Under the Hill - Mirror, Mirror

I was having lunch with a friend of mine who just turned twenty-six, and Oh My God is now four years away from being thirty, and she was fretting about getting fat. She couldn’t stop lamenting about the fact that she was getting too old to drop weight and that once upon a time all it took was a week of water and fruit to get her body in shape. I felt her pain, but unlike years past, it didn’t send me into a tirade about my own less than perfect figure and I realized that I had finally and happily turned a corner.

Turning thirty had not only ushered in a new found comfort with my personality and beliefs, it also finally helped me make peace with who I was on the outside. I had finally matured to the point where I could look in the mirror and see more good than bad. Yeah, me!

Everybody struggles with his or her appearance. My struggle has always been the battle of the bulge. For as long as I can remember I have struggled with weight. I saw myself as fat girl even when I wasn’t and tended to go into denial when my weight started getting out of control. Fat has been my life long enemy and has lead to a life of nitpicking about every facet of my appearance. I mean, how can a fat girl be anything but ugly?

When you’re young every flaw is magnified. You’re so insecure about yourself and your place in the world that it’s tempting to believe that if only I could look like <> my life would be perfect. Right. Just because being the most beautiful of them all equaled happily ever for Snow White doesn’t mean that beauty is the magic cure all for life’s ills.

Thirty is when I realized that I was not going to be young forever. You know, once upon a time people grew old gracefully, but in the age of botox and boob lifts the concept of aging gracefully has all but disappeared. Age is no excuse chickadees to look old when the plastic surgeon is on speed dial. But as I get older and reap the positive benefits from living three decades on this earth, I realize that I don’t want to be younger and I don’t want to be perfect. I just want to be me and that’s a realization worth getting older for.


till next week…