Am I Going To Keep Up With This Blogging Shit Or What?

I'll be straight: I had a bad reaction to a new medication I was tried on and was kind of out of commission for a bit. But I'm pulling myself out of the hole and trying to ease back into the game. I had actually completely forgotten about my little burgeoning blog, but thought of it today. I was looking at a bunch of tumblrs I like and I thought to myself, "I have a voice too! There is a mother fucking light inside me that needs to shine too!!!!"

Today I was thinking that instead of wasting time, energy, and resources on this horse shit "obesity epidemic" - maybe we should take some time to address a more serious issue, the fucking self-loathing epidemic. It hits minoritized and demonized populations the hardest, but no one is immune, not even the default person (straight white dudes, I know you feel it too). I have some more thoughts on this that I will get into those on a future post (maybe), but I just wanted to put this out there, just in terms of my own experience: There is nothing I have done in my life to deserve the level of hatred I have for myself. Like anyone, I have a heap of things I've done that I'm not proud of. But, I mean, do I strangle cats in my spare time? Do I punch babies in the face? Have I killed anyone? (Just to be clear: no.) It seems that the great sins I have committed are as follows:

• I have consumed more calories on an average day than my body burns.
• I have cystic acne and scaring on my face.
• I have scars on my arms and legs from a period when I was very sick and hurt myself.
• I'm bipolar.

There is no moral component to any of this, at all. And yet I berate and belittle and isolate myself because I feel as if no one could love someone so ... all of the above. It's got to stop, but I hardly know where to begin. I've had these feelings for quite some time; they won't go away overnight. I think I have taken a strong first step in giving up dieting. I'm trying to be comfortable in my own skin but it's hard. I'm going to keep reading the blogs of people who don't hate themselves (yay Fat Acceptance!) and hopefully some of it will rub off on me.

Sometimes, when I get sad, or feel alone with the above bulleted list, I imagine that "Hey Jude" was written especially for me. Just for me. Thanks Paul.

Fat Acceptance

Do you know what I like? Fat Acceptance. I feel like the only way I'm ever going to be comfortable in my own skin is to accept the body I have right now at this very minute. This is a daunting task. So many years of messages from media, family, and friends, and they all can be reduced to this simple motto: "skinny is pretty, fat is ugly." Fuck all that. I am doing things to make my body feel physically stronger and healthier, because it's something I want for myself, but I have no interest in dieting. That whole cycle is an epic waste of time and a collossal source of heartache. Once I am able to lose my anxiety around food, feel in control of my consumption, and stop bingeing, my weight will stabilize where my body wants it to be - lighter than I am now, heavier than I am now, who can say? Whatever it is, I will need to work on accepting it. It's not easy. It's a challenge to love what you've been conditioned your entire life to hate - a fat body.

I used to read all these blogs where people would post their daily oatmeal breakfasts and every morsel of food they'd consumed all day and every bit of marathon training or Bikram Yoga they'd done (not that there's anything wrong with that, just not appealing to me). I realized that I just don't have any interest in a lifestyle that's that extreme.  Slowly, I have moved over to reading FA blogs, and WOW, they make me feel like I'm normal, as opposed to lazy and self-indulgent, as some other "healthy living" blogs often do.