On weight loss...
Sep. 19th, 2007 01:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hippybngstockngI've always known my neighbour Nina to be an intelligent woman who isn't afraid to ask really blunt, honest questions, but yesterday she gained a high level of respect in my mind that I reserve for only a very few people that I recognize as masters of investigating someone's true nature. I had just come back from downtown Kitchener where I'd had my wedding ring resized, 2.25 sizes smaller to account for my dropping at least 100 pounds since the last time it was sized. I walked up to the elementary school to stand with the other parents waiting for their kids to emerge, fingering my "new" ring, and feeling how weird the difference was. It took a lot of time for the size to become a problem, and in the middle term I had become quite accustomed to fiddling and playing with it in the context of it being too large on my finger. This felt like an entirely new ring even though I inspected it closely to make sure it was the same. I was so distracted that I didn't notice Nina standing there at first so it took me a moment to walk over and say hello. The first thing she said to me after we finished our greetings was the magical question I never knew I wanted to hear someone ask so badly... "You've been shrinking quite a bit, how do you feel about that?"
It was so wondrous and shocking to have someone NOT launch into a wave of compliments about the differences in my appearance, to NOT immediately presume it was my life-long fat-girl dream to be thin, and not assume that I was blissful about it. I never deny that it has been pleasing to become smaller in many ways, so usually I just stick to how annoying it was to have to replace all the amazingly hot fat clothes I'd spent oodles of money on at a time when I basically have none at all. The only consolation there is the fact that Value Village finally has more to offer me now, so I usually tell people how much fun I've had rediscovering thrift stores. To reward Nina for the insightful question I gave her the answers I save for my closest friends, that it's actually been really weird, that it's required a lot of mental adjustments for me, that I'm not nearly as ok about it as I might seem sometimes...
The hell you say? No, really. There are still some down sides.
No one but the fat people out there probably understand me when I say that because nobody but fat people really know what it's like to be fat. You can't tell me that every fat person's ultimate desire is to be thin unless you asked them all, and something tells me you just haven't had that much time on your hands. It bothers me when I hear people like Oprah talk about how even though a fat person says they're comfortable being fat that there is always a little person on the inside just screaming to be thin. That might be true of a lot of fat people, but certainly not all of them, and there is a lot of grey in the varieties of the little voices that might exist in the heads in between the two extremes. I imagine that as in all things it is different for every person.
For me the discomfort comes from being raised by a dieting obsessed mother from an extremely image conscious family. She meant everything she inflicted on me to be "for my own good", but in the end there's really nothing more damaging to a little girl's experience with eating than having your mother count every calorie that goes into your mouth as well as hers, out loud, frequently in public, with a long running commentary about how you are clearly setting yourself up to fail by not doing every little thing she says. I was probably a compulsive eater by the time I was out of elementary school, since I know I vividly remember sneaking sweets and other food into the house in my early teens. When I was finally free from my mother and her diet craziness, like so many other fat girls I know, I went on the binge to end all binges. On my own-some I finally got to eat what I wanted, when I wanted, as much as I wanted, and as many times more as I wanted to as well. I gained at least 30 pounds that first year of college, lost that, then gained that plus another 70 the following year and just kept it.
In any other world this might have been the lowest point of a suicidal spin of doom, but I was deeply embedded in the way-left liberal college that is Hampshire, and fat acceptance was certainly among the many issues on the menu there. I was in the right place to deal with myself because instead of being encouraged to get all doomy about it, I actually had a lot of tools and folks around to help me embrace it. In a lot of ways I was more comfortable as a fat person. It cut through the field of random icky guys who used to hit on me and reduced it to the few folks who actually like a girl for who she is inside AND out, or at least those who can appreciate a nice round ass. Plus the huge boobs were an awesome bonus. I didn't seem to notice any drop-off in the amount of play I got, though sometimes it took a little longer to work my way into the arms of some of my more vain lovers, and those people usually didn't last. Things like that hurt, but I grew to understand them too.
I grew to have a lot of understanding and sympathy and especially appreciation for all kinds of different bodies and appearances, something I'd been hungry for throughout my childhood as my relatives would neurotically try to enforce a conformist attitude on my eccentricities. I fully and finally rejected the world of conformists, and took on a new attitude. I was me, still nice and sweet and cute and all that, but also quite weird. Deal with me or don't. I don't care. It's worked for me, and I stick with it. I change for me, or people I love because it's important, and that will always be the case because any time I try to do it any other way I fail. I can't be someone else, I can't change in ways I don't want for other people, it's just too hard and I get sad and lose myself in the process. I was happy with myself as a size 24, and I had no plans to change that. I built myself a fabulous wardrobe that made me feel sexy and went on with my life like any person should.
