Am I coping?

When I’m feeling unhappy about me (my weight, dress size, my stomach, what people are saying about me) I think that buying some new clothes will help sort it out. Somewhere out there is that fantastic dress that will make me look two sizes smaller, have people asking me if I have lost weight, something magical that will make me feel better about myself. I have this idea in my head as to what I am going to look like and sadly even after finding a dress that matches my dream the results in the mirror don’t match up to my expectations. I didn’t like what I saw beforehand so putting a different wrapping on it isn’t helping.

I read an article the other day about accepting your body: this doesn’t mean loving it but merely realising the usefulness of parts of it and, I suppose, adopting a neutral tone when examining yourself. That would work for me if I couldn’t get to the point of loving myself but even that seems a step too far. Every mirror has to reflect back my flaws, my eyes instantly drawn to the bits of me I don’t like, can’t see the use of, and yet I am so, so sick of living like this with these tedious thoughts never far from my mind. And I hate how these thoughts have such a huge impact on my enjoyment of life. It’s stupid, pointless, ridiculous etc etc and yet I can’t seem to stop.

This morning I decided to try on my jeans: they fitted. They are tight but they were tight last time I wore them. What do the negative voices do? They keep telling me I am getting fatter (I was tempted for a fleeting moment to step on the bathroom scales – what a self-defeating catastrophe that could have been) even though the evidence didn’t back that up. Am I a less valuable human being if the scales reflect a higher number than they used to? The trouble is I think I am and I’ve got to keep working at changing that.