Perspective

I recently reconnected with a bunch of old friends from grammar school on Facebook. I went to prep school for high school, and my family moved to a new town after my freshman year, so I lost contact with almost all of the kids I grew up with after eighth grade. 30 years later, we're back together! It's been an amazing experience, meeting all these kids who've lurked in my memories now as adults and catching up on what happened with their lives in the ensuing years. Of course, it being Facebook, we have all started hauling out all of the yearbooks and photos and scanning them in to share and have a good laugh over.

When the picture above appeared, my first thought was, "Oh, she's pretty. Who is that?"

Then I realized: That's ME.

My whole world tilted a bit.

For years, I have described myself -- and I thought I was being kind -- as a chubby kid. In my memory's eye, I have always been overweight; it's been a pillar of my belief about myself and weight loss that changing my body like this is fighting against 40 years of pudge and genetics and history. Many of my memories as a kid stem from feeling so much bigger than everyone else, a hulking giant among fairy sprites. I joke that all the women in my family look exactly alike: big dupas, breeder hips, round Polish peasant faces and every last one of us has the same nose. We're all overweight, we always have been, and fighting that much history is a mountain that seems impossible to climb some days.



I am shocked now to see unequivocally that none of that is true. (Except the noses part.) I am looking back at these photos now with new eyes; I was never overweight as a kid, not in the true sense of the word. That came later, as an adult. As a little girl, I was just taller than the other kids, and I'm still taller today. But my actual body size was perfectly normal!



I keep staring at these old photos of myself in disbelief, and I am posting them so I don't forget again. So that I let it sink in that the battle I am fighting with my weight isn't based on genetics and history; it's just adult laziness and bad habits and poor nutrition, and all that happened when I was old enough to know better and to do something about it. I am posting these to make myself see, really see, that the vision of myself as a child in my head is not even close to the reality of what I was.







Hell, I even participated in a fashion show once. (Shut up about the plaid; this was 1973 or 1974!)




As I got older, I got taller and more coltish, with long legs and shining long blond hair. I remember hating my hair back then, because the style was feathered hair with wings and a long line of a perfect curl in the front; mine never did that, it just hung thick and straight like a velvet curtain panel, and it was so, so blond. I would kill for my hair now.







I remember this photo, and hating it so much. I thought my belly was huge and sticking out, that I was so fat and ungainly next to my girlfriends and I couldn't understand why any boys ever liked me at all. Now I think the short shorts were still a mistake, but I am perfectly in proportion...and I kind of understand why my first boyfriend from that era just friended me on Facebook. ;-D

I also think I want to grow my hair out long again. Boy, do I miss it!

Anyway. I have plenty of other old photos I am unearthing and laughing very hard at; some of the fashions and the hair cuts have been insanely bad over the years. But these make me smile, and they make me see myself in a whole new perspective. It's been a revelation to learn these truths about myself and my past, and my future.