So what changed then? Well, that's also complex. It wasn't my need to either be fat or thin, really, it was my need to no longer be so completely depressed. I finally got it hammered through my very thick skull that I was slowly killing myself with my persistant depression, letting it run every aspect of me and my life, oozing into the lives of others and bringing them down with me. I was a monster to live with, and it needed to stop. I hated myself. I didn't want to be healthy, I wanted to stop the associated pain that goes along with feeling constantly sad, and I stopped it with lots of things that go in my mouth, so being fat was really just a side effect. It just happened to be the most major side effect of the thing that really was kinda killing me. I wasn't morbidly obese, but I was morbidly unhealthy about everything. I knew all of this all along, but it still required that I had to care enough about it to want to change it since I already knew how hard that kind of change is. I loved my son and my husband enough to believe it was worth changing for them, since they loved me so much, it was dumb of me to assume I would never grow to love myself too. I had never really tried except in my head. It took realizing that to make the changes in my behaviour possible.
It helped that we were living in Toronto and I no longer had use of my car for getting groceries. Taking cabs was getting expensive. Hauling up to 70 pounds of groceries for 2 kilometres will do wonders for your muscles. The increased amount of physical exertion it required finally made it clear to me how weak I'd let myself become, and also that it could feel good to use my body to do difficult things, not as good as chocolate maybe, but still good in many ways. I'd never had a good relationship with anything body related, especially gym class, so the whole concept of exercise was usually quite lost on me. I knew better than to throw myself into working out though, so I didn't and I haven't and I won't, since I'm just not in the place that will let me mindless huff and puff away in a room full of other sweaty adults doing the same thing just yet. I'll stick to walking and bike rides, since those include fresh air and trees, both of which I like much better than sweaty puffing adults.
I also changed my relationship with food in a lot of important ways. I knew my negative attitude toward vegetables was always my biggest downfall so it occurred to me that I needed to make friends with them somehow. I started trying new things and cooking old things I used to only sort of like in different ways until I started to find things I enjoyed. The more vegetables and actual FOOD I was eating, the less I was eating the things I used to eat more of, things loaded to the ground with refined sugar which I had also noticed was increasing my depression. The more I did all that the more I noticed my depression melting away. I barely noticed the weight beginning to melt away right along with it until my clothing started to fall off.
So why did that make me a tiny bit sad you ask? At the time we had just lost the big job that had brought us to Toronto in the first place, and we had no money for me to suddenly go out and start my wardrobe over again. In the end I managed to hobble along with some things I got from others, doing a lot of laundry, and probably as many as 150 safety pins. By the time we moved to Waterloo the safety pins were no longer cutting the mustard, but thankfully we'd gotten the job that brought us to Waterloo so I hit the Value Village one day and rediscovered clothing that fit, and how sexy that could make a girl feel. But it came with that touch of resentment I still feel toward the clothing industry. Why are so many fat girls still denied so much sexy when they have at least 30 times as much as a girl who's a size 3. Why are sensuous curves still hidden under tents? Why are fabulous boobs disguised as glittering billboards for gardening? Why is lumpy flannel always the preferred choice to silky cling? I was still quite angry about that, angry at how easy it suddenly was to find the things I like (and angry that I couldn't afford most of them), and angry as hell remembering all the time, pain sweat, effort, expense and serious hassle it used to take, and suddenly I felt like if I said any of this out loud all the fat girls would probably all turn on me anyway because I had clearly turned my back on them by becoming thin. I began to worry I would end up like some of Oprah's cast of thin-crusading guests, former happy fat girls who lost all their best fat girlfriends because they were no longer fat. I didn't want to say what I was thinking out loud because I knew what it would have sounded like in my ears when I was still 250. I just kept my mouth shut.
But as time marches on it just gets a little weirder the more weight I lose. I'm never offended when people want to tell me how hot I look, that would also be hellishly dumb of me, but in the small dark corner of my brain that remembers the difference of the compliments I would get when I was fat I am always looking for subtext, trying to determine which kind of compliment it really is, wondering what kind of change it might have on the relationship I have with that person. With women especially I find myself worry-filled at times. I can sense the conscious and unconscious resentment some people have for me. I sympathize with them. I kind of resent myself too, in the way only a fat girl could resent me, and I'm never sure anyone will believe me when I tell them this, but it's true... It still sounds like bragging when I say it out loud though, and makes me want to poke myself in the eye.
