weekend 2

once i got home this evening, from a day full of friends, good (not necessarily that healthy) food, i was home around 8pm or so. since i had already had dinner, i knew i shouldn't be eating anything. but that feeling came again, that "i should be eating something" - popcorn for a movie? ordering chinese food? pizza? the compulsive overeating. it's about 10pm now and i haven't eaten anything, and i will go to bed and not have given in, but i still feel a bit uncomfortable.

uncomfortable, because, i want my coping mechanism. and because the real issue probably is...

i think a certain part of me is using food to cope with the fact that i am single. that i'd like to have someone to come home to, but i don't. i want romance, i want to be wanted. i want to excite someone. and so far, i've developed the thinking that i'm not desirable because i'm overweight. that my singledom is a direct (and sometimes sole) reflection of the sizes on the tags of my clothes. i'm sure in some cases it's been true, and in others, just in my head; but either way, i've been hurt by it. and it's something i'm wholly and deeply afraid of, ashamed of, to the point that i don't even know how to directly confront it.

and i suppose to a certain extent it really means i don't accept myself because of my size, but that's another thing that i know i shouldn't feel, but i do. and this needs to change, because i can't control what others think of me.

i know it's my responsibility to carve out my own feelings. but i see so many of my friends and mother figures all have fucked up body image, and i deeply resent existing in such an environment. BUT, i'll be 30 in six months and it's about time i stop blaming the women around me for my own body image. but it feels like an uphill battle to maintain a positive body image when all around me, quite the opposite feels true. and it's not like i'm the queen of security in myself.

i suppose this is where the personal mantras come in, the daily acknowledgement of things i like about myself, etc. i've done them before, and it's helped. i can identify a lot of qualities i like about myself. but somehow the weight always undercuts it.

my weight doesn't define who i am. i want to believe that 100% of the time but i don't. and i hate that i feel that way. because i have a brain and i know better. i don't want to think that of other people, and i don't want to think it of myself. and what i find so frustrating is that i don't know what the happy ending here looks like. do i stay the same weight and learn to accept and love myself as-is, genuinely and authentically? or do i lose weight, and probably have increased confidence, etc, but simultaneously prove my own self-loathing?

i think this is why i don't do well on weekends, home alone for long periods of time. especially on a weekend evening, where i should be out doing something, or with someone. and granted i did things all day, with wonderful friends, but at the end of the day, they have someone to go home to/with. and i wish that i did too. and i get home, and i have nothing but time to sit and think myself silly about all of these things, and it's easy to go to the negative places. which makes it REALLY easy to go to food.

i'm happy that i'm identifying these feelings, even though it doesn't make them disappear.