This is just me getting my personal thoughts out of the way. For a very long time now, I've felt depressed about my physical appearance and the way I looked.
I had something called Precocious Puberty, to where for some reason, I started puberty early, late at age 8 and almost at age 9. I remember because my horrible mother was pissed off she had to buy new clothes for me and told me I wasn't getting anything for my birthday at the time (not that she ever bought me birthday presents in my life, to begin with). With Precocious Puberty, it starts early, but is also severely stunted because of this. So I had reached my current 'adult' height by age ten. At that age, I was athletic and on the track and field team and projected by doctors to reach 6'5", 195 cm, by adulthood. That clearly never happened. From age 10 to 17, I watched everyone slowly catch up and outgrow me. I used to be the "leader" among my three best friends when younger, Courtney, James, and David. We would even play Pokemon together. They eventually ended up outgrowing me too, ending up at 6'0", 6'1", and 6'4" respectively. Courtney even became a porn star after high school. Although James and David also ended up just as successful as her. I had lost my entire reputation and identity in school by my own body betraying me in this way.
And so, I had developed early on an association of "physical appearance equaling self worth." And it's not like society doesn't reinforce this belief. Women get it worse, but it's almost as bad among men, as well. Society conveying if you're not tall, good looking, fit, with flawless skin and teeth, you're worthless to them. One could say I developed Body Dysmorphic Disorder, or B.D.D due to this. But really, by age 17, I was just super depressed. There are other compounding reasons for this, such as growing up with an abusive mother, but having "skipped puberty" and having all my friends leave me, and losing my popularity in school, and feeling sick and physically weak, all of this added up to me feeling extremely unhappy and miserable. I wasn't getting love from home and I never would, so it was simple: popularity equaled self-worth. And now, my body failing to grow, I had all of that taken away from me. It was bad enough my home life was already dysfunctional. But now, I couldn't even get a substitute for love outside the home, as well. I had nothing left. And it was all due to my body betraying me.
I developed an intensely hatred for my body and self, because of this. And while I've come to accept my brain and mind, I honestly still despise my body. To use an analogy, I hate it enough to where if it was a person, I'd stab it repeatedly with a knife until I was out of energy and breath, and physically couldn't move anymore. That's how I utterly despised my body. It took away everything from me. While the lack of family wasn't it's fault, I still got my physical appearance from my ugly-ass parents to begin with. My grandfather and uncle were 6'5" and the father I never knew was somewhere at 6'0" or taller. So I couldn't even lay the blame solely on my family. I should've rightfully been tall, thus having worth in society and being loved.
There's lots of other bad things that's happened in my life, but I won't discuss them here. They're things that are common enough among people. Abuse, neglect, living in poverty, having a mother you wish were dead, and other stuff. I had always been a self-reliant person, though. One to solve my own problems. And in a way, it worked. I escaped out of extreme poverty, as well as a hopeless situation back in that shithole of a city with shitty people in it called Philadelphia. I became a hard worker and a hustler. I did what I had to do to survive. And throughout my teens and childhood, I'd always been a Perfectionist. I was good at it, too. Perhaps that's why my height and body being stunted hurt more so than it would an underachiever. I could usually just work and hustle my way into success and the results I wanted. But my physical appearance and shortcomings... They were unfixable. They were flaws at the genetic level. I had been broken in my DNA. And I didn't know why.
I didn't even know these issues had a name until well into my adulthood. I didn't know my condition was called Precocious Puberty. I didn't know the name of my hustle energy was called being a Perfectionist. I was just me and upset things weren't working as they were meant to be. As a kid and teenager, I had a healthy amount of confidence. I could believe in myself and work hard and achieve my goals. I wasn't used to failure, let alone failure outside of my control. So when it hit me, around age 16 and 17, that something was wrong with me, I didn't know what to do. I had no family to love me, my friends were outgrowing me and abandoning me, and no one to listen to me or help me besides the school counselor, Mr. Rubin. I saw doctors to get help in why I wasn't growing, but they were unsympathetic and didn't care and just figured "nothing was wrong with me." I was so fucking pissed at them. I was pretty much all on my own.
