Jeans




I proudly shared my #TransformationTuesday photo today on Facebook. Everyone oohed and ahhed. Everyone has been great with my overly posting pictures. What I didn’t post yesterday? When I put on those jeans this weekend, I smiled in shock, and then, I cried. There are so many moments in this journey that I’m heartbroken. I don’t know where to start. I don’t know how to explain that I can’t stop looking in the mirror. I can’t explain how it breaks my heart and makes me cry. I can’t handle the response: but you were beautiful before. It’s still you.

Bullshit. I fell down some deep hole before, and I was a reflection of that hole⁠—my choices, my body, my being stuck.

I had no idea what my life could be like. I had no idea what I could be like. I never imagined any of this was possible or that it would ever matter to me. My identity was so wrapped up in protecting and upholding the idea that I was good enough the way I was that I rejected the possibility of otherness. It’s still so complicated. It’s 1000% about looking hot in a pair of jeans and nothing about looking hot in a pair of jeans. I am tiny and fit and strong. I never believed I could be any of those things. My own body image proud rhetoric never allowed me to believe that...because if I believed that, then I would be failing all the fat girls who I wanted so badly to feel good and beautiful and worth it. I still want that, and I still think I’m failing them and feel like I was failing myself.

 My body now isn’t simply a reflection of society’s desire for thinness. My body now is a reflection of strength. It is a reflection of pushing my body to limits I didn’t know were possible. It is a reflection of flexibility and muscle. It is being one with my body and finding a place where my mind clears. My identity is now wrapped up in the path to that strength. And it makes me sad that I missed out on that for so long. It makes me sad that I missed out on this body. And, I don’t mean this thin body, I mean this body that can DO things. I climbed up the rock wall and did the monkey bars at the park with my daughter the other day. We have back-bend contests. I walk over a mile a day back and forth between the train station and my office. It is thoughtless walking filled with a mix of Taylor Swift Radio, podcasts, or chatting on the phone with my boyfriend. Never once did it even kind of make me tired.

A mile used to be hell. A mile used to be torture. A mile should never be hell. That is the shit that was wrong with my before picture. Not my fatness. Not society’s need for thinness. Not my lack of health problems. The problem was my disconnection from my physical body. My inability to do things. My idea that I would never be fit or that being fit made me someone I didn’t want to be. But I am that person. The energy I always poured into intellectual pursuits is now also poured into my body. Do you know how tired I used to be? I’ve always been upbeat and bubbly, but I am energetic at all times. This energy has changed me. It has given me more drive. It has given me a bigger need to control my environment. It has pushed me to constantly be doing and acting.

 Being a tiny hot white blond girl has certainly changed how others respond to me and I struggle with that. But having this energy has changed how I respond to others and to life.My body happens to look a certain way when I lose weight and gain muscle. I get that. I get the privilege more now than ever and I struggle with that privilege. The reflection in the mirror shocks me every single time. When I share these pictures with you, it isn’t simply--look at this thin girl! It is Who the fuck is this person? Do you see this person? Is this person real? Was this person always here?

I can’t stress enough that we can say that are insides and outsides aren’t reflections of each other, but they are. My inside has changed with my outside. How could it not? I can do a one-handed push-up, Fat Shosh wouldn’t have wanted to talk to someone who could do a one-handed push-up. And my life has made a 180 degree turn in the past year and a half: a real relationship, new house, new job...I will always question if I got all of this because of thin privilege or because changing helped create a different person inside who was ready for these changes. I know you’ll tell me it is the latter...but I’ll always wonder.

The wondering is hard. The wondering is where I am stuck. It is the place people will tell me not to worry about and I'll want them to stop. How can I not wonder? I have a whole new life. I have a whole new EVERYTHING. Where does the weight part end and the other part begin?

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