Acceptable. February 28, 2008
Posted by Jae in Aimless Conversation, Body Image.Tags: acceptance, Body Image
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This morning I weighed myself and found that I was three pounds above what I thought my set point would be. I didn’t freak out. I didn’t skip breakfast. I didn’t run myself ragged on the treadmill. But I did feel just a little disappointed.
And I hate that I did. I want to be okay with the number on the scale. I want to be so okay with it that I don’t even bother to check it. The problem is that I still can’t shake the idea that there is a certain point where, for me, weight gain will cease to be acceptable. At my highest weight, I wasn’t treating my body well. I ate mostly junk food, and since I was always about to start another diet, I often binged because I believed every time I did it would truly be the last time. And I never exercised. When I decided to give up my dieting and disordered eating, I knew I would probably gain some weight and I accepted that. Now though…now I’m only 25 pounds away from my highest weight and I’m afraid that I might end up back there, and as much as I hate to admit it, I don’t want to.
I don’t have very many good memories from that time in my life; I was anxious, unsure, and I hated myself. I know in reality that those things were not caused by my weight, on some level I think I knew that back then, but it was so much easier to blame my fat hips than to face my real problems. And even though I’ve grown so much since then, somehow, looking at the scale, I feel as though I’m just 25 pounds away from being that same scared, self-loathing, little girl.
Logic tells me that I’m wrong, that those things had nothing to do with my body. At my heaviest I imagined that a size 14 would be all I would need to be totally content with myself and with my life, but the truth was that I hated myself just as much once I got there. I never enjoyed that size 14 body; I called it hideous and disgusting on an hourly basis. If anything, I’m happier with myself and my life now at a size 18, than I’ve ever been in my life. But somehow it still feels unacceptable to go back.
I know that this is all part of the struggle and that I will eventually get to a place where I feel secure enough to know that all the things I love won’t slip away if I have to go up a jeans size, but until then? How do you trust in something you can’t even imagine?
Loserish. February 4, 2008
Posted by Jae in Aimless Conversation.Tags: ramblings
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So if you’re reading this blog, you can see I’ve been gone for awhile. Where did I go? Nowhere really, just away from blogging. The real reason is probably that I feel like I’ve got nothing interesting to say. I read so many wonderful blogs that make me put on my thinking cap, shed tears of joy, anger, and frustration, and make me laugh ‘til I cry, that I wonder why the blogosphere needs one more voice…especially if that voice isn’t anything special.
Because in spite of being a part of a generation that is frequently painted as a very self-important bunch, I’ve never felt that way. I’m really no different and no better than most people. I’m not the smartest or the most talented. I’m not the prettiest or the friendliest. I’m not the most hard-working or ambitious. I’m just little ol’ go-about-your-business-there’s-nothing-to-see-here me. And while I suppose this makes me down-to-earth, sometimes I wonder if it also isn’t biting me in the ass.
If you don’t see yourself as anything special, you can convince yourself there isn’t much point in anything. If I’m not the most cutting-edge, the most thought-provoking, why bother to blog? If I’m not the smartest or the most ambitious, why try out for that promotion? If I’m not the prettiest or the most socially adept, why bother to smile at the cute guy who works next door? It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. Once you’ve convinced yourself that you’re a nondescript human being, that’s exactly what you become; it becomes meaningless to do anything above surviving.
And that was me for a long time. Hell, if I’m being honest, it’s me right now if I don’t fight those urges. Once I decided to stop dieting and started trying to accept my body I felt like part of me came alive. For the first time I considered myself to be worthwhile just the way I was. I didn’t need to be the best anything; I was good enough simply the way I was. And I was floating on fucking air; every step was a joy. My mistake was expecting that effortless sense of well-being to last without any coaching from me.
These past few months I’ve done a lot of fighting, with myself and with others, to figure out what I was worth. I’ve met with resistance from the nasty voices in my head, and from a person I loved. One of my best friends and I came to blows over her vision of who I was, and she said some terrible things. When I stood up for myself and told her that I couldn’t have her in my life if she believed those things, if she would only love me if I lived my life her way, she told me she hated the person who I have become. Of course it hurt me, and knocked me off my feet. It made me wonder if I am indeed doing the right thing or if in trying to accept (and even love) not just my body, but myself, I am somehow settling for less. Because life is supposed to be about growth and change and becoming the best person you can possibly be…or at least, that’s what I’ve always been lead to believe: that somewhere out there, if I just did everything right, I would find a better version of myself.
But then I realized, that’s the same dream I’ve been chasing my whole life. Being thinner, being more organized, being more ambitious at work, more vocal at school, more bubbly at parties…those were the keys to transforming myself into the better me and making sure the loser me never saw the light of day again. The problem though, was that once I let go of being the better me I never bothered to truly tell myself that there never was a loser me.
I’m saying it now though: there is no loser me. I may not be the best anything, but I’m me and I am pretty damn awesome. And while saying it doesn’t change anything, it is a start. Once the truth is out there, it is hard to run away from it.
Version 2.0 October 24, 2007
Posted by Jae in Aimless Conversation, Me, myself, and I.Tags: change, dexter, friends, thoughts
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Every Sunday, one of my best friends comes over for our weekly date with the dark and dangerous <i>Dexter</i>*. It’s only been going on for a couple of weeks now, but I really look forward to it, not just because I’m addicted to this show, but because it feels like our time. We often are lost to each other, even though we are such good friends, because of the demands on our time, but now we have this one night a week where we can sit together and talk and squee over Michael C. Hall.
This week as I listened to her talk about her life and how lucky she is to have such caring friends, I realized something: amongst all my close friends, I am the caretaker. When something goes horribly, terribly, wrong I strap on my cape (metaphorically of course…I don’t actually own a cape…*looks around nervously*) and try to make things right. I never made the decision to do this; it just seems to come naturally to me. Whenever one of my friends is breaking up with their significant other or having trouble at work, I am the one they come to looking for answers or an understanding ear. And I love being there for them. Their problems become my problems, and there are no words for the joy it brings me to see them work out what troubles them.
Unfortunately, for all these bright sides though, there is a dark side and that is that sometimes it can be easy to forget that my own soul needs the occasional bit of maintenance. Sometimes this makes me angry at my friends; yesterday though, it made me a little angry at myself. Because, though I am willing to walk on broken glass to help a friend, I often tell myself that I do not require that kind of effort–not from my friends and certainly not from myself. But I do. I might hate that I do (because I have a problem needing anyone or anything), but that doesn’t change the fact that I have certain needs. I need love. I need respect. I need to be shown compassion and patience. And I can’t expect that everything in my life will go smoothly whether or not I have them.
When I decided that perhaps it was time to jump off the crazy-diet train and start working on loving and accepting myself I never really bothered to go through with the daily business of change, but I think perhaps that it’s time I start.
*If you read the books or watch the show, you know it’s all about the alliteration.