In my early 20s, I tried to achieve my dreams, but the post-high school life was brutal to me. All of my peers had outgrown me in high school, but few were beyond 6'2" or 6'3". College was far more crippling to my self esteem. Even girls were commonly 5'11" and 6'0" tall. Non-athlete girls too; just normal 19 year olds. It made me feel even smaller, weaker, and more helpless. If my ambition was low, I wouldn't have cared being a mouse among men. But I was a Perfectionist. Community College was very easy work, but my depression made ot hard for me to try much. My dreams of being a university athlete were over. My secondary dream of becoming an influential figure in society also seemed unlikely, considering I went from a popular high school athlete, to school pariah, in the span of two years. I figured no one would listen to a "short shit" like myself.
By 2006, in my first year in Community College, I was nearly suicidal. And I only say "nearly" because while I never actually attempted to end my life, I didn't have anything left to live for either, and didn't care at all if I died. I had no loving family, my inability to grow ruined any college scholarships as an athlete, and I was finding out that no one listened to or cared about what short, unattractive, "inferior" men thought about improving the environment, helping families raise children, and reducing poverty and hunger in society. I had even tried to enlist in the army at age 20, only to be flat-out rejected and told I needed to lose ten pounds first. If I wasn't good enough to even be a meat shield in the Middle East, what hope did I have left in anything else in life? Back when I was "tall" (relative to everyone else), people listened to me and saw me with worth. But now, post high school, people ignored me and I was invisible to everyone. I was seen as mediocre. Worthless. Valueless. Insignificant. "Average."
I know I wasn't any of those things, and that I still had value. But the way people treated me... The cruelty from others. The way my help and charity and attempts to make friends went ignored by people... I wasn't used to such cruelty from others. Despite my high school peers turning on me, my school really didn't have much "bullying." When people tried being bullied, it'd usually be me to put them in their place. Or the rest of the school would ostracize and avoid the bully. In short, no one bullied each other. Ironically, in college, it was the total opposite and people were more immature than they were in my high school. Cliques, gossip, and verbal bullying among people who were technically adults. So that only made me feel even worse about myself, especially since these people had never known me when they were still going through puberty. In other words, I was on the bottom of the social ladder in college.
Outside of college, I had tried to date using dating sites, and thought it I tried really hard, made a serious effort, and really let it be known I was looking for true love, I'd surely find someone. I had been insulted, berated, and called names by a few women in college for being too short, too dark, or too ugly for them. Women such as my personal trainer at the time, or this one hipster girl I shared a class with, Kate. Women in the real world were mean enough to me due to my lack of looks. But on dating sites? That was exponentially increased. I'd get a mean comment once or twice a week from a woman in real life. From women online? It was far worse. I'd either get women telling me to go kill myself or how short guys writing to them were offensive, but most of the time, I'd just get "Read/Deleted" or "Unread/Deleted" from women. I can't say that Match .com or Plenty of Fish were helpful for my already low self esteem.
My self esteem probably hit rock bottom between 2007 and 2009 when I was on there daily, desperately searching for love. I didn't even have one woman give me the time of day until 2009. I met two that year, Molly, who was 6'1" and Ellen, who was 6'2". Tall women, ironically, were most likely to date me, despite being shorter than them. I loved this feeling, because I felt more value towards myself if a tall girl was into me, knowing they would ideally want a taller man, but chose me anyway, as opposed to short girls, who 99% of men were taller than, thus I had little value, meaning, or worth to them. It's not like these tall women had much trouble finding someone taller. But maybe "some trouble" was enough to make them downgrade to a guy as short as me. A tall girl would be choosing me over a tall man, meant I was "special" to her. That I actually mattered in her life. I won't get into how Molly or Ellen treated me, but all I'll say is, I would've had few issues, if any, if I was actually tall and not "the short-shit" everyone saw me as.
These issues really persisted onward throughout my entire twenties. Girls online treating me like shit due to my lack of height and looks, people in the real world treating me like shit due to being worthless and invisible in their eyes (average), and me having to give up all of my hopes and dreams because of this.
I entered into the security field after I failed to become a police officer in 2011. (I later failed again in 2012, but that was someone else's fault.) I then passed a security school and became a "bodyguard" in executive protection. Ironically, it was my apathy and carelessness for my own life and existence that made me so good at that job. If I didn't care if I got hurt or died or not. I saw it as giving my own life value if I could help someone else's. At least I'd be of SOME value to someone then, I thought. I had no fear towards anything because I didn't care if I lived or died. Of course, no one really wants to hire a male bodyguard less than six feet tall, especially one with no military training. So although I was one of the best at that agency, I couldn't get enough contracts to continue to keep going. Meanwhile, all the tall men and women got more and more work and continued to build their resumé and 'climb up the ladder.' I once again was set back in life due to being genetically inferior.
