When I look at my 4 year old daughter I see a little me. Not an exact copy, but close enough that I can imagine being her, remember myself as little girl. She is precious and she is perfect and she is beautiful, just because she is her. She is too young to think she is anything but beautiful. I tell her she is beautiful, and funny, and smart, and precious. I wonder if I ever felt those things about myself? I wonder if someone stopped telling me - or if they ever did? I have no memory of being complimented, or praised.
Maybe it was my mother, who was never told those things by her mother, that didn't know to tell me? Maybe it was my father leaving when I was 10 that made me think I wasn't special, that made me decide I wasn't beautiful? Maybe it was growing up with images of beauty on TV and in magazines that didn't look like me. I remember feeling confused in my early teens. I had an idea that I might be pretty, but no-one ever told me that I was, so I decided I must have been wrong. And it's a feeling that has endured. Even now, I think I might look nice, and then make a list in my head of all the reasons I am wrong. Someone may compliment how I look, and I very quickly decide it's not true.
What I do remember, was my mother talking about how fat she was. I remember that a lot. I remember her soup diets, her exercise books and videos, and her constantly putting herself down. I don't remember her ever telling me I was fat, but I learned how bad being fat was, and how you can't be pretty, or good, or ok, if you're fat.
I want to feel ok being me, just as I am, I feel like that's something I ought to feel, but I don't. I think it's because I am overweight that I don't, at least that's what I've always told myself. Yet, even though being overweight makes me unhappy, and even though I want to not be this way, I continue making choices that continue making me fat. So I conclude, that there is in fact something wrong with me, or bad about me, for me to behave this way. I'm beginning to think I don't need a diet as much as I need to figure out how to love myself just because I am me. How does one do that?
