The Battle With Myself

It's taken me a few years to accept looking nice isn't bad.

In a nutshell: I'm 5'3". My son's dad wanted me ugly and shapeless. He had me wear ugly, baggy stuff or he'd insult me and say I was trying to sleep around. After our physical confrontations, I ran away in the middle of the night.

Letting myself get treated like crap was one thing but having the baby in my tummy hurt was completely unacceptable!

Anyway, I ran back to my childhood "home", got really depressed, didn't take care of myself and honestly didn't care. I got up to 199 when preg and almost died of complications including high blood pressure.

Slowly, I've been dealing with my internal demons and the weight has been coming off by itself. I'm no where near what I was but I still feel weird about myself. It feels like I am continually trying to get used to being in my own body again.

It doesn't help that I used to be snotty before. Both about how I looked and my intelligence. I'm trying to find that balance. The place where I can think, hey I look good but it's not one of those conceited things, you know? Balance. In and out. =)

This is me before I met my son's father:

That was a full body pic. If I find the rest of it, I'll upload it.

This is me after all the drama:

[ LOL As if I'd show a pic of that! Actually, I don't even have one. Thank God! ]

This is me now:

Mom, an equipment and techno-phobe, took the pic on the left. After 10 minutes of asking "I push this button?". Hence my slightly frustrated/annoyed look. If you stare hard enough into the fuzz, you'll see what I mean. ;)

CJ yelled "wait!" and snapped the pic on the right in the space of a blink. Srsly. My little tech nut doesn't fall far from the tree! After his one shot, my camera promptly died and I took it as a sign that enough was enough. LOL

You can see I've made progress but I still feel really odd in my own skin. So much so that I normally don't have pics of myself now.

This post is basically in response to all the "full body" and "head to toe" pics I've been asked for. There. You've seen me in all my embarrassed glory. We can move on now.

Wishing you much peace, happiness and success,