Marketing Through Pain

I haven't bought any online courses, coaching programs, or self-help products in Russian for over a year now.And in other languages? Almost the same. Just books, in-person trainings, and live workshops. Plus, I've spent the past year studying at a somatic academy.

A recent visit to a fine art gallery in Venice — specifically, an exhibition about the body — stirred up a few thoughts I want to share.

Sharing thoughts is such a strange ritual, isn’t it? You didn’t ask me to. You don’t exactly need this. You probably have a million other things to do. And yet — here you are, reading this. Voluntarily (?)

For a long time, I was hooked. Hooked on the idea that something was wrong with me. That I needed to fix myself. Take that course. Learn those skills. Upgrade. Transform. Become someone entirely different — someone acceptable, perfect, productive.

Only then, I thought, would I deserve to live.

I bought into those programs because it hurt so much to be myself. And I was promised I could become her — the ideal version, sold by the next self-styled guru.

Some part of me saw through it. But there was also a little girl inside, desperate to belong, desperate enough to give up almost anything.

I’m not going to say I’m “healed.”How could I be, when perfectly contoured eyes keep staring at me from every screen, whispering: Buy this eyeliner. This mascara. You deserve it.

But I don't deserve that.I don’t deserve to be constantly objectified, manipulated, or turned into a product.I don’t deserve to have my life framed as a glitchy code in need of endless fixes and updates.

I’m tired. And from that tiredness, I’m slowly learning to tear myself apart a little less. To acknowledge my limits. To allow myself to be messy. To be too much or not enough. To be unattractive, unsuccessful, inconvenient.

But to be myself.