Sometimes it's seems easier to avoid the truth, to hide it and ignore it. Even if it means living with the fear of discovery for the rest of your life. As long as you don't acknowledge what is REALLY going on in your life, you don't have to risk facing criticism or feeling vulnerable. In this way of life your lies are your defense. Sure you can stand up to "haters" as long as they don't know the REAL you. But what happens when what they are criticizing is the truth?
Ok what the hell am I talking about? Well, for many many years now I've been walking around with a little extra weight. I could hide it enough to call myself "thick" or "shapely", and for that matter other people would look at me and say "You're not that fat."..good enough. Not only was I fine living in my lie, but I was also lucky enough to occasionally receive confirmation that I didn't really have anything to worry about. Even though everything seemed fine and manageable, the lies that covered up the truth was something like a small water balloon trying to contain a gallon of water, anything close to the truth coming out of someone else's mouth would just shatter me. Half of the time was spent trying hard not to think about my expanding waistline, the other half was spent checking the eyes of other people to see if they could see past all my mirror tricks.
What a way to live right? Everyday always worrying about being exposed, and all over something so simple.
Fast forward a few years to 2012 and it's my wedding day and I'm bigger than ever. I promised that I would FINALLY get in shape for my wedding day, but sadly it just didn't happen. Why? Well, I really did try...at first, but then the shame of having to acknowledge how far I had let myself go, and the fact that in order to fix the problem I had to share it, in one way or another, with other people was enough to depress me into just being depressed about the whole situation. It was all very mopey and emotionally.
2013 saw no improvements either, but toward the end of the year I did manage to get my head unstuck from the crack of my ass long enough to think about why I've been overweight for so long. What I wrote above is pretty much what I came up with and following a short, soft crying session I finally decided that I didn't want to feel like that anymore. Self-consciousness, sadness, frustration, shame ect... all the unnecessarily complicated baddy emotions. So after I dried my eyes, I listed out (verbally) all the negative things about myself that made me live in fear of being discovered, and followed that with ..."and so what?" My poor husband thought I was having an emotional breakdown, but really it was more of a release because in the end; who am I hiding from? And why? The only person that can live my life is myself, and being self-conscious and ashamed infers that you care about what other people, who cannot live your life, have to say about what you are doing and who you are.
The bottom line is this:
I'm not perfect...so what. I'm socially awkward...so what. I'm messy...so what. I'm goofy...so what. I'm habitually late..so what. I wake up ugly...so what. My job is ordinary....so what. And finally;
I'm fat...so the fuck what.
All these things are a part of who I am. You can love it, or you can leave it.