This continued, with both jobs and attempts at relationships with women. From 2006, when I was 20, to 2016. 2016 was when I had enough, however. Using my own therapy process, I came to a big realization. That although my unhappiness started from Precocious Puberty and my body failing to grow like it was supposed to, my depression came from trying to "win" in a shitty society that would demean you as worthless if you weren't tall, good looking, athletic, wealthy, etc. In other words, I had been playing their shitty game and living life by their shitty rules. So I guess you can say, I became Blackpilled at age 30. I came up with the Island analogy. If I was stuck living on an island with no one but me and a dog, would I really care if I was short? Would I care about being ugly? Having a small dick? Being dark skinned? Would any of these things society (especially women) deems unacceptable in men, really matter? All I'd care about is survival. And I decided, since my dreams of a woman and ideal career were long dead anyway, this is how I needed to live my life: in survival mode, not concerned about love, companionship, respect from others, acceptance, etc.
And so, for the past four to five years, this is how I've been adapting to all those dead and buried hopes and dreams. Sometimes, they zombify and try to resurface. Like the silly and stupid idea of having a loving relationship with a woman after ten failed attempts and a death of a partner. But I just have to hit those dead dreams again with a shovel until they get buried back underground. There isn't a woman out there for me. I will literally never be loved. This is brutal to accept as someone who was never loved to begin with. But it is what it is.
And while being tall without a doubt either would've guaranteed me plenty of women, relationships, intercourse, and social status by now, it wouldn't have guaranteed me true love. But at least I'm not the only one who has that problem. Plenty of men are in that same boat. And while being a short-shit and having no one respect me or take me seriously anymore because of it (among other secondary reasons) is still awful, I'm also not the only one in that boat, either. Most men in the world are short, under six feet tall, as well. Granted, most men are also physically weak and cowardly and didn't want the power and type of masculinity I desired. However, I'm not the only one with such a shit-tier height, being small and "weak." Most human beings are small and physically weak, too. I was meant for more and ended up genetically useless, as I still continue to think of it, at least I'm not the only one.
There's this clash in my head now, daily. Between giving up my past life, hopes, and dreams, and moving forward towards an unknown future. The body that I absolutely loathe beyond words, is still something I struggle with. However, it has humbled me. Before, I was a "nice" person out of status. I did "good" things just to look good. I was fake. But nowadays, I am a nice person out of empathy. I know what it's like to be shit on and treated like garbage. And while most of this usually only happens with men, I can empathize with any woman also going through the same thing, if I ever meet any. But usually it's modern men in society who are made to feel worthless, meaningless, without value, etc. They used to be more rare back in the 2000s. But in the 2010s, more and more have, sadly, caught up to me.
I'm not out of the cave yet. All I can say is, you're not alone. I've known most of my life, aside from ages 9 to 17, what it's like to feel worthless and alone. I know what it's like to be told you don't meet society's expectations. What it's like to be told you're not "good enough" and you never will be. I know what it's like. All I can say is, you're not alone.
"You are what you put yourself out there to be." I understand what it's like to feel like nothing, most of one's life. While people will always be shitty to one another, the one last thing I can say, is advice I myself need to take. If all you say are what other people define you as, then that's all you'll be. DON'T LET OTHER PEOPLE DEFINE YOU! Define who YOU are! No one else has to agree with you, nor should they. Think of trans people. They decide to live life how they feel on the inside. And while it may not change reality, it does change perception. And to many humans in their infinite flaws, "perception is reality." I learned that the hard way. In short, what you say about yourself, is what people will accept. Even if it's "I believe I'm a woman." Other people will go, "I believe they believe they're a woman, too." But you don't have to behave like trans people. Not at all.
Just, define your own life. Very slowly, but surely. I spent too much time focused on my flaws, handicaps, and negatives. Like my height and looks. Me not talking about them doesn't change them always being there. I'll never grow six inches and reach my dream height like the doctors told me I would as a child. And most people will probably still notice all my physical flaws and shortcomings. But just like these wouldn't matter on a deserted island, the key is to stop talking about my flaws. For me, they're been the source of my unhappiness for so long, sixteen years, that it takes a conscious effort to stop focusing on my negatives. But it's what I need to do.
"You are what you put yourself out there to be."
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