Happy Friday to everyone except for the devil, who has been encouraging me over the past couple months to dig a hole and fill it to the brim with all the reasons I should feel like trash about myself.
It's been a while since I felt positive things toward myself - my body, my thought processes, my personality. It's been a lot of "too much" and "not enough" and "you'll never" or "you can't" and it's been making me tired. So yesterday, having decided to get extra ready appearance-wise to feel put together and find some motivation to get what I needed to done (which did NOT work by the way lol), and in an effort to convince myself that I can sometimes measure up to a standard of aesthetically pleasing I did an impromptu vanity shoot in front of my closet doors in my bedroom.
I quickly found myself deleting and cropping what I found unflattering and flinching at the width and of my arms, amazed and embarrassed at how big my thighs are and the way my body looks different - larger - than it did a year or two or five ago. (The picture above sent me spinning.) I get an ego trip off pictures that don't actually look like me or leave out some information and then feel shame when I see the ones that tell all or devastation when I look in the mirror and my body doesn't hide the way I have tried to teach it to. My brain immediately grabs hold to distortions that have been growing lately -
If I still had dating apps, no one would swipe.
My future husband is going to have reservations about my body and my character once he sees that I haven't always been this big.
And then all too automatically one word descriptions about my body that I've identified with since I was 4 years old follow
Unattractive.
Incapable.
Unworthy.
Gross.
And then comes hypocrite. Fake. Liar. I preach self compassion and body positivity for everyone else but leave none of it for me.
I don't really have much more to say than this sucks. And I'm uncomfortably human. And that I can be better. There's no real light at the end of the tunnel to offer like I typically find myself trying to, just something real and raw, hopefully something that will help those who also struggle to not feel so alone, and a really, really loud SCREW YOU, SATAN.
This is an Instagram post I shared this morning, and I've realized that being able to throw my words onto some blank space is a really great way to prevent them from swirling around in my brain, so this is the first of (what I intend to be) weekly posts about what has been heaviest on my mind.
In my lowest of times, the more I think about my body, the more I feel that I have been shafted. I work out, eat very healthy on and off (but even when it's off it's still decently healthy), and do what I can to take care of myself emotionally, my blood levels are just dandy every time I visit the doctor's office, and I am overall healthy except for when it comes to my weight. It seems like most people my age can inhale three pizzas and not even flinch, but I think about cheese too hard and my pants get too tight. It's socially acceptable to be thin and unhealthy, but the idea of being fat and healthy is conveyed as a paradox.
It's a vicious cycle between being angry at the world and being angry at myself. Sometimes frustration at God is thrown in, but I'm usually able to take it up with Him and feel better about it quickly. It's myself and the world that I have perpetual beef with.
There are conspiracy theories out there (I need to find and cite the evidence about it) that the BMI index and diet pills/weight loss programs hung out and decided it would be a good idea to do business together - diet pills/weight loss programs have more prospects when more people are told that there is something medically wrong with the content of their bodies. What used to be considered overweight is now measured to be obese. The average size of a woman in the US is somewhere between 16 and 18 (this one is a legit reference, but another one I need to find). Though it's better now than it used to be, representation of women in media is still overwhelmingly those who fall within a small range of "ideal".
[Oh boy and don't get me started on the dumpster fire that is the representation of men in the media - I have no doubt this will be something we'll chat about in the future.]
But when we flip the anger and frustration coin and we have Ashlee vs Ashlee. If I were capable of finishing what I started, this wouldn't be a problem. If I were disciplined. If I wasn't lazy or so emotional or so hard-headed or incapable, I could get my act together.
It's okay for everyone to struggle except for me.
I'm not looking for advice, at least at the moment, and I am grateful to everyone who has so kindly extended some as I am sure it will help me continue to pass through this rut I am in. If you would like to talk about your experiences or struggles whether they be similar or different than mine, I'm here, and I'm listening.
With love, unfiltered -
đź’›Ashlee
