Self Imagining

I have no self-image. I've never had one. It's never really been a problem. Only when enduring 'self-help' in some form or when trying to remember the past usually for 'self-help' reasons does it ever become an issue. I don't have one now. If you asked me what I looked like today (or yesterday for that matter) I could only describe what I'm wearing or the particular style (if there is one) of my hair. Cold hard facts I can give you. Anything else is both irrelevant and unknown to me. I thought of all this this morning when while sitting out on the deck sunning and thinking about writing a morning blog post I realized that my shoulders were pretty tense and wondered for a brief moment whether my neck had shrunk. Then I got a blurry half formed image in my mind from a picture of me from my teenage years where apparently I was ALL neck. I was that gangly one with the swan like neck. Or so everyone else said, because at the time I had no 'image' of myself in my head. When I looked in the mirror I just saw me, a person. Not particularly one thing or another, not fat, not tall, not swan-like; just . . . me.


I didn't have the 'self-imaging' ability back then either. I had plenty of self-imagining ability. I could come up with whole worlds full of experiences I was going to have. Usually involving a bright red convertible and my completely fabulous friends and outer space. But as to what I mentally looked like, in reality or fantasy, the picture in my head was always a blurry indistinct picture. 


Through the years with the self help guru/ pop culture/ pop-psychology  paradigm shift and media influences I've heard many times that I was 'supposed' to have a self image and that it had better be good or else. If I didn't,  I would live a life full of misery and suicidal tendencies that would be my own fault for not 'believing' in myself. I dismissed all that mostly cause it never really bothered ME that I didn't have one and since that also meant that I didn't have a 'bad one', I figured it was okay. I've never looked into a mirror and saw something I really didn't like even when at age 20 I developed acne for the first time long after everyone else had gotten past it. I just tended to just make crazy faces and lean in real close to 'zoom' the zit to mutant monster proportions and come up with evil scientist monologues for it. Then depending on my mood I would take pictures of it and send it to my friends and family titled - "Introducing the newest member of the family". 


As for my body I thought it was great except when it came to buying clothes (or hugging) as I've mentioned before. It curved where it was supposed to, it dipped where it was supposed to, and in general did what it was supposed to do which was carry around my massive consciousness and act out various schemes and plans my mind came up with. Now here, all late in the game, I wonder if I should go ahead and develop one. It's mostly just a mental exercise though because I still make faces in the mirror (and yes still suffer from occasional acne) and still generally like what my body can do when I tell it to. Besides, why commit myself to one possibly erroneous viewpoint (image) when I can imagine so much more...