My Earlobes Still Feel Fat

“If you think I’m hard on my body now, you should have seen me ten years ago.” My new boyfriend looks at me with his eyebrows raised, uncharacteristically disbelieving. Then he says, with a slight edge to his tone, “but I didn’t know you then. I only know you now.” I pause for a second to try to figure out why this irritates me so much, when he brushes off my explanations of my past as if it has no bearing on the person I am now. It’s always surprising to me when he does this, partly because to me it seems obvious that my past is a huge part of my current self, and partly because he’s usually so thoughtful and understanding, and this kind of invalidating reaction is unusual for him. I take a deep breath and try to articulate my frustration. “You have to understand that where I was then is important…it informs where I am now. And for you to say that the person you know, the particular body image issues of the woman you’re dating here and now, are all that matter…for you to say that...

A couple of hours ago, I was lying in bed with my boyfriend, making out etc, and he whispered in my ear "your body drives me crazy."  Not only did I not respond by arching my back and grinning at him, the way I should have, but the way I did respond is just SO classic.  I sort of faux-smiled (cha grinned , as I like to call it), and said "that makes two of us." God, what a mood killer, eh?!  If it weren't for my boyfriend's persistance I would have just given up.  And to be honest, sometimes I do.  I don't write about sex much on this blog, I guess because it's one of very few subjects I'm not quite comfortable throwing out there into the internet, but I'm beginning to think I ought to change that.  After all, the bedroom (or the living room, or the kitchen, or the airplane bathroom, etc) is the one place where (in most cases) we can't hide our bodies behind clothes or under water. It's also one of the few places where sarcasm...

So I’ve been doing a little room improvement, which has led to a lot of re-arrangement of bookshelves, which has in turn led to a lot of rediscovery of old journals / favorite postcards / art supplies. And photos. Lots and lots of photos. More specifically, I was surprised to remember that I went through a phase where I actually bothered to create photo albums and scrapbooks for trips in my life. I spent a good hour sitting on the floor, surrounded by bookshelf detritus, flipping through old albums, laughing and remembering the good times: the roadtrip my friends and I took in high school, the dress-up my friend Mark played freshman year of college, the trip my best friend and I took to Australia… but what struck me the most was the difference in how I looked then and now. And then, and then, and then… One album was made up of photos from my dad’s 50th birthday celebration in Italy. We were both pre-GB, and boy did it show. I had completely forgotten how huge I was, and more impo...