Learning to love your legs: Doing the hard stuff.

Body image issues and girls go together like salt and pepper, peanut butter and jelly, ice cream and bad break ups.

Turns out that you almost always find one with the other. I don't like ice cream so bad break ups  of any kind for me mean more kitchen floor resets and like...brownies or chips.  Perhaps a reason why loving my legs is hard.

a n y w a y....

If you're wondering, I don't look like super model coke bottle. I don't need to lifted from my house from a crane, though. To be honest, I don't remember when I started scrutinizing every last imperfection of my body, probably somewhere around the age of 14 or 15. Maybe younger, honestly. I've always been athletic-ish....like i'm pretty strong, but i've also always been sort of on the chubby side. I remember being in Sears looking for swimsuits and i must have been like  8 or 9 and that is the very first time i remember feeling fat and sad about it.

But don't feel bad for little me. She grew up just fine. She found her self confidence...for the most part. And she had a mother who taught her that beauty has more to do with your heart than your face or waist line and a dad who told her she was beautiful all the time.

I'm lucky, really, I am, but i am also at the mercy of a society who values physical beauty, and i have really beautiful friends...so the image thing...is just kind of there. I don't let it get the best of me, although i feel like i spent my senior year of high school and my entire college career on the verge of an eating disorder.  It's actually in college when I started to spend a lot of time staring at myself in the mirror. Wondering why my face was so chubby, my boobs were small and i just wasn't that pretty. Why didn't I look more like my friends, the ones that the boys paid attention to.  Like why was my lot in life to be the chubby, funny, best friend/wing woman? (PS. I'd take being funny over pretty almost every day of the week, now).

I just want to yell at 20 year old me. STOP IT. YOU ARE FINE. The older i've gotten the more I've settled into myself. I like my butt and my nose. I also have mostly straight, mostly white teeth that I feel pretty okay about.

But I hate my legs. LIke SO MUCH. Thunder thighs. Tree trunks....and whatever other creative name that means i don't have runway model legs. My calves are huge....which makes cute boots near to impossible. My thighs make jeans an ORDEAL.  Like i buy nice semi-expensive jeans only to have replace them because THIGH RUB.  I mean... Come on. I refuse to wear a lot of dresses that are cut above the knee to avoid judgement about my snow flake, dimply thigh area that's exposed.

And forget shorts. Gone are the days I can run around in shorts and feel the summer breeze on the freshly saved legs. Those days hit the road prior to high school.

This summer, on a feeling spending situation at Target,  I bought a pair of sleep shorts. I get hot at night sometimes but i refuse to just not wear pants to bed. You can sleep in as little as you want, i sleep in a T-shirt and leggings or sweats. Until this summer, this summer I wear shorts.

I don't wear these in public or even around the house really. Though, I've been  known to sport them roudn the house from time to time. But i put them on and stand in front of the mirror, and I just look at myself until I can see past what my brain in an anxious frenzy tells me i look like...until i see past what i HATE and start to see the truth. (PS I half-heartedly apologize for the amount of run-ons/over use the the word "and" you'll read today).

The truth is pretty simple. I'm not that gross. Actually. I'm not gross at all. I don't actually look as much like a whale, blimp, manatee ....whatever as i think i do. I look at myself until I see that my legs are strong. They carry me places, the are athletic, they are capable. And it's starting to get easier to look at myself in the mirror.

 I know that staring at yourself in the mirror probably isn't a hard thing. We all do it  multiple times a day. But i think learning to love yourself is a hard thing and I think it's a always a work in progress.

So I kind of decided, with this shorts thing, that this summer will be a summer where i try to do hard things. Like loving my tree trunk legs.

But also,  making peace with developing parts of myself. To be on a continuum of learning how to forgive people. How to honor past seasons but not be stunted by them. To live a life of gratitude. These are hard things which wont get accomplished over a short summer,  but I think they are worth the effort.

Like my old best friend is getting married in one month. We had a big falling out. I hurt her a lot, and as a direct result we are pretty much no longer friends. I am not invited to the wedding that I would have been in had things gone differently. I am not invited to the wedding that two of my other best friends (former, really) are ushers in. These boys were mine long before she laid any claim to them and yet here we are. I'm the odd one out.

And it's okay, mostly. Because I'm mostly happy for her, and I'm mostly over it because i know that we were all a season and it was hard and lovely, but now it's over. I'm learning how to close chapters but to be honest, i'm pretty bad at it. I sometimes think about the things i would say in the speech i would want to give. I think about how I would cry watching her choose this boy because it took a lot of hard falls and skinned knees to get her to this point. And sometimes I miss the idea of her.

Selfishly, my chances of being a godparent or a fake aunt or giving one last killer wedding speech went out with the closing door of our Summit apartment, as did the idea of best friends. The death of my idea of best friendship is something I still get sad about sometimes.  Because I've lost the concert buddy, the roadtrip partner, the all other duties as needed, person.

And as an only child, it was kind of an important thing.

But, again, it's okay. Because I love my life and the people in it, and so does she.  And that's the goal right?

Well, all that nonsense aside,  I got her a card and i've been really thinking hard about what i will write in it because with the stamped envelope, this chapter will end. And it will end on a note where i tell her how much I love her, and how grateful I am for our season, and how I'm so happy for her and wish her nothing but amazing things ( I really didn't mean for that to sound like an Adele song).

And that's kind of hard stuff. It's not as hard as learning to love your legs, but really, what is that hard?

So, as I realize that the hard stuff is not a road I want to travel alone. I pray for perspective, for eyes that see truth, for a grateful heart, and for grace for every single time I buy into lies, I trip and get discouraged.

And I'm praying for, whoever you are, as you do whatever things feel hard to you. Know that as you do them, I'm praying for you to hear kind words, for courage, for you to be surrounded by the people who will encourage you and not hold you back. I pray that you ask for the love you deserve and that you don't accept an ounce less than that. And that might sound weird since we don't know each other but I think we don't get anywhere alone and it's nice to know there are people out here who also think that. Who understand that hard stuff  is the worst.

So know as you're looking in your mirror, I'm right next to you, holding your had in solidarity, like a Red Rover line. Together, we'll shanghai the roadblocks and the lies.

Here's to you and to me, and the hard stuff. May it make us stronger, and may it reveal to us  our immense, innate value, and may we carry on like the tough cookies we are.