Insecure

Posted on | June 1, 2018 | No Comments

“What’s wrong?” He asked, as I moped through my morning routine of layering product on my skin. “Is it work?”

I shook my head.

“Did I do something?”

I shook my head again, answering in a small voice:

“You don’t want to hear it.”

He sighed. He knew what was wrong with me now… it was the same thing that often was wrong: I was feeling fat.

I know it frustrates him. I know he hates to hear me belittle and talk down to myself. I know that I’m supposed to love myself in all my faults. I know that being the feminist I am, means I’m supposed to love myself even and especially when my body and face isn’t perfectly airbrushed like the cover of a magazine. I know all those things.

And yet I still find myself pinching and pulling at loose skin and rolls of fat where no rolls used to be. I still find myself inspecting cellulite, pulling taut the skin of my thighs and wondering when they became so “other.”

I don’t often recognize my body in the mirror any more. It is soft and pliable. It is rounded in the places society wants straight. It is curved where magazines tell me it should not be. I remember the 22 year old in her white pants and crop top and I wonder where she went and if she’s hiding in the folds that seem to be all I see when I look at myself these days. I wonder if she’s gone forever. I wonder if I’m supposed to want her back or if I’m supposed to age gracefully into my size 10 jeans, pulling them rough over my too wide thighs and squatting down, again and again to be sure they pull all the way up. I wonder if I’m supposed to be content with the body that three pregnancies, two children, and one food-filled divorce left me with.

I want to smile when I see my reflection.

I want to notice the curves and fluffs of my body and appreciate that it is who I am. I want to tell you that I’m learning to appreciate myself as I am, that I feel comfortable in a bathing suit… that I don’t care that there are two numbers in my size. But then… I also want to starve myself for several weeks in the hopes that 20 pounds magically disappear. I don’t know how to tie the two together. Sometimes I think that only thin people can get away with telling the rest of us to “love ourselves.” I see Pink on the Grammys in no make up and sweats telling me that Wild Hearts Can’t be Broken and while part of me says “YASS GIRL” the rest of me says “Easy for you to say, you svelte b!tch.”

Maybe I can be happier if I exercise more.

Maybe I can be happier when I am thinner.

I have always, inexplicably, been happier when I deny myself the things I love… pizza, beer, french fries. Like I’m winning an award for self deprivation. I fear my whole life has been and will be a cycle of “don’t eat too much” and then “whatever, eat it all, fatty” when I can’t seem to reach the figure I want. Because no matter how thin I’ve been in my life, it’s never been thin enough. I will always see myself in comparison to someone else and someone else will always be thinner. Or prettier. Or smarter.

He lets me huff and puff around my make up for a while and then sighs again.

“We’ll join a gym,” he offers, trying to help. “I know you’re happier when you exercise.”

“Yeah… you ARE fat” is what I hear, no matter how many times he says otherwise, and I rip off one shirt to find another… one more forgiving… one that doesn’t stick and cling quite as much to all my insecurities.

Category: about me

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Insecure

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