What's the real, what's the deal? How I look or how I feel?

 When I was a young girl, I was all knees and elbows. Then I grew through the awkward age, at a time when I was on the verge of womanhood. My limbs and facial bones were all growing at different rates, I was clumsy and to make it worse, I was living in a home with a mother who was a tyrant. When my tender, creative soul was evolving into a woman, I wound up in a high stress environment and things just got exponentially worse, when I finally mustered enough courage to leave the home and strike out on my own.

 

I was 5 feet 11 inches and close to 150 lbs. I used to think I was fat. I would see myself reflected in my mother's eyes. Eyes who I had no doubt were disgusted by what they saw when they looked at me. Because of that toxic reflection, I grew up with a very distorted self image.

When I was in my 20's, I was under 160lbs., in my 30's, I had a couple of kids and gained about 10 lbs for both of them. I thought I was enormous those days even though we had no wheels, I was working several jobs and raising a mess of kinder, half on foot, half on the back of my bicycle.

In my 40's, I slowly gained about 30lbs every time I menstruated. My water weight would fluctuate ridiculously from one extreme to the other. I was still able to fit in commonly available clothes so I wasn't too big yet. I thought I was obese however. There was always a niggling little opinion in the back of my mind that my imperfections began with my huge size.

I'm in my 50's now, I am no longer chasing kids. I'm not running stairs at the ivy covered halls of learning, and I am in a solid, loving relationship with a stable, providing man just as my body's changes brought my raging hormones to a screeching halt. I'm bigger than I've ever been. I hardly eat, I watch everything that I put in my tummy and I've had my blood tested six ways to Sunday, but I'm still slowly, but steadily growing in spite of my every effort to stay healthy and curb the process of swelling, be it from edema or responding to wheat/dairy/ chemicals in my diet or my propensity for sedentary undertakings

.

Our beautiful Avona and I were talking on the beach as we watched the woman with the horse go by. She was about the same size that I used to be when I was her age, somewhere around 28. Back then, I thought that was gianormous. However, yesterday, at the beach... when I looked at the woman, I thought, 'I used to look like that'... and then I thought 'She's beyoootiful.' and then it dawned on me, that back then I would see myself as I looked like that, as being something else.

It was an aha moment, when I started thinking about how much distortion there was to the lens I watched life through. The current image I have of myself, is oddly, that I am as slim and skinny as I was back then. My self image is offended when I look at a mirror and see this prohibitively big body and realize that what I see is what is real. Even when I look down the length of my body with my own eyes, I don't see rolls and fat, I see big curves and long limbs, a big gal, for sure, but certainly not the woman who must buy clothes marked 5x in Penningtons, their largest size.

Avona and I watched the beautiful horsewoman go by and I played with the scarf in the breezes and got back to what was really important. Honouring myself, and living in the moment. Oh well, I'm a work in progress. If I was perfect with a perfect self image, what would I have to work on? How would I evolve? Why bother? 

So I'm glad that I'm me. Big me. Big Baudacious, Bright, Creative me.

What's the real, what's the deal... how I look? Or how I feel?

Avona and I, keeping it real one morning when we woke up beautiful and didn't need to do a thing to make it better.

Here's my beautiful life partner Ron, when we were in Rhodes in 2008. 50 lbs ago.

I AM having fun however.