What makes up our blanket of hate?

Why is it that hurtful words stay forever etched into our minds and hearts but words of praise and love tend to float away on a breeze?

Well, in spite of the rain today and kind of crummy feelings all week, it is time for Fabulous Fridays and it is time to remember just HOW fabulous we really are!!

So, I have an exercise this week that will hopefully help us make peace with some of our bad experiences and also help us find a good memory to have in our pockets when we're feeling down.

Because.  

What most of us do, when we are feeling down and feeling like we're never going to make it to our healthy goals, is draw on all the bad memories we have stored away, in order verify and validate our feelings of frustration and failure.

That's a bad circle to be in.

So, today's exercise in fabulousness is to take (at least) one of those bad memories and examine it by following a few steps.  Then we'll bring a loving memory to the front of our minds and try to keep it there.  

So, I'll go first.

1.  Bring out the Memory:

This happened probably 15 years ago.  (God it feels pathetic to me that this memory has stuck around, hurting me for this long!) It may seem like a very small hurt, but to me it felt huge.  I think it was because it came at the hands of 2 of my best friends.

(I will not use their real names here.  We are no longer friends, and it's incredibly unlikely that they will ever read this, but that doesn't mean I shouldn't still consider their privacy.)

Back then I weighed around 200 pounds.  Sometimes a little less, sometimes a little more.  99% of the time I felt unattractive and gross.  I was about 19 or 20; the height of the time in our lives (I believe) when we determine our value by our physical attractiveness and our ability to "snag a guy".  I could not "snag a guy" and I always felt like less compared to my two pretty friends.

Generally, these friends performed all the "good friend" rituals of reassurance.  Telling me that I looked fine and that it didn't matter what I looked like anyway, I was a good person.  They weren't usually mean and didn't often say hurtful things.  So, I'm sure they didn't mean to be so hurtful on this day.

One afternoon we were supposed to be going out to a coffeehouse, (which were still the height of cool, hip places to be in 1998!)  We were at "Jane's" place getting ready to go.  "Jane" and "Debbie" were sitting in the living room waiting for me to finish getting ready.  (I'll drop the quotes now - you get it - those aren't their real names!) 

I was having one of those really good days.  All my fellow fat women will know what I mean.  It was one of those days where the mirror was really cooperating with me.  I had bought a new, very cute dress and was loving the way it looked on me.  (In retrospect it may NOT have been the best look, but fashions always look silly from a distance of 15 years.)

I had found this little spring dress at Pennington's.  It was one of the first times in years that I'd been able to find anything in my size that didn't resemble curtains or a circus tent.  Or so I thought.

The dress was a deep yellow with little green leaf sprigs all over it.  It had a kind of gathered up neckline that tied with a bow.  It's hard to describe accurately, but suffice it to say, that it seemed to hang just right on me to hide all the things I was so anxious to hide, while still looking fashionable and - JAUNTY.  Or so I thought.

I came out of the bedroom feeling like a runway model.  I had pulled my hair up on the side in an adorable little butterfly clip.  The clip sat on a little spring so that the butterfly bounced a little as I walked. (Hey, it was the fashion!) 

My point to all this description is just to try to get you into my mindset as I walked out of the bedroom and declared in my peppy, I'm-finally-one-of-the-pretty-girls voice, "I'm ready to go!!"

Jane sat on the couch to my left and Debbie sat on the couch directly facing me.  Debbie scanned me for a half second before giving me a puzzled look of incredulity.  

"That's what you're wearing?  It looks like a nightgown!"

And pop!  My balloon of happiness that had been inflating me and lightening my step just broke open and sucked all the air out of me.

Jane spoke up.  "Debbie!" she said in a slightly admonishing tone.  But she was laughing.  Laughing.  Laughing!  

I felt like I'd been kicked in the stomach by one best friend and the other one was laughing about it.  

Debbie tried to explain herself.  "It's just that it looks like a sac!"

More laughing.  I joined in.

Inside my stomach was clenched and painful in that way it gets when your desperately trying not to cry.  My throat burned and I was blinking rapidly and kept looking down at the once beloved dress, so they wouldn't notice the moisture in my eyes.  

My laughter sounded thin and pathetic.  "Yeah, okay." I managed, "I'll change out of the sac."  More thin laughter.  I quickly returned to the bedroom.  Their words followed behind me.  "No!" "Don't change!"  "You look fine."  "Just leave it."

But I quietly closed the bedroom door and clicked the lock.  I sat on Jane's bed and cried.  Hot, silent tears that bubbled up from my aching chest.  I kept swiping at them quickly, trying to make sure there was no trace of them.  But I knew the puffy eyes would be a dead give away.  

So, I put my tears away and slowly took off my little green-sprigged dress and took the butterfly out of my hair.  I put on my usual attire of a super long black skirt and long-sleeved, majorly over-sized black T-shirt.  I snuck into the bathroom and washed away the last traces of puffiness. 

I came out of the bathroom and declared again, "I'm ready to go."  But this time my usual feeling of disgust with my body was back.  This time, I was again feeling the sway of the fat on my body and was disgusted by it.  I carried around the extra weight of self-loathing on my shoulders.

Jane and Debbie tried to tell me to put the other dress back on, that it looked fine, but I just waved them away and told them that they were right.  I never wore that dress again.

2. What was the motivation/catalyst behind the painful memory?:

It's hard for me to understand Debbie's motivation.  I think she just thought she was being funny.  Or, it was just an honest impulsive reaction to a dress she didn't like.  She really did think my dress looked like a sac or a nightgown.  Jane's motivation for laughing was obvious; she agreed and found it funny.  She seemed to realize that what Debbie had said was rude, because she was trying to "admonish" her, but couldn't get over her laughter.

3.  Can you forgive the people involved in the painful memory?:

I think so.  As I said, we are no longer friends.  We drifted apart and became different people.  I think I can probably chalk it up to their youth.  Neither of them had learned much tact by then.  

4.  Work on letting go of the pain:

The pain from this memory is not a daily trial.  It's not like it's there in my mind everyday.  It's more like it's a part of the big blanket of hate I have toward my body.  This confirmation by my friends that I couldn't be one of the "pretty girls" is one of many memories over years that make up that quilt.  

And I have to say, the memory is there with me, almost any time I try on new clothes.  I tend to hear a voice that sounds a lot like Debbie's saying, "It doesn't matter what you buy, you're just going to look like a fatty dressed up in slightly nicer clothes."  

Giving up that pain and silencing that voice, will take real work on my part.  I think the next time I hear that voice, I'm going to answer with this:

"Bite me!!  I - I!!! - like how I look!  I think I look great!  I FEEL fantastic!!! So YOU will just have to deal."  

Which is what I should have told Debbie and Jane so many years ago!

5.  Find a supportive memory to turn to when this bad memory (or any other!) threatens to hurt you:

I'm going to pull out one of the hundreds of times my amazing daughter has told me how beautiful I am:
  
"I LOVE that shirt, Mommy!"  
"You look like a princess in that dress!"  
"Your hair is so long and beautiful, just like Rapunzel's!"  "Mommy, you are SO beautiful!"

Who's opinion am I going to put stock in?  Ex-friends from 15 years ago, or the fabulous, loving opinion of the most important person in the world?

I choose the fabulous!!!  :)