Before!

2/5/08

Who Am I?

Who am I?

That question has been haunting me lately as I have watched myself transform into a new person. Who is this woman staring back at me in the mirror? The fat is gone, the crooked teeth are gone... but do I like what I see now?
And beyond the physical... who am I on the inside?

A loving, compasionate, caring person? Or a self centered, egotistical, bitch?

I hope I'm not the latter, but it seems that I've been hearing that a lot lately. I did brush off a lot of it as jealousy, etc, but you know yesterday I realized something.

I have become a big ball of bitterness. Somewhere a long the way I have internalized every bad thing that has happened to me, the molestation, the rapes (yes I said rapeS), the loss of people I love, the broken trust, the broken relationships, etc. I have held it all. I dug a place inside of me, and just kept burying it all. Then I planted bitterness over top of it and it grew. And grew. And grew.

It was easy to hide behind a wall of fat. That seemed like the bigger issue in my life. I could laugh and joke in front of people...pretend I was coping with it all, then go home and shove it all back down with a package of cookies and a pizza.

As the fat has been peeled away, it has revealed my hidden wounds, hurts and pain. Pain that I can't hide anymore. Pain that can't be silenced by food.

I have tried to turn to other things to replace the drug that food was. Smoking has been the biggest one, but as my 9 year old daughter sat on our couch sobbing after finding out her mom was smoking, I realized that it's time to let the bitterness go. It's time to stop self medicating and its time to deal with the pain. Deal with the issues.

How?

I don't know yet.

But I'm working on it and I will do this. I've come this far and I'm not willing to give up now.

2 comments:

Tracy said...

You can do anything you set your mind to!!!!!! I for one will be out here rooting you on :)

Kim said...

This post is so powerful. You get to say who you are. You get to be beautiful and raw and emotional and needy and all the while know that food won't silence it, nor will smoking make it stronger.

Keep on keeping on. Dust off those corners of your loveliness. Remember who you want yourself to be.