Again, the photographs. I know you must be tired of hearing of them, especially when you cannot see them, but they are obsessing me. Really no wonder I have been so obsessed with the way I look. I guess anyone would feel that way taking a crash course through their own past and staring endlessly at photographs they haven't unearthed in ten years or more in an attempt to order them chronologically. I note the changes in my look and it sends me on long mental journeys of how I felt at a certain time of my life, or more unpleasantly, how blatantly bad I look at times. And more depressing, though I'm on an upward swing, I do not look my best right now.
I'm going to talk about my appearance now, which is something I try to avoid doing, because I end up deleting these entries anyway. I have a sense of guilt about it, like it's immoral to think too much about the way I look one way or another, because it leads to unhappiness, but really not thinking enough about how I look has made me pretty unhappy as well. What I noticed tonight was that a year ago I looked worse than I ever did in my life. On our wedding day I looked great, but my weight was an issue even then. Even more depressingly, why can't I lose weight? I've been trying for a year and a half now, to no avail, except for a brief period two months ago when I got down to 120 (very briefly, like for a day or two). It makes 115 seem so unearthly far away. But it's absolutely unmistakable: with a few exceptions, my weight has the biggest impact on my look. My hair color, whether or not I'm wearing makeup or what hairstyle I have, makes very little difference.
My weight is the most decisive alterer of my appearance. The second most decisive alterer is whether or not I am tired. It's impossible to tell in any of these pictures if I'm wearing makeup, and whether or not I'm happy doesn't matter either. In almost all of these college pictures I remember deliberately forcing a smile and in one of them, actually starting to cry right after the picture was taken, and I don't look old or overweight there. In the pictures of me when I was unwrapping Johnny, I think I look over thirty, and it's probably because I was doing it at nine a.m. after going to bed at five a.m. I try not to sleep so much anymore because I want to make sure I have full days, but if it's going to age me it's not worth it (Besides, I'm going to start a dream blog, so even my sleep time will be productive. I have my best dreams after I turn off the alarm and sleep for another hour).
I feel really awful for talking about my appearance this way. I keep telling myself it doesn't matter, but I need to lay it out and resolve it so I can move forward and worry about other things. When it comes down to it, what I look like won't really impact how happy I am. I know it's a lot more than that. But how you look impacts the way other people treat you, which definitely impacts how happy you are. It may be trite, but it's true. I don't want to live off other people's compliments, but I want to live feeling worthy of being complimented. Maybe that's wrong, I don't know.
Also, one more thing. There is this picture of me that was taken my freshman year of college. I'm afraid I might have thrown it away in my more religious period because of my scanty dress. I don't know. I remember being 115, possibly 110 lbs. and looking unspeakably grand. I'd do anything to have that picture again for reference.
I don't want to live in my past, but right now, and I know I've said this before, I need to connect my past to my future. That's what this time in my life is about.
I have also been asking myself tough questions about my writing. This morning, the bottom dropped out of my stomach as I posed this question to myself. It would be exactly like if I asked Nathan if he loved me and he had to stop to think about it. I asked myself, "Do I really want to write anymore?" and in the silence in my mind that followed, I felt this intense fear. I clung in my mind to my stories and characters, but stubbornly, the way I am afraid to let go of what is familiar. Maybe I am doing it out of habit now rather than passion. The thought really scares me.
Instead of journaling, I have taken pictures. Part of this is because I just don't feel like sitting down and writing things anymore. It takes a lot of time and hurts my back and bores me(right now I'm just writing to sort out this mess, not really out of a desire). I don't love taking pictures and I'm not good at it, but it takes just a second to take a picture of Henry on our new bedspread, or the flower on my cockscomb that I grew from a seed, and I love going back and looking at those pictures, and printing them out. I don't really like reading my old journal entries because I feel so critical of them, and of myself.
But I don't feel that way about my stories, weirdly. I see them as something strange and beautiful, kind of like those pictures of me in high school and college when I was 110 lbs. I feel disconnected from them, but I feel this intense passion to reconnect with that again, with that body, and those stories. Not because I want to live in the past, but because that's the beginning I want to take to my future. I don't want to erase all that's happened in the past three years. They've made me who I am now. I don't want to have illusions about who I was then, because I was really uptight and unpersonable. Something has happened to me in the past year so that I feel energized and full of passion for life and experiences and people. I love that, but I don't love myself as I wish I would.
It's not that being thinner would necessarily make me happier, but it would be an accomplishment. When I was twelve, I could run a mile without stopping, and still go on, not winded. I remember running once for what felt like forever, and feeling like I could just keep running until I had to eat or sleep, because I had almost limitless energy. I could be that way again. The fact that I ever was gives me so much confidence. I don't want to compare myself to other people, their bodies or talents, but knowing what I did before, I'm completely convinced I can do it again, and that's what gets me out of bed to run or swim in the morning when I don't really care if I'm thin or not. I desire that energy. Combined with this passion that I've developed for life, for places, for people, for knowledge, this living-like-I'm-dyin', I feel like I would be near-unstoppable if I were physically fit, capable of defending myself or others, truly strong.
