body issues **4/15**

I have body issues.   I have self-confidence issues.  If people who know me even knew the HALF of how deep these insecurities run they’d probably drop into a faint because of shock.  I have always been chubby.  It’s because I’m short.  In high school I weighed between 120-135 in that four year period.  I was still called fat and while the size of my clothes has changed, my overall body shape, the way I LOOK hasn’t.  I have huge boobs, a fairly narrow waist (I mean the actual waist, where your ribs end) and modest hips, no butt to speak of, my thighs are average though but I have muscular calves.

I have always been very self-conscious about my size and more importantly my build.  Again, even at my lightest I still LOOKED overweight just because I’m SHORT.  My real height, no shoes, is 4’11".  So unless I drop below 100lbs, I have no place for any weight to go.  

My family is who first made me aware of how fat I looked.  From the time I hit puberty it was "diet this", "exercise that", "run here", "push ups there".  My body was always being pointed to as being WRONG.  High school justs cemented all of the things that they told me.  

Guys laughing at me and girls making fun of me.  Being picked on because I’m short and chubby-looking even at 120lbs.  They just made all of the simple cuts my family gave me deeper, they turned those simple wounds on my pride into scars that I still carry around.  Scars that are actually physical in places.

I tried on a dress today at American Eagle.  It was a really cute black summer dress; spaghetti straps, crochet/lacing around the hems and accenting the front.  I could fit my boobs into it.  It was a 14, which really isn’t a bad dress size at all.  But about this time last year, I was in a 12, at 5lbs lighter than what I’m sitting at now.  I kept looking at myself in the mirror and while I could see that this dress was really cute and I looked very nice in it, all I could see were my flaws.  My arms were too flabby, my huge calves, my tummy, my hips.  Everything just looked so wrong even though my head was sitting there saying that I looked cute.  I asked Isaac, he said I looked good in the dress.  But all I could see was everything that I’ve always been told is wrong with my body.  I know I should buy this dress because I rarely find a dress that I look good in these days because they are all made for girls who have no boobs and the ones that are made for boobs hang off of the rest of me like a sack because, really truthfully, my boobs are the biggest part of me!  I don’t have the lower body to match the boobs in most of these dresses.  I might still go back on Friday and get it.  It was a $20 dress but it really would be something but then again…maybe not.

I don’t know.

I’m so self-conscious, I don’t know if I’d ever actually wear it.

Isaac asked what was wrong when I was quiet so I had to make sure not to be quiet, not to dwell on it while I was with him tonight.  But it killed me inside.  And it kills me that he saw me in that dress.  It makes me that much more self-conscious.

I kept looking at myself going "what does he see in me?   Look at me, I’m awful.  I’m ugly and I’m fat and there is no reason for him to be with me at all."

It’s not fair.  I’m probably the only girl in the world who is terrified of trying on a wedding dress, not because I don’t think I’ll find the dress of my dreams but just because I don’t think there is a single one out there that will actually make me look and feel beautiful.  I can’t even remember the last time I FELT truly beautiful or if I ever have at all.  Even when people tell me that I look nice or when someone is nice enough to tell me that I look beautiful, it isn’t modesty that makes me blush and turn away.  It’s just embarrassment.  In my head I just think they’re being way too nice when they say things like that to me.  In my head I don’t think I am, I don’t think I can be.  So I don’t believe anyone who tells me that I am.  

After 15 years of being told everything that’s WRONG with your body, 15 years of being told that you need to lose weight or improve your body in some other way, after 15 years of being made to feel like you aren’t good enough, that you aren’t pretty, how do ever believe anyone that tells you you’re beautiful?  After 15 years of being told that you’re ugly, when do you become beautiful?

I bought the dress today. 

Xx