How to Love Yourself: A Lyrical Pechakucha
Content Warning: Sexual trauma.
1.Be Willing to Feel Pain and Take Responsibility for Your Feelings
There is a moment where my body does not belong to me. I molt my skin, and know this is how dying is supposed to be. My feelings are not mine, they are colorful helium balloons hovering me from myself. I’m in the middle, a medium; an acrylic ochre reject, a charcoal depression, a watercolor heartbreak, a marbled anxiety, a cherry oak wood panic. There is a moment and lightning flashes, God knows I hate lightning. All of my balloons pop. There is a moment when I crawl back into my skin, I use my finger and write on my arm “pain.” I do not shower.
2. Say No When You Need To
There was a time in the sixth grade I should have said no to flashing the boy my new, grown-in boobs, no to seeing his fleshy penis sopped with pre-cum, no to letting him sear his fingers on the seams of my pants where the zipper ends, no to running an errand with him to fetch the teacher’s purse in a closet in an empty classroom while everyone was in recess, no to stroking my face with a thumb, no to being a good girl, no to trusting him, no to…
3. Pay Attention to Posture
There is a black-and-white photograph in some waiting room office, a nude model curled over, their back a rosebud, their limbs, layers carefully folded in, the spine stemming from the nape to the root of their tailbone. It’s beautiful. Until, it’s me. I’m hunched over drinking coffee, reading a book, on the computer, sleeping in a fetal position. My neck has shifted closer to my chest plate, I feel myself shrinking. I always hated being tall, some wishes aren’t worth it. The model stands up, presses a hand between my shoulder blades, cements a brace, and holds me in place.
4. Have Fun By Yourself
Rarely am I alone. When I am, there is a familiar silence that sirens to me, I mermaid my way to its source, I flow into my bed, onboard alone sailing off my clothes, my hands waterlining the hull of my breasts, ruddering towards my haired hill, I steer myself in circles, my limbs are waves undulating in rough waters of tension over my body, I cruise the horizon climbing in knots until I see land breaking in view, land is my finish line and I shore my way to its end.
5. Forgive Yourself For Your Mistakes
Sixteen years later, my mother asks me what she has done for me not to trust her. Tell her the truth. Her eyes, a jar of water ready to tip over, her nose, Santa-red. As a daughter’s duty I don’t tell her it’s her fault. I hear her words from when I was hitting puberty and growing into a woman’s body at the age of twelve: thirteen-year-old girls know what they are doing, it’s not rape. They are old enough to understand, it’s not rape. They are old enough to make those decisions, it’s not rape. I hold onto my own jars my eyes carry. I apologize, I forgive.
6. Don’t Compare Yourself To Others
My body pales a new shade of corpse annually. I don’t own bikinis. There is a growing amount of monokinis I am collecting in the bottom drawers with jean shorts and crop tops that don’t fit me anymore, or not like they used to. I don’t remember the last time I visited the beach in a swimsuit. I walk there in sneakers with socks, leggings, and a long sleeve, one size bigger. I watch the bodies break surf, tanning triangles, under canopies, some sit on towels, babies eating sand, a portable speaker playing Bad Bunny, and for a moment, I realize, I don’t remember how fat they were.
7. Learn About Your False Beliefs
I tell myself to be a man, think like a man, play like a man. I swear to myself I won’t get my heart broken anymore. I don’t date. I fuck, I fuck around, I leave when they confess they are into me, I don’t make friends because they will fuck my lovers, too. I wear a suit under my clothes every day, a lit cigar in one hand, the other hand runs a soft hand through my slick-back hair. I am charming, enigmatic. My cigar smoke calls to you, and you come in multiple ways. You will tell me about your past because I’m a good listener, a gentleman. You will ask to cuddle. You will love my aloofness and cool air. You will think you can break through. You wake up. I don’t leave a note or a chocolate kiss. I don’t leave my phone number. I don’t leave an earring, underwear, or a shoe. To leave anything behind is to leave a piece of my heart; the heart that is guarded under robes of orgasms, small talk, and friendly laughs.
8. Stop Criticizing Yourself
I want there to be a day when I wake up and don’t grab a handful of stomach when I sit down to pee in the morning, measuring whether I have lost or gained weight by the size of my belly folding over myself. My hand can grab pockets of fat, through my skin, skillfully avoiding organs. I think of healer hands in movies, except I’m not providing miracles, I’m giving myself a lipo. I take that back. I want there to be a day when I wake up and grab a handful of stomach when I sit down to pee in the morning, and it doesn’t bother me anymore.
