the men I’d meet. This time, I began to draw in men who had been through a similar spiritual awakening or turbulence to myself. Us anomalies weren’t so few in numbers. I was thrilled. Half of my anxiety about my past was being resolved, regardless of how long they remained in my life. Such dates would continue to filter in and I continued to grow taller in confidence.

And here I am now. I have unravelled my worst fears and publicly declared my past, on here. What’s ironic and stranger still, my level of self worth sits in a contented place, yet no prospective is to be seen.

…what the hell is going on with that? Is destiny at play, as per my afore years of intuitive moments?

While I think about that, I owe my increase in self worth to a few things – many were highlighted in The Big Dream of Self Belief. To summarise again, through life happening in between and my commitment to these screenplays and hobbies of music and French, in particular, I’ve unravelled my fears, reaped small victories and learnt to accept myself as I am. To date I can state, I’m secure about my insecurities and my wonky hip doesn’t appear so wonky anymore.

It’s just my ogre-self I need to resolve so I can get the best out of me and match the same with MR WHO? when he peeps around the corner.

…How would MR WHO? appear in my head?

A man who has experienced the school of life, beyond degrees and fancy titles. A man, while strong, isn’t afraid to unveil his own vulnerability to those who are close to him. A man who watches my back as I watch his. Truth and equality matters. Compassion matters. Fun and laughter matters. Putting the toilet seat down matters. Not farting in front of me matters. Family matters. Above all, we have a deep love and respect for one another and bring out the best in each other.

That’s my BIG HOPE FOR TRUE LUURVE. 

Wow, that’s who you are, MR WHO? More visible than Mr Invisible…at least in my head.

While that settles in, Rumi’s (the philosophical poet and sufi mystic) famous saying comes to mind:

‘Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.’

…so back to my quasi-ogre, how do I find my peace with you?

I’m reminded of another Action Man and Woman I latched on to as part of my self-belief regime – John Lennon and Yoko Ono. In particular, their inspiring Bed In, peace protest, in Montreal, 1969 where they recorded Give Peace a Chance, the anthem sung in Washinton DC by 14 million demonstrators to end the Vietnam War. John said, make love not war, even kiss a cop for peace. I’ve added bankers in the mix too – give them a hug at least.

I care about World Peace and often wonder how it can be achieved if we’re still battling within ourselves. I need to visualise being at peace with my ogre-self until it happens, the same way I visualise fulfilling my film project, the same way athletes visualise winning a race before they actually win it. It’s been scientifically measured.

Be gentle with it. Don’t criticise nor blame it when things go wrong. Love it even. It’s a she. A wounded part of me that needs healing. Not a Quasimodo. Gee is her name too…two fingers up, the peace kind this time.

This could be my biggest game changer – I CAN could roll off my tongue with such ease and confidence.

Part of the dismantling of the barriers that Rumi speaks of is to remind myself of how much love already exists in my life.

I’d happily yell off a rooftop: I love that I have found purpose. I love that I’m free. I love my meaningful connections – with my mum, family, friends, some of my dates and everyday people. I especially love that I’m not hiding Who is Gee? anymore. That I can even laugh about my past…just about.

Here’s to being love rich inside and out. Arooooooooorh (my underdog’s howl in case you missed it).

As for MR WHO? if the writing’s on the wall, as destiny, then destiny can do it’s thing while I do mine. As I said in The Big Dream of Self Belief, MR WHO? has been scripted in as the punctuated ending for my Indian screenplay, and I need to continue making life happen to lead me to my personal luurve finale – so it can inspire my screenplay finale. I have no idea how that’s going to play out in real life, but at least I’ve defined who MR WHO? could be.

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WHERE TO NOW? Into the here and now, I say, and the beginning of my blog. 

If self-belief and love for yourself are your goals, then to be in the now is to maximise today. How to get there you may ask? Create the now, now, I say. Be doing it now, than fretting it tomorrow. Every step counts, pigeon and tortoise ones included. Grow them into strides. Grow them into running leaps. Grow them into FULL FLIGHT.

What is the ogre part of me, I’m handing you an olive branch in my head, as I write this. What do you mean you don’t want it?…Grrr, I’ll melt you if it’s the last thing I do. 

Click here or there to read The Beginning of the NOW.

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