Body Image: Up, Down and All A-Round

Hello again potential readers. Lately, many of the posts that I've written to date focus a lot more on my mental health and aspects thereof as opposed to some of the other themes that you could come across in this blog. Mental health as been at the forefront of my mind given the lingering crises that has inundated my brain on the daily. Recent adjustments have been made to my medications that have definitely helped to lift the fog of despair from my psyche but many aspects of my thought processes are still dragging through the mud.

As I sit here at my kitchen table with my laptop that I haven't booted up in months, Home Town on HGTV running in the background and playing fetch with sophisticat #2, I can't help but notice the surface area my body takes up on the bench I'm sitting at, feeling my stomach rolling over my lap and just wondering "how did I manage to get to this point?" Just a few years ago, I was feeling the best with how my body looked three years ago at my wedding, and now I'm here- two major depressive episodes, one pandemic, and 40 pounds later, I'm the heaviest I've even been in my life. I can imagine this is the case with a lot of people and we should all be having grace for ourselves given the really unique circumstances our world is in right now but I find myself having shitty thoughts, impacting my self esteem. I probably should just do away with the scale all together since it impacting me so greatly but I don't know. I mean, life really is much nicer in an elastic waistband, but I also don't want to look and feel like a slob forever. Just a couple months ago, I went to the mall and bought myself a few new pairs of pants that fit me since I had gained weight, but now I found that even since then, the larger pants I bought now don't fit me as well as they did then. I don't know how to dress for this body type. It's so new to me and it feels jarring.

It's funny though. This past weekend, one of my friends and I decided to go out for a night on the town. We're both vaccinated and my household has been extremely conservative during this pandemic, so I decided to give myself a small break and try to have a semi-normal night out on a Friday night. We first made our way to a gay bar (that neither of us have been to for almost 10 years) and come to realize after we get there that the first Friday of the month was "Furst Friday,"a time for bears, cubs, and admirers alike to get together and be themselves. We were definitely not the intended population for the night but we got a drink and spent some time there. While we were there, a wonderful man, who told us he was gay, randomly came up to us and told me that I was a gorgeous queen and that I was the most gorgeous person in the building. It was so random but absolutely ego-boosting. It was some of the nicest compliments I had received in a long time and I cherished that moment. He then proceeded to kiss me on the shoulder and made his way back to his friend. It perked me up quite a bit and I thoroughly enjoyed that moment. We then made our way to another lounge near our side of town and had ourselves a nice time too. We got to dance, hang out, and we were also hit on by a wonderful black man who told us we were both beautiful in different ways. My friend is a girly girl who is more overtly pretty that men are immediately drawn to and I would say I am one who is more the low-key, girl next door, androgynous pretty type. He told me that I had more of the traits he would look for as far as body type (e.g. thick thighs and ass for daaayyyyyzzz.) I appreciated his thoughts and even though I am married, it was still a nice additional ego booster for the night.

Given all of those random and positive interactions I had over the weekend, I somehow find myself on this Monday feeling like an absolute trash can (emotionally and physically feeling and looking.) Maybe it's just bloat from the weekend, maybe I'm about to start my period, or maybe it's just a bad body image day but it is something I will just have to keep working on....and buy more pairs of sophisticated sweatpants.....okay /rant.