So believe me when I say I was overjoyed to finally be asked how I felt, instead of feeling like I was being told how I should feel. I know I should feel proud, and I do, but not for being thin. I feel proud for deciding I was worth saving. I feel proud for the ways in which I've finally decided to love myself for my own sake, and for my family's sake. I know being thin should make me happy and it does, but not just for the fact of looking thin. I am happy that I can sit with my legs crossed in front of me in a chair, and that it's indeed so easy to find clothing when I need to, and all the myriad other things that are made easier and cheaper by being of an average size. And most important of all I absolutely know I should enjoy the attention I get for being a smoking hot girl, and believe me I do because I know that I am a smoking hot girl, and that I do deserve all the attention I get. I just can't help but still hurt just a little for the fat girl I used to be, for all the incredibly hot sexy fat girls I know who don't get the same kind of attention but so richly deserve it, most of them far more than I do. I am even a tiny bit sadder for all the thin girls who've made themselves sick with grief and hassle in order to stay thin because they don't understand that there is also joy in being fat, even just a little. It was joyful to me to be allowed to miss it openly for once. I finally got to hear myself say, "I was fat for a long time, and I was at peace with it, and sometimes I feel like no one understands that, and it's weird."
I miss my big breasts. I miss large parts of my hips, and when I sit on hard chairs I miss big hunks of my ass. I miss being smooth and round all over, I stick out in places I don't even remember having. I have wrinkles where wrinkles ought not be, and it's creepifying. I know that a bunch of this might go away with time, but sometimes the creepy is too creepy and I wish the weight was back just so I could look at myself naked more easily. I think I looked better smooth and soft. Did I forget to mention the enormous boobs? Gods how I miss them. I don't want to go back to being unhealthy or sad to get them back, but I do find myself wishing openly that there was such a thing as a cheap, non-porno breast implant.
However, most of all I think I missed getting to be proud of myself as a fat girl. Even though I was terribly sad about myself in lots of ways, being fat wasn't usually one of them. I took great joy in life, still doing all the things the thin girls do, things that many fat girls won't because they can't bring themselves to believe they deserve the same joys that thin people take for granted. I can't say it didn't also give me a little joy to fly in the face of the thin people who presumed I should be hiding myself in a dark room with a bag of M&M's by showing them that a fat person can and should be as committed to living life to the fullest as they are. I never shied away from eating a large meal in public, dancing in a crowd, or dressing any way I damn well wanted to despite society's need to try to tell me I shouldn't. Nina showed me how totally I had hidden that yesterday by giving it back to me. I share all this with you today as my way of saying thanks. Thanks to her, but also thanks to all of you friends of mine who have been proud of me all along, not just for being hot but also smart enough to see that I was killing myself, and proud of me for turning all that around. I really appreciate it more than you know. I didn't go on this long crazy ramble to make you feel bad for complimenting me because I enjoy it far too much, and I certainly don't want you to stop saying nice things or telling me I'm hot! I just came to realize that I've also been holding out on all of you, and that there's no good reason for it, no reason people shouldn't also know about the sad parts of it, I was just lacking the proper responses in my head. It's felt wrong to not share it, and getting those words back means a bunch to me.
It was so wondrous and shocking to have someone NOT launch into a wave of compliments about the differences in my appearance, to NOT immediately presume it was my life-long fat-girl dream to be thin, and not assume that I was blissful about it. I never deny that it has been pleasing to become smaller in many ways, so usually I just stick to how annoying it was to have to replace all the amazingly hot fat clothes I'd spent oodles of money on at a time when I basically have none at all. The only consolation there is the fact that Value Village finally has more to offer me now, so I usually tell people how much fun I've had rediscovering thrift stores. To reward Nina for the insightful question I gave her the answers I save for my closest friends, that it's actually been really weird, that it's required a lot of mental adjustments for me, that I'm not nearly as ok about it as I might seem sometimes...
The hell you say? No, really. There are still some down sides.
