Rambling - Compliments

"...So... apparently... I've been getting a lot of compliments lately."

My hair is one of the main focuses of this. Everywhere I go. People look at it and tell me how beautiful it is, or touch it. Long hair, it's like a pregnant woman's belly. Apparently personal space rules no longer apply. Everyone has to touch. Haha.
I don't actually mind that much, though... at this point.

Yesterday, my mother was told by a cashier that I was "so beautiful". This stuns me. I can't really comprehend it. It's hard to let go of the various self-defence mechanisms in me, and allow myself to feel good about it. In this case, it really is about letting go of them... usually, things in my life... it's more about being stuck through with the mental/emotional equivalent of some kind of harpoon. If you've ever had a porcupine quill in you or your dog... You'll know what I mean. Those things really get stuck in there good. You can destroy the tissue pretty badly by trying to just pull them out, and 'just letting go of them' is pretty much a patently insane idea. They're not going to fall out. What they will do, and what they're designed to do, is to work their way out to the opposite side of the body - - Ugh, what am I even going on about??

Anyway, my hair is one of the few joys in my life. I hesitate to use the word 'joy', but... Yeah, I love my hair very much. It brings me a lot of satisfaction, relatively speaking... Life has trained me hard to keep anything that precious to me hidden away inside. Never refer to it as 'joy', never refer to it at all. Especially since for me, 'joy' was flat-out an alien concept until maybe three years ago. Around 2011-2013, I learned about 'joy' and what it was. Interestingly, during the absolute worst time of my entire life, when I had never felt so much despair. And this is coming from a person who has been used to constant despair and the reality of being a small child who wants to commit suicide.

I still don't really get it, 'joy'. I get it on an innate level, but as a life, I have a long way to go and a lot more saturation in 'not bad things' to go before I really 'get it'.

My goal, set in those bad times with those strange, twisted tastes of the 'truly good', what I'm living for, is to expose myself to and absorb as much of that as I possibly can.

I'm not able to think of myself as beautiful. I never have been. Really, all I see is ugly. For years, I thought... this is an ugly person who is just being prettied up by hair. I can use that. At least I have that. As far as I'm concerned, anything 'beautiful' about me is linked to some kind of optical illusion. I'm serious. I have what looks like this cute, coy smile on my face all the time - it's really because my mouth is deformed. I can't really close it properly. (I very nearly had a cleft palate, but it didn't go that far.) I have a massive, massive overbite.

What am I even saying? What's the use of putting this out there?
I have so many personal journals where I've written more or less the same... but better... and with more context included. I can't really handle going back and gathering stuff from those, and making it suitable for this. Right now, the only way for me to manage to get anything posted here is if I completely remove all expectations and standards. "Just post stuff." I hate the chaos of it, the lack of context, but - -

What I'm saying... I guess this: Basically, I'm adjusting.
I'm not used to positive reinforcement or good things and it's going to take a hell of a lot more of it, very gently and quietly, to get me used to it. I'm trying my best with this.

Even as I'm writing this I'm imagining all of the raving-asshole-type answers that it would most likely attract. (And that I'm so used to living with.) I really do not understand kindness at all... At least, kindness aimed at me, that isn't really a sneaky way of getting something from me.
It's shocking to me every time I experience it, I can't really adjust. Coming back from some things... really deep, difficult, old things... it takes a long time. It takes a long time to adjust.