Making peace with you, learning to love you is harder than I imagined it would be.
You gave me my beautiful children, my three beautiful children. It should be easy to love you for that reason alone. I do love you for that. I do.
But, my God, I hate you too.
I hate you because I am a slave to you. I hate you because there are so many things in life I've not been able to do because of the fears and insecurities I have about you.
Your sagging breasts embarrass me.
Your gaping hole of a belly button repulses me.
Your stretch marks humiliate me.
Your loose, hanging skin infuriates me.
The excess fat that you continue to hold onto so tightly angers me.
My husband loves you. He desires you. He thinks you're beautiful. Sexy, even. I don't understand how he can feel that way. I truly do not.
I want to feel the way he does about you. I want to love you. I want to love looking at you, or at the very least, not want to puke when I look at you.
It's hard to look at you without crying. Especially when I compare you to other, beautiful bodies. Or to the way you used to look.
You used to be so beautiful.
I know it's not fair to compare you to other women, or to your young self. But it's hard not to. Everywhere I look, I'm bombarded with images of bodies that look nothing like you. It's hard not to feel like a freak of nature when all of the images I see look so completely different than you. I once saw images that looked similar to you. It was a campaign for "real beauty" and I cried with joy and suddenly didn't feel like such a freak. But then? I heard people talking about how ugly those bodies looked and how they were repulsed by what they had seen, and how those women had NO business taking pictures in their underwear because no one wanted to see all of that and suddenly, my tears of joy turned once again to tears of shame and hatred towards you.
I've become more comfortable with "The Clothed You." I would have NEVER taken Aerobic Dance Class in the past because I would have been too ashamed and self conscience of my Lumpy Ass, or the Jiggly Arms. But after having shed a few pounds, I have learned to accept my Clothed Self.
But when the clothes come off, HATE HATE HATE what I see.
I'm tired of hating you, of fighting with you, of wishing you were different. So very tired of wasting all of my energy in that way.
I just wanted you to know that I don't want to hate you or be ashamed of you anymore, I'm just completely lost as to how to NOT feel this way anymore.
But I'm working on it. Be patient with me.
(I wrote this at 1am this morning. I've debated if I should post it or not because people get so damn angry at me when I write about my body, but if I let Angry People stop me from writing what I want to write, than I might as well shut this blog down because that's DUMB to censor myself based on what people will think.)
I'm not angry at you for what you write. Your thoughts are your thoughts. But I do have a suggestion, which you may choose to disregard, obviously. If you're not interested, read no further.
In your posts, you touch on some points that could eventually turn your attitude around...then you negate them with "but..." In fact, in a post like today's, you spend more time writing about the negative stuff than you do about the positive. (I did see positive stuff in there!) :-) I would suggest that you do some writing, maybe not for publication (?), in which you say only positive things to yourself. Stop before you negate them with a "but." Maybe try something silly at first, like "I'm getting sexier every day," or whatever you want. Regardless of what you choose to say, it will definitely feel weird at first, because out of habit you'll want to throw in the "but" and all the negative stuff that always comes after it. Stick with it, though, and try it every day for one week. Notice how you feel about it, even if you feel weird, or silly, or like you're lying to yourself. Then try it for another week. Promise yourself that you will write only positive things in a particular notebook. Practice saying the positive things out loud to yourself, even if you feel weird, silly or fake. I guarantee that if you do this the way I described, you will feel more positive after a few weeks. Your mind hears all the stuff you say/think, and it believes it. You have been saying a lot of negative things and your mind is believing them. It doesn't cost anything to try the positive self-talk approach; all it takes is a small commitment. I speak from experience on this. I've done this with certain areas of my life and it is amazing. Not weird or anything, although I certainly felt silly doing it at first. The results are worth it, though. *hugs* :-)