Love The One You're In....

A very clever & witty writer, leendaluu over at Wit's End started a Mr. Linky called "Love The One You're In". Your body, that is. Her article is excellent and presented me with some issues I've struggled with all of my life, so I decided to jump in feet first and bare my soul.

I was born a healthy 9 lbs. and 6 oz. and from the day I was born, everyone in my family referred to me as chubby or plump. Now I find this amusing because since going through old pictures to find my chubby pictures, I couldn't find any, which has left me perplexed and scratching my head. Hmmmm... Now, the only time I really ever gained weight was when I was away at boarding school. Go figure. Mashed potatoes and bread with meals every night, three fattening meals a day. Okay, so I got fairly heavy by the time I graduated.

Right now I'm 5'4" and weigh 135, which I'm pretty much pleased with. When I graduated from high school, I weighed the exact same weight, give or take 5 pounds. And yet my mother (The Brown Recluse) was disgusted at how LARGE I'd gotten while at school. The day I left school and flew home, she had an appointment for me with her diet pill doctor. This started me on half a lifetime of doing drugs in order to stay thin. I had no idea at the time and I didn't have a choice. The first pills I became addicted to were called Bamadex Sequels by Lederle. I mean really, who can forget their first addiction love? From there, I graduated several years later to Dexedrine. Those were fun and made me think I could do anything. Actually, I could almost move mountains, in my own mind anyway. My college professors weren't nearly as impressed with me as I was.

I'm thinking that you're all beginning to get the picture, right? I eventually had to resort to buying Bennies (Benzedrine) and the like, illegally, and did so for many years. I was ultimately able to stop although that was more of a money issue than anything else. Needing a new addiction, I became addicted to racquet ball and running and health foods, which lasted a good many years.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I was 100% affected by what the people in my life thought of me and whatever weight I was and I let them dictate to me what I should look like, when I was actually okay with how I looked. That's how I was raised. I put my heart and my health at risk, under the guidance of The Brown Recluse, for striving to be what other people (including her) thought I should be. I was still just an impressionable kid and had not yet discovered that I had a little steel in my spine.

I never once bugged either of our children about their weight and they are both two of the most confident people I know, in mind & body. I wanted them to never suffer any of the humiliations I had suffered, and they haven't.

So, I guess the upshot of this post is that after worrying about my weight nearly my entire life, I believe that at 55 years of age, I have finally come to like & accept the way I look. It feels as if mind, body and spirit have all finally come together in harmony and I am loving every minute of it. I, at long last, have come to love the body I'm in and it's damn well time too. I don't have all that much time left to enjoy it.

I've deprived myself of a lifetime of good food, but am finally beginning to enjoy it as I relish in who and what I am.

Whoever you are, don't ever let anyone influence the way you feel about yourself unless it's in a positive way. Life has enough dark twists & turns without allowing others to color the way we see ourselves. Celebrate who you are and the body that houses your soul and your heart. You are who you are and that, in the end, is all that really matters....

It won't matter a bit when you're dead, now will it?