Waiting to live

I have this poisoned mentality where I've somehow convinced myself that I have to wait to enjoy the things in life that people who don't have weight problems get to enjoy. The beach. A tropical vacation. A cruise. Pampering. A night on the town. Dancing. Swimming. Shorts. Skirts. Heels. Shopping for clothes, period. It's a sad and self-inflicted punishment. A poor body image is a prison. And it is poison. POISON! It's an ugly self-loathing that is mostly undeserved. It doesn't seem to be completely related to my actual weight. I've carried this diseased attitude around my entire life. I didn't always look like a beached whale. But I must have thought I did. Looking back at old pictures, I wonder how I could possibly have been unhappy with how I looked. I looked good! By no means perfect. By no means Barbie or the girls in the media. Never frail. Always strong and sturdy. But always heavier than the average girl. And today? Today I probably don't truly look like a beached whale either, although much more so than the me of adolescence, some twenty five years ago.
Being accepted. It has alot to do with being accepted. Maybe I would have a healthy self image if I had been raised to feel wanted and accepted. I never cease to amaze myself that I can still be carrying thoughts like these around, when I'm an adult now. An adult! A D U L T. Over forty. FORTY! I would think I would have gotten over childhood by now.

I know better, but I don't do better. I don't know how to breach the void between knowing and doing. I can analyze it, intellectualize it, explain it. It boils down to caring what others think or might think. To elevating that over what I think. It's a sick thing, to allow myself to let the imagined judgement of a total stranger, even, a nonexistent public, rob me of my living moments. It's crazy. It's stupid. But I still do it.