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| How I see myself, and what the world sees, do not always tally. |
There is a point to this statement. Honestly.
The problem is that because I have not had a very good view
of my body, I am not entirely sure what it looks like; and in a strange body dysmorphia,
how I see my body is not the way the world may see it.
Don’t confuse me with someone who is overly concerned about
their appearance – I am not. In fact I am quite the opposite. I do not really
care what I look like. This is evidenced pretty much as I type this. I am sat
in a coffee-shop in a collection of muddy running clothes – some of which would
not even be counted by the running community as conservative: Which as they
delight in florescent, day-glo tops and jackets is saying something. I am
straight from my run and I stink. I have no make-up on and my hair is a tangled
mess. I am even getting stares from the people who believe tight, battered
sweat pants and UGG boots are good combination.
I am not a girlie-girl and I never have been. I don’t do the
beauty parlor schtick. I visit the
hair-dressers once a year. I don’t own a full-length mirror and my make-up is
only pulled out when I go out on a rare night out, (and I can be bothered). I
live in my running kit and I don’t own closets of clothes. My most expensive
item of clothing is my running kit and shoes.
You get the idea.
So, this is why I find it strange that I am coming to
realize that I may have a skewed view on my body. That sub-consciously I don’t see myself
clearly.
I don’t view myself as any different to any other woman.
Yes, there are parts of me I would like to change; but isn’t that the same for all
of us? I have a wobbly ‘mummy-tummy’. The creep of orange-peel and stretch
marks on my thighs that is normal for anyone over the age of twenty-five. I am
currently five-pounds heavier than I was this time last year -- and that is an
improvement, I was ten pounds heavier a couple of months ago. I could wish for
a high-fashion models body, but I know I am ten inches too short and have too
many lumps in all the wrong places. I am okay with that; I am not after the
un-attainable.
When I was fifteen I had the body of a fifteen year old –
along with a fifteen-year-olds’ associated hang-ups. I had a few layers of
‘puppy-fat’; I was scrawny with a bit of extra padding. I was the last girl in
my group to get a boyfriend and everyone seemed to be telling me I wasn’t
attractive. I was all breasts and very little else. It seems strange that those
bloody breasts have hindered how I view myself.
As I can’t view my body because of my ‘appendages’, I have
no idea on how my body has changed over the years. When I compare myself to my
friends –which let’s face it, we all do sub-consciously- I still use the
fifteen-year-old version of myself as the model.
It has only been over the last few months -as I have been
stressing about the weight I have gained since my back injury- that I have come
to realize that maybe I should be using a different version of myself as a
model. Trying to be a version of me that
I feel I should be, is as unattainable as me being a high-fashion model; it’s
impossible and unhealthy to even try.
Last year when I felt at my best, I was just shy of being
classed as ‘Underweight’ by my BMI. Friends and family were commenting how I
had no roundness; I was scrawny and boney. I ignored them, thinking that this
was my perfect me. I was surviving on salad and I was hungry all the time, but
I was eating, so what was the problem? How did I get so mentally messed up
about how I looked? How did it happen without me realizing it?
When talking to friends, buying clothes, or just looking at
the people around me, I have come to realize that the person I felt I wanted to
be when I was fifteen is already here. I am in a good place physically and
pushing for something more is dangerous. I am not the over-weight, short, adolescent
girl with body-hang-ups anymore.
I am me.
I am a fit grown woman. I am slap-bang-in-the-middle of the
BMI range for my height. I have a low resting heart rate. I can run three, four,
five, more miles in one go. I can fit into a UK size eight trouser (US4). I am
strong – or at least I am working on that. I am confident in my abilities. I
know who I am and what I can do. I am a Mother, writer, and a lover. I am smart
and I am silly. I can organize an international move in less than six-weeks. I
can advocate with authority for an Autistic boy. When I go into a room of
strangers, I can articulate my views and people will listen.
I am everything my fifteen-year-old self would have wanted –
and more. I am a confident woman and losing those extra five-pounds would
diminish that woman in more ways than one. Maybe I should bury my fifteen-year-old
self into the ground -along with those fifteen-year-olds hang-ups- and start
being the forty-year-old woman I am.