I'm going to talk about my appearance now, which is something I try to avoid doing, because I end up deleting these entries anyway. I have a sense of guilt about it, like it's immoral to think too much about the way I look one way or another, because it leads to unhappiness, but really not thinking enough about how I look has made me pretty unhappy as well. What I noticed tonight was that a year ago I looked worse than I ever did in my life. On our wedding day I looked great, but my weight was an issue even then. Even more depressingly, why can't I lose weight? I've been trying for a year and a half now, to no avail, except for a brief period two months ago when I got down to 120 (very briefly, like for a day or two). It makes 115 seem so unearthly far away. But it's absolutely unmistakable: with a few exceptions, my weight has the biggest impact on my look. My hair color, whether or not I'm wearing makeup or what hairstyle I have, makes very little difference.
My weight is the most decisive alterer of my appearance. The second most decisive alterer is whether or not I am tired. It's impossible to tell in any of these pictures if I'm wearing makeup, and whether or not I'm happy doesn't matter either. In almost all of these college pictures I remember deliberately forcing a smile and in one of them, actually starting to cry right after the picture was taken, and I don't look old or overweight there. In the pictures of me when I was unwrapping Johnny, I think I look over thirty, and it's probably because I was doing it at nine a.m. after going to bed at five a.m. I try not to sleep so much anymore because I want to make sure I have full days, but if it's going to age me it's not worth it (Besides, I'm going to start a dream blog, so even my sleep time will be productive. I have my best dreams after I turn off the alarm and sleep for another hour).
I feel really awful for talking about my appearance this way. I keep telling myself it doesn't matter, but I need to lay it out and resolve it so I can move forward and worry about other things. When it comes down to it, what I look like won't really impact how happy I am. I know it's a lot more than that. But how you look impacts the way other people treat you, which definitely impacts how happy you are. It may be trite, but it's true. I don't want to live off other people's compliments, but I want to live feeling worthy of being complimented. Maybe that's wrong, I don't know.
Also, one more thing. There is this picture of me that was taken my freshman year of college. I'm afraid I might have thrown it away in my more religious period because of my scanty dress. I don't know. I remember being 115, possibly 110 lbs. and looking unspeakably grand. I'd do anything to have that picture again for reference.
I don't want to live in my past, but right now, and I know I've said this before, I need to connect my past to my future. That's what this time in my life is about.
I have also been asking myself tough questions about my writing. This morning, the bottom dropped out of my stomach as I posed this question to myself. It would be exactly like if I asked Nathan if he loved me and he had to stop to think about it. I asked myself, "Do I really want to write anymore?" and in the silence in my mind that followed, I felt this intense fear. I clung in my mind to my stories and characters, but stubbornly, the way I am afraid to let go of what is familiar. Maybe I am doing it out of habit now rather than passion. The thought really scares me.
Instead of journaling, I have taken pictures. Part of this is because I just don't feel like sitting down and writing things anymore. It takes a lot of time and hurts my back and bores me(right now I'm just writing to sort out this mess, not really out of a desire). I don't love taking pictures and I'm not good at it, but it takes just a second to take a picture of Henry on our new bedspread, or the flower on my cockscomb that I grew from a seed, and I love going back and looking at those pictures, and printing them out. I don't really like reading my old journal entries because I feel so critical of them, and of myself.
But I don't feel that way about my stories, weirdly. I see them as something strange and beautiful, kind of like those pictures of me in high school and college when I was 110 lbs. I feel disconnected from them, but I feel this intense passion to reconnect with that again, with that body, and those stories. Not because I want to live in the past, but because that's the beginning I want to take to my future. I don't want to erase all that's happened in the past three years. They've made me who I am now. I don't want to have illusions about who I was then, because I was really uptight and unpersonable. Something has happened to me in the past year so that I feel energized and full of passion for life and experiences and people. I love that, but I don't love myself as I wish I would.
It's not that being thinner would necessarily make me happier, but it would be an accomplishment. When I was twelve, I could run a mile without stopping, and still go on, not winded. I remember running once for what felt like forever, and feeling like I could just keep running until I had to eat or sleep, because I had almost limitless energy. I could be that way again. The fact that I ever was gives me so much confidence. I don't want to compare myself to other people, their bodies or talents, but knowing what I did before, I'm completely convinced I can do it again, and that's what gets me out of bed to run or swim in the morning when I don't really care if I'm thin or not. I desire that energy. Combined with this passion that I've developed for life, for places, for people, for knowledge, this living-like-I'm-dyin', I feel like I would be near-unstoppable if I were physically fit, capable of defending myself or others, truly strong.