Comfortable in your skin

I remember a time when I was comfortable in my own skin.  Or perhaps "remember" is too precise of a term.  I've read enough about how memory works to understand that real memories are an illusion, so let's say that I can reconstruct the vision of what it felt like to be comfortable in my skin.

I could go back to when I was around eleven or twelve, a wiry kid with skinned knees and dirt under the fingernails.  I was always short and slight and even in sixth grade I could pass for a second grader which served me just fine when I was, yet again, running late for school and wanted to avoid being written up in the lateness ledger.  A second grader is often given a pass that a sixth grader isn't.

I was a relatively active kid, although perhaps no more so than my friends, but I was blessed with a small frame and an ability to eat little and rarely feel hungry.  I knew I looked good when I cleaned up, but the point was, I was comfortable with the way I was which meant that I rarely thought about how I looked.  It wasn't a worry, it wasn't an overwhelming concern, and I had yet to learn the debilitating pain of feeling that I don't measure up to the ideal.  Because the truth is, I did measure up.  I was cute and slim and I hadn't yet realized that being flat-chested would be a detriment in a couple of years.  Of course, I never got a chance to find out that it would be because in a span of a year I went from being somewhat underweight to being severely overweight.  My skin expanded to accommodate the new body I acquired courtesy of stress eating, but I never again felt comfortable in it.

Perhaps it wouldn't have mattered and I would have found ways of feeling uncomfortable even without doubling my weight; after all, most teenage girls profess to hate the way they look, or at least say that they do.  Had I remained slim, would I have bemoaned the lack of curves my friends were developing?  Would I have fervently wished to have a rounder bum or fuller arms?  Maybe I would have and maybe that body would have felt as inadequate and ill-fitting as the one I got.  I never got a chance to find out.

I have long ago stopped dwelling on the unhappiness that being overweight brought me and these days my struggles are mostly around not gaining weight rather than losing it.  I could be in better shape (who couldn't?), but I'm not overweight anymore and I fervently hope I never will be.

But I am also not comfortable in my skin and I am constantly looking for ways to change that.  I know that a lot of it is attitude, but good as I am at deceiving and soothing others, self-deception isn't something that I can stomach.  I'm not perfect and that's not ok.  Yes, maybe there's an element of self-mockery in that statement, but putting a hand on heart, it truly is what I feel.  If I don't look the way I want to look, if the image reflected in the mirror isn't what I want to see, then I can't accept it.

And lest you think me entirely superficial, it's not solely about weight.  Sure, I'd like a few fewer folds around the stomach and less sagging around the arms, but it's everything together - it's my untameable mane of hair, it's the patch of dry skin on my bottom lip that just won't heal, it's the short stubby fingers, it's the way my body just doesn't want to bend and twist the way I want it to.  I want things to look and work the way I think they should and they just won't cooperate.  Some things even I realize I won't be able to beat into submission, but it's often the ones that I could improve that give me the most grief.  I should be able to fix and adjust them and I just am not able to, which for me immediately translates to "you're just not trying hard enough".

Don't get me wrong, there are things I like about myself and I don't take them for granted, but they are expected and therefore aren't as valued.  It's the ones that aren't up to snuff that deserve the attention.  A bit like the child who gets good grades in school and is well-behaved and gets ignored in favor of a more troublesome sibling.  Not that I'd know anything about that, children in my family weren't allowed to be troublesome.

At any rate, I am keeping a wary eye on things that I have going for me, as if to warn them that they'd better keep going as they are or there'll be hell to pay.  As for the ones that aren't right, the ones that make me squirm in my skin, I see them as fractious mutineers, stubbornly refusing to fall in line and do as they're told.  That's not a good attitude to take with me as anyone who knows me will tell you.

Perhaps I'll never feel as comfortable in my skin as I did years ago, but I sure as hell won't make it easy for myself to settle into mediocrity.  Perfection may be unattainable, but it doesn't mean I should, or ever would, stop trying.