Who has the power over your self worth???

I have not even allowed myself to venture into blog land since January - JANUARY!!! Why??? I wish I could give some sort of profund reason, something like I needed to become my own person or something that had meaning or something, but the truth is I ran away. I ran away from this battle of weight loss, I ran away from my blog as it is a mirror for me to truly see myself, and well its really hard sometimes to look at yourself not just your reflection, we are basically forced to that every once in a while, but your soul, your mind, this blog gives an insight in who you are and you ladies, your responses and our reactions to your responses and to what we ourselves put on this blog they at least for me help(ed) me define alot about who I am. And well the state of my life really hasnt been where I want it to be, so the mirror had become to painful to look at anymore.

One thing I have learned in this time, is that I give my power to others much too easily. It is very important to me what others think of me, my personality, my lifestyle and especially what I look like. My vanity may be one of my biggest flaws, but I am aware of it and I do not understand those that just are secure in themselves and innately know that they are good enough, or that truly give no mind to what others think of them. It is really a foreign concept to me, what others think of me consumes at least 40% of my thoughts in a day, and just that fact in itself is very disheartening to me. Getting back to my complete retreat from blog world, I felt that I did not look to you all like I had myself together, and well to avoid the responses and the mirror I just avoided it completly.

The fact is that starting in September I pulled myself out of a social cave and exposed myself to people, to friends, all of you in Chicago, to new coworkers; I am a little socially backward because I do give so much power to the opinions of others, when I expose myself I freakout, my fear of rejection, of judgment from friends, peers, and those I admire is paramount. There are times that when I go out with friends one night and spend much of the next day extremely panicky because I go over every second of the night, every word out of my mouth, every move I make; analysing every moment and trying to decifer if I made an ass out of myself. Some days its excruciating. I went from a state where I KNEW that I wasnt good enough in my extreme obesity and self hatred to realizing that I no longer lost from first sight and I had to now lean on my personality and see if that was good enough ( all the while still in the back of my head fearing that my body was still not good enough for social exceptance). This has been a very difficult journey for me. And I will be honest when I say I am really still working on it.

When the boy thing happened it was about 500 steps back, I was really, probably too excited about him and well the rejection put me in a bad place. For months I have been dealing with this feeling with this motto in the back of my head: "I have put all this work in and nothing has changed, I still can't have who I want, I AM STILL NOT GOOD ENOUGH" I wake up every day and have to try my hardest to push it back, and honestly the only time I even face it is when I have been drinking, which I have to admit has been happening quite a bit too much for my liking lately. This struggle has made my progress very difficult, both emotion and physical - I have been drinking too much to try to help with the social anxiety, then I emotionally eat the next day to deal with the aftershock from the social encounter and the embarassment I have of myself from my drunken stupor, and well that has basically caused a seriously bad plateau. I in fact have gained 18lbs since my lowest in October and now have been working but struggling to get back to where I was and see the 170's.

I wish I could say I am back because I now have myself together, but that would be a lie. This is an issue that I am now facing but still working through, and it may be something that I work on my whole life. Unfortunately this is one struggle that perfectionists have, nothing is ever good enough and for me - there is always something that needs improvement, my biggest focus for this perfectionism is myself, my body, my face, my personality and somedays its excrutiating how hard I am on myself. I admit the problem and am committed to facing it, and I no longer want to let it stop me from seeing my weightloss goals. I thank god for my band because the emotional state that I have been in the last six months would have surely brought  me to that weightgain upswing that I usually saw, I am certain that I would be back to that 50 + lbs weight gain that I have seen so many times, 18 lbs really is nothing and I am confident  that I  can see my 185lbs again and I will see the 170s this year!!

I also realize that my neglect of blog world also coincides with weight gain, the fact is that this bond, this very scary mirror as I described it also keeps me honest and  focused, not to mention reading your successes and your problems and having this extra support truly helps with weight loss. The fact is I need this community, you all have a direct effect in my weight loss and I am very aware of it. So I have to stay commited to myself, to the blog, and to you all. I am excited to read over your blogs for the last few months and see your emotional and physical transformations!!