2005

I recently came across a picture of me from 2005 via an old friend's Facebook and thought, "damn, I'm so glad I don't have short black and pink hair anymore." Then, today, the same person posted this picture of me, also from 2005, and I thought, "Jesus, no wonder I had body image issues for so long..."

I weighed like 92 pounds! I barely even existed! For so many years after my drug phase I struggled with the notion that I would never be as skinny as I was on speed, and I really did not want to accept that. I kept thinking that if I just ate as little as possible and worked out all the time I could get back down to 100 pounds. I think I came close at 107 when I was about 17, but I have since given up on that "dream." Every now and again, though, I do look back at myself as I was and wonder how I really feel about my body these days. I can't say that I love every aspect of my body, but I have grown much more accepting of the parts of it that I don't really like, and I have become more comfortable about things that I used to be super self-conscious of. Sometimes I consider that it might be nice to be that thin again, but then I wonder why it would even matter, or how it would make my life better...the years that I was extremely thin (even when I was off drugs) were definitely the most miserable ones of my life. Even now I find it hard to suppress the thought that being thinner would make me happier. Maybe it would, on some level, being a model, but often times I look at my photos and think that I look much thinner than I feel, and other times I feel much thinner than I look, so I think it's entirely subjective. I've never weighed more than 120 pounds in my whole life and unless I get knocked up or go back to eating meat I highly doubt that figure will alter drastically in the next 5-10 years.

The past week has seen several instances of me being forced to relive or remember my past and I find I have a lot more demons lurking than I thought I did. I suppose, in a way, moving here was a big part of me trying to escape all of that, and while I've physically removed myself from the people and the situations that were less than favorable, the memories still remain in some remote corner of my mind and they appear to be accessible at the worst possible times. I'm not really sure how to go about dealing with those things but I'm kind of hoping that if I just keep living my life and being happy and positive that they will fade away. In the mean time I have a whole slew of new confusion to deal with.