Well it's been a hot minute since I've written my thoughts down so here goes.
There has been an increasing trend in myself of this complete drop of self confidence and gain of self deprecation and general uncomfortableness with being in my skin, particularly when I'm around other people. I guess it's just strange to me because I haven't really felt this way since high school. Which, by the way, seems like ages ago. So, looking for the source of a lot of these feelings has led me to turn the gaze to all the classic signs of being a twenty-something in this day and age.
I have been reading a lot of Jezebel.com, which for the most part is empowering, informative, and generally just another place on the Internet. However, a lot of topics discussed are on body image and all the complications of how our society handles the female body and I feel I've just started to internalize some of the problems the articles discuss. Which also seems to me to be a mite bit crazy. I mean, the general goal of the writers on the site is to bolster arguments which put women's bodies in a positive light, rather than the negative light I've started to put my own into. What's happening?
I have definitely gained some weight in the past year. My clothes fit tighter, I can't help but notice the cellulite farm my ass and thighs cultivate, my breasts have sagged slightly, and the numbers on the scale don't lie. For the most part I always anticipated this stage in my life. After all, I have an older sister who gets to go through all the stages of growing up first so I can observe and correct my attitude and moves accordingly. How convenient. Except I have fallen into this complete trap of having been much more active in the recent past to becoming much less active and expecting, somehow, to keep a similar figure. It all seems completely irrational when I type it out and re-read it, but that's where I seem to be.
I guess what I'm saying is these recent changes in my body have thrown me into this spinning place of thinking of myself as less than desirable. Whenever I get with a guy I end up feeling like a fucking giant and end up focussing on those feelings instead of the more important tasks at hand. And then afterward I feel like I know that they're thinking about exactly how out of touch I became at some point and how disappointing it was that that happened because their first impression was me being comfortable enough with myself to engage in intimacy that spans beyond what ends up feeling more like going through the motions. I want to come, too! And if I'm not there, that's just not going to happen.
I also find that I haven't been able to voice my feelings to my best friend because I don't see how she could ever understand what it feels like to weigh 200 pounds and feel like a giant around people because she just so petite. I admit that that is also irrational, but play along with me because this is really the first time I've written any of this out, let alone shared with someone. Best friend. She's just so desirable. I've never known her to not have a boyfriend figure - someone who hangs off her and worships the very ground she walks on. Which is understandable because I often worship the same ground. She's kind, thoughtful, quirky, loving, intelligent, perceptive, and all around a genuinely concerned human. However, it's also always her show and she commands attention like no one else I know. And I know she is also a human and feels all the same things I feel which range from comfortable and ready to conquer the world to so insecure and afraid of the judgements of others.
Anyway. I guess the reason I feel like she won't understand is because I briefly broke down to her a little while ago and explained that recently I've had a ton of social anxiety and have been uninterested in hanging out with others because of that anxiety. I then launched into where I felt the anxiety came from which included being so uncomfortable in my own skin that sometimes the only way to explain it is in the phrase about wanting to crawl out of it. I left it at that and didn't really explain that these feelings also include so much judgement on weight gain and self image problems and feeling like a fat pig when out amongst college age folk who wear all these super cute outfits because clothes like that in my size don't exist, or at the least make me look and feel even more ridiculous. I feel she wouldn't understand because her response was to focus more on my feelings of not saying the correct things around people and being so in my head that actualizing my thoughts in words to others often seems trivial. I know, I know, she's my bestie and I should be able to outright say whatever is on my mind...
I guess what I'm getting at is that I understand the only way to lose weight (if that's the origin of these feelings) is to go to the gym I pay monthly for and become active again and not eat whatever because it feels good. I like to think I have the healthiest relationship with food out of my immediate family members, but maybe that's just not true anymore. I've always been a stress eater but I've also always recognized the way that food actually makes me feel and adjusted my diet (for lack of a better term) accordingly. Maybe recently I haven't been doing that type of regulation as well, though, and it's time to take that control again instead of eating out of convenience and boredom. Some days it just feel literally impossible to give that much of a fuck, though. Ugh. I want to drink beer and be a kid and eat pizza and hamburgers and also have a healthy self image and not be held back in my interactions with people based on how only I perceive the situation. I want my clothes to hang off my body in a way that doesn't make me feel like I need to adjust something every five seconds and to feel comfortable being naked around people again - I used to nude model for fuck's sake! And I know exactly where all of that begins so why can't I just grab hold of that and not have entire months where the overarching theme is giving absolutely zero fucks and justifying my actions and choices through claiming to be some sort of empowered woman who doesn't need all the attention from the opposite sex. How can it not all just catch up with you eventually?
Thanks for seeing me through that one. A lot of this post was rhetorical venting so don't worry about sage advice - I fully recognize how much if this exists solely in my head. It's good for me to write these things so I can look back and learn from my emotions that I express in the moment of feeling them. That sounded super lame. I'm done. |
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