No one but the fat people out there probably understand me when I say that because nobody but fat people really know what it's like to be fat. You can't tell me that every fat person's ultimate desire is to be thin unless you asked them all, and something tells me you just haven't had that much time on your hands. It bothers me when I hear people like Oprah talk about how even though a fat person says they're comfortable being fat that there is always a little person on the inside just screaming to be thin. That might be true of a lot of fat people, but certainly not all of them, and there is a lot of grey in the varieties of the little voices that might exist in the heads in between the two extremes. I imagine that as in all things it is different for every person.
For me the discomfort comes from being raised by a dieting obsessed mother from an extremely image conscious family. She meant everything she inflicted on me to be "for my own good", but in the end there's really nothing more damaging to a little girl's experience with eating than having your mother count every calorie that goes into your mouth as well as hers, out loud, frequently in public, with a long running commentary about how you are clearly setting yourself up to fail by not doing every little thing she says. I was probably a compulsive eater by the time I was out of elementary school, since I know I vividly remember sneaking sweets and other food into the house in my early teens. When I was finally free from my mother and her diet craziness, like so many other fat girls I know, I went on the binge to end all binges. On my own-some I finally got to eat what I wanted, when I wanted, as much as I wanted, and as many times more as I wanted to as well. I gained at least 30 pounds that first year of college, lost that, then gained that plus another 70 the following year and just kept it.
In any other world this might have been the lowest point of a suicidal spin of doom, but I was deeply embedded in the way-left liberal college that is Hampshire, and fat acceptance was certainly among the many issues on the menu there. I was in the right place to deal with myself because instead of being encouraged to get all doomy about it, I actually had a lot of tools and folks around to help me embrace it. In a lot of ways I was more comfortable as a fat person. It cut through the field of random icky guys who used to hit on me and reduced it to the few folks who actually like a girl for who she is inside AND out, or at least those who can appreciate a nice round ass. Plus the huge boobs were an awesome bonus. I didn't seem to notice any drop-off in the amount of play I got, though sometimes it took a little longer to work my way into the arms of some of my more vain lovers, and those people usually didn't last. Things like that hurt, but I grew to understand them too.
I grew to have a lot of understanding and sympathy and especially appreciation for all kinds of different bodies and appearances, something I'd been hungry for throughout my childhood as my relatives would neurotically try to enforce a conformist attitude on my eccentricities. I fully and finally rejected the world of conformists, and took on a new attitude. I was me, still nice and sweet and cute and all that, but also quite weird. Deal with me or don't. I don't care. It's worked for me, and I stick with it. I change for me, or people I love because it's important, and that will always be the case because any time I try to do it any other way I fail. I can't be someone else, I can't change in ways I don't want for other people, it's just too hard and I get sad and lose myself in the process. I was happy with myself as a size 24, and I had no plans to change that. I built myself a fabulous wardrobe that made me feel sexy and went on with my life like any person should.
So what changed then? Well, that's also complex. It wasn't my need to either be fat or thin, really, it was my need to no longer be so completely depressed. I finally got it hammered through my very thick skull that I was slowly killing myself with my persistant depression, letting it run every aspect of me and my life, oozing into the lives of others and bringing them down with me. I was a monster to live with, and it needed to stop. I hated myself. I didn't want to be healthy, I wanted to stop the associated pain that goes along with feeling constantly sad, and I stopped it with lots of things that go in my mouth, so being fat was really just a side effect. It just happened to be the most major side effect of the thing that really was kinda killing me. I wasn't morbidly obese, but I was morbidly unhealthy about everything. I knew all of this all along, but it still required that I had to care enough about it to want to change it since I already knew how hard that kind of change is. I loved my son and my husband enough to believe it was worth changing for them, since they loved me so much, it was dumb of me to assume I would never grow to love myself too. I had never really tried except in my head. It took realizing that to make the changes in my behaviour possible.
It helped that we were living in Toronto and I no longer had use of my car for getting groceries. Taking cabs was getting expensive. Hauling up to 70 pounds of groceries for 2 kilometres will do wonders for your muscles. The increased amount of physical exertion it required finally made it clear to me how weak I'd let myself become, and also that it could feel good to use my body to do difficult things, not as good as chocolate maybe, but still good in many ways. I'd never had a good relationship with anything body related, especially gym class, so the whole concept of exercise was usually quite lost on me. I knew better than to throw myself into working out though, so I didn't and I haven't and I won't, since I'm just not in the place that will let me mindless huff and puff away in a room full of other sweaty adults doing the same thing just yet. I'll stick to walking and bike rides, since those include fresh air and trees, both of which I like much better than sweaty puffing adults.
