Foal

Inspirational song: I Feel Pretty (West Side Story)

Like a newborn foal tottering around on wobbly legs, moments before bounding off across a pasture, I am gaining strength, balance, and enthusiasm from the feedback I've been getting in the last two weeks, not to mention what I've gotten over the last three-plus years. I've laid myself bare over and over here, admitting to my weaknesses and challenges, and rather than leaving me feeling vulnerable, time and time again my readers have made me stronger for the revelations. It has been the very process that builds muscle, tearing the fibers through exercise for the purpose of rebuilding them bigger and stronger than before. My current exercise is bringing my face and body out of the shadows, learning not to hide in the comfort of anonymity. Not everyone is comfortable living publicly, and at times I have resisted it too. (I'm still not going to name my friends who don't want their real life identities spread far and wide over the internet.) But I am finding a new source of power when I stop hiding, stop keeping secret exactly who I am and what I look like. I fat shamed myself for decades, starved myself for years, binged on exercise at times (not knowing it was hard as hell on the autoimmune diseases that were at the heart of why I was overweight in the first place), and kept myself from enjoying life, believing that as a heavy woman I didn't deserve to do so. I am forcing myself to grow up and stop holding myself down, and turning my new portraits over to the mercies of public opinion has been a monumental step forward in that process. When last I looked, I had gotten feedback from well over a hundred people, and the support was overwhelming. Only one person asked why I'm not smiling broader in the photos. I explained that my smile is very crooked because I have to make a concerted effort to lift the left side of my face (if I don't think about it, it doesn't happen), and then I thanked her for the other positive things she said. At other times in my life, I might have completely ignored the hundred voices of love, and made myself miserable that one person criticized my smile. This time, finally, after all of these decades, I can see the forest for the trees.

Wow. I am trying to type and watch a certain trainwreck on television at the same time. I am being encouraged to finish the post quickly, record the spectacle, and go for a walk. I think I shall. In the spirit of what has been happening and will continue to happen for the next month, I will "leak" the next couple photos from my shoot, revealing myself exactly as I look right now. No photoshopping of flaws, no careful camera angles to hide body size. This is me, being proud of me. It's new and it's fun.