The narrative about self-hatred on the left had some circulation on the Web (the origin was Tully's blog.) It was forwarded to one of our members, who commented, “It was hard to read with tears in your eyes. It bothers me just as much this afternoon as it did last night. It's like trying not to look at something you know you don't want to see, but you can't stop yourself. ” He and several other members of the group added the parallel narrative (in italics) on the right, as a way of reframing the conflicts we have all experienced.
One of our members added later:
It's amazing what a difference a few weeks can make in your life. Things calm down and start to fall into place. You take on a new perspective. You do one heck of a lot of thinking and self examination. You let go of parts of you that you find are nothing more than baggage that you've been carrying for decades, and carrying long enough. You discover new parts of yourself that were buried deep enough that you never realized they were there.
Day by day you start to shovel out years of self hate and refusal to accept the complete person that you are. I realize, looking back, that nobody could have shown me more prejudice as a gay man than I did to myself.
One day it all started to come apart and it scared the hell out of me. I felt manic/depressive - laughing out loud one minute and feeling like I needed to throw up the next.
Pieces of the old you dissolve and chunks of defensive armor fall off and expose the real you for perhaps the first time in your life. You try fighting it, like always but this time it doesn't work and something inside of you tells you not to go back to what you were and something tells you that you couldn't if you really wanted to. In a way, it's like a rebirth but it's not going to happen as long as you fight it.
Mostly, I'm happier and more at peace with myself than I've been in a long time. I look back on some of the worst days and wonder how I could have thought they were that overwhelming. There may be more hard work coming, but I won't turn back.