I also changed my relationship with food in a lot of important ways. I knew my negative attitude toward vegetables was always my biggest downfall so it occurred to me that I needed to make friends with them somehow. I started trying new things and cooking old things I used to only sort of like in different ways until I started to find things I enjoyed. The more vegetables and actual FOOD I was eating, the less I was eating the things I used to eat more of, things loaded to the ground with refined sugar which I had also noticed was increasing my depression. The more I did all that the more I noticed my depression melting away. I barely noticed the weight beginning to melt away right along with it until my clothing started to fall off.
So why did that make me a tiny bit sad you ask? At the time we had just lost the big job that had brought us to Toronto in the first place, and we had no money for me to suddenly go out and start my wardrobe over again. In the end I managed to hobble along with some things I got from others, doing a lot of laundry, and probably as many as 150 safety pins. By the time we moved to Waterloo the safety pins were no longer cutting the mustard, but thankfully we'd gotten the job that brought us to Waterloo so I hit the Value Village one day and rediscovered clothing that fit, and how sexy that could make a girl feel. But it came with that touch of resentment I still feel toward the clothing industry. Why are so many fat girls still denied so much sexy when they have at least 30 times as much as a girl who's a size 3. Why are sensuous curves still hidden under tents? Why are fabulous boobs disguised as glittering billboards for gardening? Why is lumpy flannel always the preferred choice to silky cling? I was still quite angry about that, angry at how easy it suddenly was to find the things I like (and angry that I couldn't afford most of them), and angry as hell remembering all the time, pain sweat, effort, expense and serious hassle it used to take, and suddenly I felt like if I said any of this out loud all the fat girls would probably all turn on me anyway because I had clearly turned my back on them by becoming thin. I began to worry I would end up like some of Oprah's cast of thin-crusading guests, former happy fat girls who lost all their best fat girlfriends because they were no longer fat. I didn't want to say what I was thinking out loud because I knew what it would have sounded like in my ears when I was still 250. I just kept my mouth shut.
But as time marches on it just gets a little weirder the more weight I lose. I'm never offended when people want to tell me how hot I look, that would also be hellishly dumb of me, but in the small dark corner of my brain that remembers the difference of the compliments I would get when I was fat I am always looking for subtext, trying to determine which kind of compliment it really is, wondering what kind of change it might have on the relationship I have with that person. With women especially I find myself worry-filled at times. I can sense the conscious and unconscious resentment some people have for me. I sympathize with them. I kind of resent myself too, in the way only a fat girl could resent me, and I'm never sure anyone will believe me when I tell them this, but it's true... It still sounds like bragging when I say it out loud though, and makes me want to poke myself in the eye.
So believe me when I say I was overjoyed to finally be asked how I felt, instead of feeling like I was being told how I should feel. I know I should feel proud, and I do, but not for being thin. I feel proud for deciding I was worth saving. I feel proud for the ways in which I've finally decided to love myself for my own sake, and for my family's sake. I know being thin should make me happy and it does, but not just for the fact of looking thin. I am happy that I can sit with my legs crossed in front of me in a chair, and that it's indeed so easy to find clothing when I need to, and all the myriad other things that are made easier and cheaper by being of an average size. And most important of all I absolutely know I should enjoy the attention I get for being a smoking hot girl, and believe me I do because I know that I am a smoking hot girl, and that I do deserve all the attention I get. I just can't help but still hurt just a little for the fat girl I used to be, for all the incredibly hot sexy fat girls I know who don't get the same kind of attention but so richly deserve it, most of them far more than I do. I am even a tiny bit sadder for all the thin girls who've made themselves sick with grief and hassle in order to stay thin because they don't understand that there is also joy in being fat, even just a little. It was joyful to me to be allowed to miss it openly for once. I finally got to hear myself say, "I was fat for a long time, and I was at peace with it, and sometimes I feel like no one understands that, and it's weird."
I miss my big breasts. I miss large parts of my hips, and when I sit on hard chairs I miss big hunks of my ass. I miss being smooth and round all over, I stick out in places I don't even remember having. I have wrinkles where wrinkles ought not be, and it's creepifying. I know that a bunch of this might go away with time, but sometimes the creepy is too creepy and I wish the weight was back just so I could look at myself naked more easily. I think I looked better smooth and soft. Did I forget to mention the enormous boobs? Gods how I miss them. I don't want to go back to being unhealthy or sad to get them back, but I do find myself wishing openly that there was such a thing as a cheap, non-porno breast implant.
