I'm Not Sorry

I read a book awhile back called Beauty Queens. when I first saw the book I was like UGH but it turned out to be this super sarcastic, AWESOME book that basically debunked all the stupid ideas about what beauty is and what girls "should" be.

One of the most powerful parts of the book for me was when the girls (a group of beauty queen contestants are in a plane crash and stuck on an island) are talking and decide they will no longer say "I am sorry". They forbid the use of the phrase on the island.

Now, there are times when being sorry is, of course, very appropriate. Times when you need to beg for forgiveness even! But these girls were talking about being sorry for the things they were thinking. Or being sorry for the way they looked. Or being sorry for not doing something perfectly. They were so conditioned to do certain things and behave certain ways that if they strayed one bit, they immediately felt the need to apologize.

I am that way. Oh I am not obvious about it, my apologies come out defensive most of the time. Well I am sorry I am not being who you want me to be....trying to make it sound like I am not in fact sorry...but proving by the very need I have to say it out loud that in fact I am sorry.

There are many things I am not. There are many things I am that "most" (what a stupid thing to say) girls are not. I am defensive about most of them. I often blog about those things in fact, because this seems a good place for me to "explain myself".

Well yeah, I am not a minister BUT...here is why.

Well yeah, I am overweight BUT you don't know the whole story.

Well yeah so I am still single BUT....

You know what? I don't' need to explain myself! I think I do, and I keep finding myself attempting to. But...like the crazy girls in the crazy book...I am not allowing it anymore. No more "I am sorry" for me.

I am librarian. Not a minister.
I am fat...I didn't used to be, now I am.
I am not married. I am not dating. I am a horrible girlfriend.

That is just the way it is. I am not going to explain myself to you. If you love me, you don't care why those things are. They are just me. If you need an explanation, obviously you don't really love me.

I think there are times that I share things about myself that are not self-destructive. Sometimes I want to talk about it, I want to get it out. Or maybe I am working through something and want to air it all out. That is fine, even healthy I think. But I am going to do my best to learn to just BE myself and stop feeling that anything about ME needs to be explained or apologized for. I am who I am.

To Be (Fat) or Not To Be

So I have really been struggling a lot lately with the issue of my weight. Well...in many ways. Obviously I am struggling with the fact that it is too high. I do not want to weigh what I weigh or look how I look.

But internally I am struggling with that as well. Why does it bother me so much to be over weight? Why am I so ashamed of my body? Granted I am not exactly the embodiment of a healthy woman, but that is not why I want to lose weight. Not mainly. It would be awesome to feel better and be more healthy, but I know that is not the real motivating cause for me to lose weight. I want to look "better".

I hate that. What makes skinny better? What makes a certain weight acceptable and another not? What makes me SO repulsed by my own body that I literally have cancelled plans because I did not want someone to see me looking this way. Give me a few months, I said to myself, then when I feel better about myself I will feel so much better about seeing him again.

WHAT??!! I want to  yell at myself. That is stupid. If a person cannot enjoy being with you at this weight then who cares what they think a few months skinnier?

The truth...ME is the answer. I care! I want to be skinny again. I want to feel pretty again.

I also want to slap myself for not being able to feel comfortable enough in my own skin to feel that way now.

I wonder what it takes to make oneself feel truly comfortable with how they look. Honestly I look at other women my age and many of them are my size or close to it. We are starting to have grayer hair and wrinklier skin. But why is it that weight is the one thing I cannot seem to be okay with. The size pant I wear is more important to me than almost anything else I can think of.

WHAT? You say...that is crazy...it shouldn't be that important to you! Come on...get off it. The fact is we spend more time DIETING and trying to eat better and trying to journal our food intake and count our calories than almost anything else we do. They say if you look at where your mind and your actions go and you will see your priorities. My own priorities, and those of too many of my friends, are seriously out of whack.

I have no answers here. I don't want to be comfortable with how I look...I want to look better.
At the same time I desperately want to not want that. I think we, as a generation or a culture or whatever, have a problem with this issue. Some are on kicks that are more "healthy" than others and I applaud that. But truth be told...the bottom line is still weight loss. The pictures people post of their success is not of a lower blood pressure chart or what-not. It is of how good they look in a new dress. I am not condemning that, heck I do the same and am jealous when I cannot.

I just feel like...we must be missing something. Surely being skinnier than I am is not really the answer we are seeking.