Sometimes I think I’m conceited.
I take selfies. Like… A lot. I take more selfies than a 14yo with their first phone. I post my selfies on my story on facebook and I send them to The Zen Master and my friends. Some of them just sit there in my phone for ages. I must have thousands.
Here’s the thing…
I feel pretty. I feel cute and beautiful and dare I say it… even sexy. And I’ve NEVER felt like that before. I grew up hating myself. I hated what I looked like. I had a pretty smile. That’s about the only thing I liked about my looks. And even then I didn’t like it sometimes because when I smiled my big grin, I was so large that my cheeks would push up and my eyes became all squinty. I know… we’re all our own worst critics. But it wasn’t just internal. I was teased. I was ridiculed. I was insulted.
My mom told me I was beautiful. And when I got older, some other people did too. But I never felt it. I always thought they were just being nice. Or perhaps they DID think I looked good but then there was something wrong with them because really, what normal person would think I was hot? Some men treated me like a fetish. I was wanted because I was FAT, not because I was sexy. Or at least that’s how I felt.
Then I had surgery.
Then I lost ~250lb.
My self-esteem started to blossom. I started to like the way my clothes fit. I wasn’t afraid of seeing myself in the mirror. People treated me like a person and not something disgusting they needed to avert their eyes from. Did you know that a lot of people don’t make eye contact with people who are morbidly obese? I think it makes them uncomfortable. I had been a non-person. And all of a sudden, here I was, getting hit on by a guy in the grocery store and being told by a woman who looked like a model that I was “killing it”. People started to notice me in a good way.
Then I met The Zen Master. Who incidentally had his eye on me PRIOR to the surgery, but I was unaware of that at the time. He’s shy.
The Zen Master adores me. He treats me like a Goddess. And he looks at me like I am the most perfect, beautiful, sexy and fierce woman he has ever met. I can FEEL it when he looks at me. I owe at least some of my current self-confidence to him.
And now I like how I look, at least with clothes on. You do NOT want to know what 2 kids and a ~250lb weight loss will do to your skin.
Do you know what it’s like to spend at least 30 years of your life feeling repulsive then find that you actually feel beautiful?
It’s fascinating.
I don’t really think I’m conceited. I think I am fascinated. I’m fascinated by how I’ve changed. I’m fascinated by how I feel about myself. Feeling beautiful? Cute? Sexy? It’s a novel idea. So I take pictures. I think part of me knows that I’m not going to feel like this forever. That I’ll get older and the natural effects of aging will bring my self-esteem issues back to the surface and I’ll start feeling crappy about myself again. So I am taking advantage of this. I’m appreciating myself. This confidence. This beauty. I’m taking pictures to celebrate myself and what I’ve accomplished. And the compliments I get from said pictures don’t hurt either… So maybe it IS a little conceited.
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