However, most of all I think I missed getting to be proud of myself as a fat girl. Even though I was terribly sad about myself in lots of ways, being fat wasn't usually one of them. I took great joy in life, still doing all the things the thin girls do, things that many fat girls won't because they can't bring themselves to believe they deserve the same joys that thin people take for granted. I can't say it didn't also give me a little joy to fly in the face of the thin people who presumed I should be hiding myself in a dark room with a bag of M&M's by showing them that a fat person can and should be as committed to living life to the fullest as they are. I never shied away from eating a large meal in public, dancing in a crowd, or dressing any way I damn well wanted to despite society's need to try to tell me I shouldn't. Nina showed me how totally I had hidden that yesterday by giving it back to me. I share all this with you today as my way of saying thanks. Thanks to her, but also thanks to all of you friends of mine who have been proud of me all along, not just for being hot but also smart enough to see that I was killing myself, and proud of me for turning all that around. I really appreciate it more than you know. I didn't go on this long crazy ramble to make you feel bad for complimenting me because I enjoy it far too much, and I certainly don't want you to stop saying nice things or telling me I'm hot! I just came to realize that I've also been holding out on all of you, and that there's no good reason for it, no reason people shouldn't also know about the sad parts of it, I was just lacking the proper responses in my head. It's felt wrong to not share it, and getting those words back means a bunch to me.
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Re: colour me stunned
Date: 2007-09-20 01:15 am (UTC)But seriously, thank you. *hugs* And indeed, boy body issues are frequently even more complex because so few of y'all are willing to talk openly about them. More of you need to speak out! ;)
no subject
Date: 2007-09-19 06:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-19 06:56 pm (UTC)That has to be the highest praise I've ever gotten! Thank YOU for putting yourself through such eye strain!
no subject
Date: 2007-09-19 07:03 pm (UTC)It makes me horribly uncomfortable for people who knew me when I was heavier to ask me about my weight loss. They often ask like they're looking for me to give them some miracle cure for their problems. I had what I thought was an ok friendship fall apart partially because I felt exposed when I was asked about it and tried to get out of the situation and acted in a way that I was later told was offensive...
I don't really know about the being comfortable with being fat aspects, but I know all too well depression and weight gain, and the assumptions that people always make about how great it must be to be thin. I'm thinner because I happen to really enjoy activities that use my muscles and keep me thinner. I'm thinner because I'm genetically predisposed to being thinner. I'm not thinner to please society.
no subject
Date: 2007-09-19 07:22 pm (UTC)What I'm saying is, fat or thin, what matters to me (and, I'm sure, the vast majority of your friends) is that you're able to be happy--or at least moving in that direction. Your size ain't gonna chance how I feel about you.
Not that my feelings matters, of course, in this case. :-) I'm glad you're doing ok!
no subject
Date: 2007-09-19 08:41 pm (UTC)this whole post though, this embodies ALL of the struggling i've had to do with my own thinness. only mine's come about not so much of the depression, though it's part of the issue, but because i'm kind of sick now with the PCOS stuff and eating healthy is the only thing that is keeping me on an even keel.
It was so, so considerate of Nina to pose the question like that rather than barrage you with 'WOW YOU LOOK SO GREAT!'
which is something that makes me feel -really- uncomfortable. I know people mean well, but it stings every time i get a compliment. I know part of that is just my self-depreciativenes, but yeah. Sometimes it just makes me want to claw my eyes out.
and I TOTALLY HEAR YOU on missing large parts of your anatomy. WTF - where did my tits go??
no subject
Date: 2007-09-20 01:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-19 08:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-20 01:13 am (UTC)*hugs*
Thank you for this...
Date: 2007-09-19 11:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-20 12:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-20 02:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-22 05:45 am (UTC)BTW, I think all boobs are great -from the nearly flat to the huge and bouncy, to the getting old and saggy. Hopefully they'll grow on you. ;)
no subject
Date: 2007-12-13 09:39 pm (UTC)Just wanted to tell you how great it feels to read a story like yours and how the momentum of negative thinking can be overcome. And as a woman it's more important in your case -- I always felt women have this journey much tougher than men like me do.
I'm equally thankful that you described the MENTAL difference that nobody realizes comes with the physical ones (not all of which are positive). And the fact that you really do lose friendships over it.
Being able to be happy when you're smaller depends on your ability to be happy with yourself "despite" being overweight, and you're one of a small breed of people who seem to fully understand the full range of transformations.