9. Don’t Be Afraid To Ask For Help
I swim in the Olympic pool of the building I used to live in during the 90’s. The deep is labeled “8 feet” in black spray paint on the concrete lip of the pool. I plunge and release all of the air my lungs hold in bubbles. I watch them pop when they surface. The sun kaleidoscopes in the ripples, I see my hands reaching and swirling my fingers through the water. I know I need to kick myself up but I don’t go lower. I know I need to pierce my arms up and over me. I know I should ask for help. The sun turns into a face, my left hand still reaching.
10. Do What You’ll Say You’ll Do
I think of those funhouse tunnels, the black-and-white swirls with a bridge to get across. In those swirls I see my teachers repeating “you have so much potential,” “you’re just lazy,” “C’s get degrees.” In those swirls I see myself through my brother’s eyes, he watches me nine months pregnant, at 200 pounds, waddling by myself towards the graduation stage in a blue robe, a blue cap, and blue flats. He sees me shake the dean’s hand, he hears the announcer struggle with my compound name, he sees me take a picture with the mascot at the end of the stage. He sees me move the tassel left to right, or right to left, I can’t remember. He sees me give birth shortly after. He sees me leave bartending after dropping 70 pounds in three months post-baby. He sees me apply to become an English teacher, get accepted to grad school. He sees me leave my mother’s house, sees me leave out of state. Sees me come back home to Miami. Sees me come back. Sees me. Me.
11. Choose To Love Yourself With No Expectations
We are flawed. We will hold our lover’s hand and walk down the street and eat pistachio ice cream and talk shit about pistachio ice cream because our lover doesn’t get it. They eat cookie dough or vanilla with sprinkles. We watch a stranger walk past us. We imagine what it would be like to catch their perfume on our fingertips as we spoon our fingers around their neck, the warmth of their taste buds–will they unfasten their shirt one by one or are they a ripper of clothes in a seized moment of– pistachio drips from the corner of our mouths and we lick with a fever, our pupils dilate, our lover still holding our hand, unaware of the five-second cheating with a stranger. We can’t get hurt if we expect us to fuck up.
12. Take Care of Your Body
Cook even when the dishes are piling. Cook; the food will be ready before UberEats gets there. Cook because of taxes. Cook to keep family recipes. Cook to have leftovers, so you don’t cook tomorrow. Cook so there’s no MSG. Cook for vegetables. Cook for your son. Cook for yourself, so you can stop feeling guilty for spending money, for gaining weight, for ordering dessert with every meal. Cook jerk chicken with rub; garlic cloves, scotch bonnets, allspice berries, dried thyme, grated nutmeg, soy sauce, vegetable oil. Cook jerk chicken because it’s your son’s favorite dish. Cook jerk chicken; it goes with white rice, rice and peas, broiled potatoes, blanched broccolis, oven-baked zucchini fries, mac and cheese. Cook jerk chicken because a whole chicken will last three days before you have to cook again.
13.Accept Your Negatives
My father holds a disposable camera pointed at me sitting on Santa’s lap. In the negative strips, I’m wearing a velvet dress. My eyes don’t blink, adorned by the furrow of the right eyebrow, the corners of my mouth sag, my arms are crossed but not hugging over my sides, just holding my elbows. This look will be portrayed in my pictures growing up. In fact, if you took a candid picture of me today, this look will staple across the screen of your phone. I don’t think I was sad, but you couldn’t tell because I would never say. I told my therapist I can’t talk about my feelings. The edits on my work are dabbled with the question: “but how did you feel?” The feelings are fleeting, like eels, and I use eels because we can’t understand them. Because they want it that way.
14. Start a Dialogue With Your Higher Self
Meditation takes me to a meadow. There is a water well in the field and the well goes so deep, I can assume it stops at the center of the earth. With slow curiosity, one leg goes over the ledge, the other one follows and I’m burrowing down the hole, at the bottom of the well, there is a chair attached to a rectangular table. So I sit. Around the table are long white glowing beings. They briefly acknowledge me. They don’t speak. Instead, their white energy grows into a sphere, the sphere lingers toward the middle of the table, growing and gliding towards me, it crowns my hair, caresses over my shoulders, dresses my torso, submerges my legs, tickles my toes. I am surrounded by the light. I am the light. I am in sobs. My pillow sops. My hair is drenched. I am lifted off my bed. I am.
