Why I can't take a compliment...

What those new to this blog will discover is that I'm rather honest about everything, and I tend not to shy away from topics that are less than fun. I had to respond to the compliments that I got from boldly going where few heavy girls have gone recently, because my reaction to the comments was all over the map.

I was embarrassed and made my husband read all of the comments for me.

I wanted to hunt David Dust down for doing a special post on me [I believe I called my husband at work and said "Honey, I'm going to have to go to New York to kill a gay man." He laughed at me, and then I laughed at myself]. He didn't have to be so nice...I would've liked him anyway (Sorry! Lovin' Spoonful quote moment!)

I wanted to accept the compliments, but I find that hard to do. I was never considered "pretty" growing up. I was a bean pole until high school, and I still wasn't fat until college (thanks to Asthmacort and other steroids, I gained 75 pounds in college that won't go away), but my weight only bothers me when I'm in pictures. I see myself in the mirror, or just looking down at myself and I don't see the obese person that my BMI claims that I am. I'm not bothered by being fat; I try to embrace that part of myself so that the weight I do lose is not in an attempt to make myself feel better, but to be healthier. I see myself in pictures, especially with other people in them, and I look twice as large as everyone else and then I get upset.

When I was in junior high, I was friends with many of the boys in school because the girls were way too catty and not to be trusted. They would always sit around and talk about who the pretty girls were and who the ugly girls were. Unfortunately, the conversation would always make its way to me, and they would say that I wasn't pretty, but that I wasn't ugly either.

Why couldn't they have just skipped me instead?

I managed to keep a boyfriend from the end of junior high through high school, and not all of these guys were worth it, but I took whatever I could get. With the exception of my 11th grade prom date (which is a great story, but I might have already told it), I stuck around with guys who were willing to give me the time of day but may not have had my best interest at heart.

I have image problems from years of abuse from someone who married into the family (long since divorced), several attempted assaults, and one...assault that wasn't just an attempt. I have also been teased about my looks and have a natural inclination to distrust people, especially when they say anything about my looks that's positive. I tend to have an overpowering sense of disliking myself, and my weight is the least of my problems (unless I'm photographed; then I'm just complicated for the sake of being a headache).

So all of this attention is almost more than I can process.

I think it's because people actually mean it when they say I'm pretty. And I know this, now.

Sorry to get a bit maudlin, but I don't hold back. I wanted to put this out there before I moved on to my more interesting news articles, because I really needed to address it.

And, thank you all. I don't always believe it when anyone says it, but I'm no longer going to dismiss it as people being "mean" or "wrong" either.

P.S. I suspect that my husband made the anonymous post on the last entry. He's sneaky that way!

Self-Doubt is Rising Again

This will be brief, because it's just an emotional response to absolutely nothing in particular (damn hormones!) and I want to go home soon.

I met the professors and fellow students in the Comparative Studies department yesterday and actually felt at home, for once, amongst them. I still don't want to teach, but since I have a year before I have to deal with that again, I may get over that. I'm starting to doubt my ability to pull off being in school (15 credit hours a quarter, a mandatory amount based on the fellowship) and being a mother. I'd have these anxieties if I was was going to be a stay-at-home mother because I have serious, serious doubts about my parenting abilities.

Am I making a mistake? What if I'm a terrible mother? What if I don't do enough? What if my depression comes back worse than it's been in awhile? I'm honestly surprised that it hasn't really surfaced that often since getting pregnant, so I'm paranoid that I'm just going to shut-down once the baby's born.

I don't know what to do anymore. I'm my own worst enemy and have been so for many years. How do women do this? How am I going to do this? And the one mainstay that I would usually rely on (in this case, God) I'm still kind of pissed off with right now, so I'm not sure what I'm going to do. I think I'm going to have to hash out my feelings with God soon so that I can deal with everything else soon.