Journal10_15

October 15, 2004

My friend Joy and I were talking yesterday about my most recent photo. The one that is displayed when I make posts. She was telling me how she and her husband (Stephen) always saw the skinny me even when I was overweight. They never saw the fat me that is up in the corner of the picture. I told her that was interesting b/c the same was true for me. I always saw the me that I see in this current picture. When I look at my old pictures, esp the one of me when I was my fattest (not on this website), I don't recognize myself. Joy says that is b/c I've always had a good self-image. I have ALWAYS loved being in pictures; however, I always made sure to postion myself in a way that made me look the skinniest I could look (hide that double chin that I hate so much). Also, I've ALWAYS enjoyed looking at myself in mirrors and wearing snug clothes (except when it is that time of the month) I used to look at other people and think to myself, I'm not that fat, when actually they were usually the same size as me or sometimes maybe a little smaller.
The weirdest thing, though, is that I've always had a horrible self-esteem when it came to other people. I felt like I didn't deserve friends or a boyfriend b/c I was too fat. I was never able to let myself believe that a guy was really hitting on me; I just though he was making fun of me. Or I thought people didn't want to be my friend in public b/c they were embarrassed, so I saved them the trouble of having to make up excuses.
I never understood why my friends and family had so much confidence in my ability to be strong and stand up for myself b/c I felt like I always let everyone walk all over me. My friends would tell me that they wished I had been somewhere with them b/c they just knew that I would have set somebody else straight on something.
Since I've had this surgery and lost the weight, I've become bolder, and my self-esteem is slowly re-building itself. I'm finally seeing the ME that everyone else already knew I was. Now, I'm starting to fit comfortably into some of the shirts that I used to wear (that were really too tight on me). I'm starting to fit into the clothes that I used think I should fit into b/c I didn't believe that I really was so fat.

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