Body image is such a hard topic for me. For most of my life I have avoided looking at myself in the mirror because I have never recognized the person I see. To say my image of myself doesn’t match reality would be an understatement. Buying clothes is torture for me not because I hate the way I look but because when I look in the mirror after trying something on I can’t believe that is me. I see my Mom, and sometimes my Dad but I always fight back tears because my mind rebels screaming desperately, “That’s NOT me…please don’t let that be what everyone sees when they look at me.” I know my intimate details; I am 5 foot even, close to 185 pounds, brown hair, brown eyes, full lips, large breasts. I have a vague idea what I look like but I think somewhere along the way growing up I just simply stopped remembering, stopped looking and began to dream. I managed to go from bad self image to zero self image, zero boundaries and no idea how to cope with what I see and feel.

My body shows the years of careless abuse, my hair is all but ruined from years of hormonal problems and bad diet, I wear glasses that will soon be bifocals, I don’t own a nice dress because I can’t find one I feel comfortable wearing. I don’t own a pair of heels because I have nothing nice to wear them with. I don’t buy lingerie because I can’t stand to look at myself wearing it. I am 50+ pounds overweight and I have made all the nasty things I was told during my teenage years come true: I look awful.
I stopped caring what I looked like around 12 years ago, though the process was started long before that. In High School I was beautiful, but I had womanly curves. I was told that I couldn’t put on makeup correctly, not in a nice constructive way but as painfully and humiliatingly as possible, usually in front of people who should be hearing nice things about me. If I looked nice my Mother would say, in an affected voice, “Yes and it’s a good thing she didn’t do her makeup like she USED too, all that black eyeliner she LOVES to wear makes her look plain awful!” No matter WHO was in the room. It was so bad even Sigel grew callous in his comments to me, remarking one night in a restaurant that I had a better mustache than he did. This wasn’t a mediocre restaurant and I had spent all day getting ready for this date.

Each cut to my self esteem never really healed but they scarred, badly. I began to duck my head and continued to blend in with the scenery even as I fought to stand out. Through it all I cried inside because crying outside invited abuse and I knew even then that I wasn’t allowed to have ‘negative’ feelings…mind you, not that I wasn’t allowed to express negative emotions, I wasn’t allowed to HAVE them. I was told that my whole life, “You will NOT be angry at me,” “You CANNOT be hurt by what I just did,” “You WILL understand how I am not responsible for the horrible things I say or do because I am telling the ABSOLUTE truth and you cannot be angry at me for that,” and the worst one “The world does not revolve around you!”

If my face broke out my Father would angrily question me or my Mother about why my skin was so terrible looking. Forget the fact that I was going through puberty and our family (both sides) is notorious for terrible break-out prone skin. I was told my nose was HUGE, it’s not as a matter of fact, it’s beautiful. I love my nose oddly enough! I was too short, too fat, too smelly, too made up, took too long in the bathroom, had no sense of what I should dress in, was lazy, incompetent, stupid and over sexed. My parents insisted and still insist that they love me but even though I am 40 years old nothing has changed.

I have been told that I don’t deserve pretty things and that I am totally ungrateful for the nice things I do get. The worst part is for most of my life I believed it. I didn’t have a self esteem problem to discuss with my therapist because I had zero self worth and therefore NO self esteem. It hurt so bad to know in my heart that I deserved all the nasty things that life threw at me, it was all because of some flaw in me. No one else was to blame it was all me because these people who were hurting me LOVED me and therefore weren’t to blame. I was loved but I wasn’t worthy of it…

I stopped thinking, stopped looking, stopped caring. I gained weight to bring the inner vision of me to life, my teeth began to rot, my skin was sallow and full of zits. I never dressed up even for family holidays and I refused to buy nice clothes. I played on line role-playing games because no one could see me to judge me.

I was attacked by my parents for my time on-line even though I was a grown woman but when I played on-line games I was valued, REALLY valued. When people couldn’t see me, the qualities that make me a good person began to shine through. I am great at organizing events, dealing with irate people, I can type very fast and I can multi-task. I lead large groups of gamers through intricate dungeons and people had a great time. I slowly began to see the real me and I met someone who fell in love with me, the real me. He began to tell me that what I said about myself was bullshit and demanded to meet me. I resisted and the more I said no the more he insisted, until he started talking to Sigel. It was Sigel who set up a face to face meeting between us three and it was Sigel who asked Arch to make love to me if he was interested, it was the only way he knew to get through my inertia.

Arch was interested, my God he shined with his desire for me. I saw shining in Arch’s eyes how much Sigel loved me and through Sigel’s eyes I saw how desirable I am to other people. I have slowly begun to build a healthy view of myself by seeing the vision of me they have. For five years I have been a work in progress and I have made some major breakthroughs this year. This year I bought a pair of jeans at the proper size because I wanted something nice to wear when I visited Arch. I have gotten so much exercise that I am actually in real danger of having to buy a pair of jeans a size smaller when I get home…YAY!

The real breakthrough came just yesterday, I have been wearing my bathing suit and a pair of jeans at the amusement park we frequent, yes ME, wearing a bathing suit and jeans in a place where tweenies wander around looking all cute! I fight the negative attitude and LOOK at the pictures of myself enjoying the rides. It is still a struggle, but yesterday I saw myself reflected in the glass of a door at the park, and for the first time since I can’t remember how long, I LIKED what I saw! I looked presentable and I dare say even nice. I am a work in progress but that progress is becoming more evident by the day. I can change a lifetime of negative thoughts and influence, I can be the beautiful person I am meant to be. I know that one day I will be able to look in the mirror and not see my Mom or my Dad, one day I will look and it will be ME that I see. I am looking forward to that day with all my heart.