I have, for a long time, like most girls, struggled with my appearance. I was always too fat and didn't have the defined chin and cheek bones I craved. My true bane, though, has always been my hair. I decided that this year would be the year that I would really tackle my insecurities and do something I have always wanted to do, so on January 1st I shaved my head. This year, I decided, would be the year that my self-loathing would stop. After all, I have had a daughter and it would break my heart to hear her say things about herself that I say about me. I need to show her and my son the way. My hubby also reminds me that it would be good for him too. So, I have set out on my adventure of self-acceptance.
I would love to proclaim that I am well on my way and that I am learning to "inhabit" my body. I would love to say I have found a way to accept my thin and lifeless hair, but indeed I feel as far from these things as ever before. I feel frustrated that I can't accept what God has given me and just say thank you. I wish I could not think about it.
Since having had my daughter I have not lost a single kilo, and will not be able to try until she is fully weaned. On some level I am thankful to have this experience as a larger person. I realize that this is God's gift to me to be less judgmental and to learn to accept this gift of my body, the one that He chose to give me. But at the same time, often I just feel like I am wearing a fat suit. I hate dressing it everyday, I despise buying clothes that fit it, and I hate looking at it in the mirror or pictures. I wonder if this is how all overweight people view themselves. Trapped in a body that does not represent them. Somehow I am determined to find a way to make my fat suit fit me, without waiting to lose the weight.
So, although having no hair has allowed me a slight reprieve from the hair issue (which will be sure to resurface in a few months though I feel fabulous without it now), I can't seem to leave my fat suit behind...and it certainly won't shave off on our budget. I'm not really sure that I want it to. Otherwise how will I ever hold someone's hand as they go through the journey of self-inhabiting?
3 comments:
I love you Beek! Thanks for your thoughts...
I have the same thoughts although stupidly at this stage I am not wearing my fat suit. I have many times, for many years in the past though. I feel as I have obtained this 'smaller suit' through no measure of effort (other than being sick 9 months during pregnancy) that I somehow don't seem to deserve it, nor should I be rejoicing in it. I have also discovered that all those years I imagined that if I was just a size 12 then I would be happy and my issues would dissolve along with my fat. Nothing however has changed, other than my dress size. No issues were resolved, nothing else changed, I am just a smaller version of myself.
I feel the need to maintain it now, not saying I am ungrateful for it, as I am. But having a smaller dress size isnt as empowering as I imagined it would be and so I am now struggling to try and work out how to tackle the real issues that I have been hiding behind the dieting farce all these years.
I hope that your journey to overcoming your inhibitions continues to move along until they are one day a distant memory. For what it is worth, I know we have only met a few times, and I know mostly of you through a mutual lovely friend, I feel that you are a lovely person, incredibly pretty and incredibly caring :) (and you have awesomely cute children :) )
I hope you dont mind but I have tagged you too :) you aren't obliged to do it though :)
From a semi-permanent fat suit dweller I can safely tell you that most days it’s easier to despise the skin your in than accept the you that’s sitting beneath it.
Please, if you don’t mind, allow me to share this with you in a different form. And I hope, maybe, you will see that we are feeling our way through this journey right there with ya.
On my knees, my head is bowed.
Thoughts im thinking oh so loud.
Wants and needs, future dreamy.
Present time just don’t fulfil me.
Silent torture, coming dread.
All these feelings in my head.
Outside views can be appealing,
But what is it your skins concealing?
Hatred? Confusion? Hurt?
Still thinking…
A feeling as though you are sinking.
The horizon is gone, the reality hits you.
How much more do I have to go through;
to get to a place where I look in the mirror
seeing a me I appeal to thats thinner?
If only these eyes would open instead
Or sitting so stuck and lost in my head.
Open my mind to the answers I seek,
Then maybe I won’t feel so frail and weak.
I can move on and hold my head high,
Knowing the difference between truth and lie.
Maybe one day, on my knees, head bowed
The answers I seek will finally be found.
(Written 2004)
This is the accidental follow up I wrote over a year later :)
I glance into the mirror and I really see my face,
Not two conflicting images being me in someone’s place.
It’s me inside this skin and this shell it covers me.
The two beings somehow formed the whole person that you see.
Forever it was my brain trapped in someone else head.
I’d hide in someone else’s eyes and take their form instead.
To hate the shell was fine because the outsides only skin.
The thing that people couldn’t see was the me trapped within.
But now a time has come and gone and borders fade away.
United here I stand before you on this very day.
No more thinking of the person I SHOULD be,
but instead getting better at simply being me.
Simple, yet freeing :)
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