15. Be Present
Notice the hangnails, the jagged whites of the nail bed. Notice how the fingers bend inward; a fist, a heart, a stomach, a bird, a model, a bubble, a train of thought. Notice your fingers opening up; letting go, high fiving, stretching, raising a question, a concern, a hallelujah, a surprise. Notice the blue jay on the jackfruit tree. Notice the pineapple, bubblegum goo from the rotting jackfruit on a bed of fallen leaves. Notice the coffee stain on the shirt that came from the dryer five minutes ago. Notice my son’s eyes tracing my face into memory. Notice he sings sad Lewis Capaldi songs. Notice that sadness is contagious. Notice that I’m not present, again. Notice his hug, notice his notes in the chorus, notice his right eyebrow dip in emotion, notice his dimples dance when he belts a high note. Notice the blue jay chirping in.
16. Give Yourself a Break
The Voice is on the NBC channel, Mondays and Tuesdays, at 8 pm Eastern time. Carson Daly as the host. New seasons every fall and spring. The first six episodes are blind auditions and those are my favorite. I usually never make it to the Live Show Finale, but I google the winner. My phone is in the other room. I take the 65” television in the living room, volume at 60. Blake Shelton points at himself. John Legend sings a line every episode. Kelly Clarkson is always crying. I laugh with Ariana Grande. I am confused on who to choose like the contestant who got a four-chair turn. I sing along to every song I know. I give my criticism to them as well. I also cry. I cry for every song being played, every high note, every run. The house watches with me, but they don’t watch the show. They watch me.
17. Be Honest With Yourself
A student asks me if I am Yassified. Yassification means it is like so much better than everything else and you can’t do anything about it. also it’s gay. I remember the texture of girls’ hair in first grade, the way my palms had sweat when I held their hands in P.E., I remember their kisses, I remember how I felt; my upper lip in glitter, my core hardened, an unfamiliar throb between my thighs. I would fake running in place to make it go away. I still liked boys, too. Everyone has this phase. My best friend said I was just bi-curious. It would go away. A student asks me if I am Yassified. She looks me up and down and with a snap in the air, I am deemed the Yass Queen among the 7th grade.
18. Accept Some People Won’t Like You
Maybe it’s the Leo in me, but I want to die so I could hear what people would say. I want to do a survey, a statistics bell curve of the percentage of those who mention anything negative. Will they mention the time I egged their lawn three weekends in a row, or when I fucked their boyfriend– they were going to break up anyways, or when I held a boy’s hand on the way to lunch and his girlfriend’s older sister came looking for me in the neighborhood carnival. Will they mention the time I opened my door at three in the morning to give them somewhere to sleep, will they mention banana pancakes, will they mention every time they turned 18 I made them penis-shaped birthday cakes, will they mention me.
19. Write Yourself a Love Letter
Dear L,
It’s the strands of whites sprouting with fervency like lavender in August. It’s your toes, shaped like martini olives, the pinky nail falling off with gumption whenever it grows more than 0.5 centimeters. It’s the thickness of hair growing in wild flocks on your legs. It’s the pudge that never left after childbirth, the city roads of stretch marks from your thighs to the highways of your ribcage. It’s your chin hairs, your sideburns. It’s the defensive walls that come up, it’s the panic attacks that come like a collision, it leaves you feeling dizzy. It’s the way you apologize after three days of knowing you were wrong, but during the argument you did not back down. It’s your hugs. It’s your silence. It’s you.
20. Praise Yourself
RuPaul says, When you become the image of your own imagination, it’s the most powerful thing you could ever do. I become a fixed posture; the bird of paradise grounded on one foot, toes spread as if between the sand. The hips, a balanced scale, leveled. The other leg, a flag pointing towards the sun. The clouds ball into a storm. When the going gets tough, the tough reinvent themselves. Lightning flashes, I hold it in my hand. In my other hand, I don’t let go of my balloons. If you can’t love yourself how the hell you gonna love somebody else? Can I get an amen? I shower in the rain. My mouth is a bowl, I collect water with love. I gurgle the rain, and push it out with my tongue. I laugh at my absurdity of being a bowl, holding balloons, and lightning, a bird of paradise. Amen.
Lissa Batista is Brazilian, raised in South Florida, and is an MFA candidate at Florida Int’l University where she was the winner of the FIU Nonfiction Literary Award in 2021. She’s also won Best of the Net with Lucky Jefferson, and you can find her other works with Tinderbox Poetry, and Tint Journal. Her hairless cat, shelter-adopted dog, and son continuously inspire her at a 70’s home nestled in North Miami.