FOUR YEARS AND CHANGE

In the year 2010 in the month of March, I lost my grandfather.

Well, I guess I didn't lose him, I mean, I know where he is. But he's not here. It's hard to believe that it's been over four years since I've heard his voice or felt his arms around my body, enveloped in a tight squeezing hug.

Sometimes I get really sad about it, and I don't know that I can figure out exactly why. I'll just find myself thinking about him and wishing that I had been given the opportunity to really get to know him. I feel robbed, is the word that most accurately describes my emotion I think.

I suppose I'm lucky, though. I do have three remaining grandparents. I also don't know what it's like to lose a parent, a pain that I can't even fathom if I try my hardest.

Actually, this was probably the first real tragedy I had experienced in my life. I remember coming back from dinner and finding my phone in my dorm room with six missed calls from my father. I was wearing a purple shirt. With a pounding heart I called him back and then subsequently collapsed onto the bed in tears, phone in hand, dad still on the line.

Parkinson's disease is cruel. It affects the motor cortex of the brain, thereby affecting their ability to walk and talk. There are a plethora of other ugly things that come along with it and the medication prescribed to help handle it, but it's a slow moving disease and unfortunately for me I don't remember the early years of the Parkinson's - before it had taken its toll on my grandpa.

Now I'm left with stories and pictures of a man I desperately wanted to get to know. He was almost always happy, with a very sweet and caring disposition. I know a lot of times people tend to glorify someone after they die, making them seem more amazing than they actually were. But I really don't believe that's the case here. And that's part of why I'm upset that I only got to know him for so short of a time period.

Nineteen years is not nearly long enough, especially when you live in two separate states. But at the same time, nineteen years is better than no years at all.

Love you, gramps.♥

WELL HERE YOU GO

Umm, happy first day of spring?

What is it about March that has turned me into a terrible blogger? Maybe that is a rhetorical question. It's probably the fact that I haven't really been doing anything of note except just living my life like normal. I wake up, go to school, yell at kids, make some art, warp some values, yell some more, hug some kids, and then go home where I watch Netflix and run on the treadmill. Usually.

But I think I have tendinitis in my left foot. It's just terribly awesome, is what. Walking is a chore and forget going up and down stairs. This is really a blatantly wonderful thing to have happen to a person and everyone should definitely experience it. I probably should be using a wheelchair or crutches or something, but I am a champion? So. Slow limp walking through the masses of students in the hallways it is! What fun!

Where was I going with this post? I don't even remember, other than I looked at the last time I posted and the last thing I posted and said to myself, "holy buckets, may-happs we should write a new thing or two." And so, here we are. Aren't you glad? (Also, umm..may-happs? I think I used to say that in like middle school. My excuse is 'throw back thursday' and you can't argue with throw back thursday.)

In other news, I painted a mug with an octopus on it last week. I think it was last week. All my days just run together. Hashtag teacher life. But I named him Henry and he's a lot more decisive than I am. He tends to help me with big life problems like whether I should drink more coffee or not. He usually says yes to more coffee. Shocker. (He's a caffeine addict, but don't tell him I said that.)

Alright, well I feel like this has been a thoroughly enjoyable post. A nonsense transmission of sorts. Did I manage to fill your quota of silly for the week? Because I suppose looking back on it now, that was my goal all along.

Success. And Happiest First Day of Spring. I hope you go ride your bike or plant something outside. I mean, the sun is shining!

THIS IS MY STORY

Since my sexy lie post, I have been thinking a lot more about positive body image and what it means to really be an advocate of having and maintaining a healthy opinion of your body, so I thought I really needed to share my own personal story.

While I was in a committed relationship with Matt (PC), I gained what we might refer to as "the freshman fifteen." I just kind of ballooned up for a number of reasons. Some of which being that I was no longer the active teen I was in high school and also that I was eating out and eating unhealthy food with my then boyfriend.

My pant size kept going up and going up and going up and my self esteem kept going down and going down and going down. I have been taught since a young age (not by my parents, but by the world) that beauty comes in a size two. It looks like Barbie with blonde hair, big boobs, nice hips and a small waist. All my life I had never looked like that, but I distinctly remember watching the Baywatch lifeguards and thinking to myself that someday I wanted to look just like those women. Someday I would have that hourglass shape and I would be pretty.

But I slowly started to realize that I would never look the way those girls did when I kept stepping on the scale and seeing a larger number than I had ever seen before. I was unhappy in my relationship, I was unhappy with my body, and I was unhappy with myself. The world had told me that I needed to lose weight in order to be happier, and I believed them. However, I didn't do anything that would cause me to lose weight, so I just suffered in my "fatness." I use quotes here because I wasn't obese, I mean, I wasn't really truly fat, I just felt that way. And that made me all sorts of sad that I can't correctly put into words.

When Matt and I broke up, it was probably the most drastic emotional roller coaster I have ever been on in my life. I had lost my entire world when he told me that he didn't enjoy kissing me or being with me anymore. And I was angry. I was angry that he didn't have the balls to break up with me himself and instead just treated me like crap until I broke up with him. This took a huge mental toll on me. Why was I not good enough for him any more? Why did he go chasing after all those other girls? Was I not skinny enough for him? Pretty enough for him? Nice enough for him? And all this doubt just crept into my head and I couldn't push it out. I kept comparing myself and my body to the other girls that Matt was bring around and flirting with right in front of me.

It led to me being depressed for weeks. I lived on a diet that consisted mainly of Tostino's pizza rolls and chicken strips from Denny's. I never worked out, in fact I almost never left my room except when I would venture to the kitchen to microwave more pepperoni pizza rolls. I just laid in bed all the time. I missed a lot of class and I watched copious amounts of Teen Mom online. I have recently come to the conclusion that I watched this show mainly because I was living vicariously through those girls. Not that I wanted a baby, but those teen moms knew what it was like to date and break up with an asshole, and that was the kind of girls I identified with.

My alarm would go off in the morning and I would groan with resentment at the start of a new day. I would have a debate with myself about whether or not I should go to class and then I would open my computer and lay there until it was time to go to sleep again. I would heat up fifteen pizza rolls at a time and go hours and hours in between heating more up.

This led to losing about fifteen pounds in less than two weeks. I went from having five pairs of jeans (sizes 9-11) to having one pair that would barely stay up without a belt (sized 5). I remember being in complete awe when I finally went to put on something other than sweatpants and nothing would stay on my hips. It was joyous, yes, but it was also a little scary. I had started college as a nutrition major and I knew that losing 15 pounds so quickly was way unhealthy. So when I called my mom and told her, expecting her to be completely shocked like I was and a little concerned. But I remember that she seemed excited and congratulated me on the matter, which just left me in utter bewilderment.

I suppose mom was trying to find anything to make me happy, since I had ended up just been this wallowing puddle of self pity for an inappropriate and inexcusable amount of time. I'm pretty sure that this was when things in my brain started clicking and I knew that I needed to change my diet and get to the gym and start going to class again.

And that's what I did, and by the end of the semester I had managed to keep the weight from coming back.

Going through that experience though has caused me to reflect on why I felt so down on myself and criticized my body so much. It has been beaten into my head that I need to look a certain way in order for people to like me. My self esteem started coming back up once I had shed fifteen pounds and started looking more like what the culture told me I needed to.

Why couldn't I be happy with myself at a heavier weight? Why was it so hard for me to love my body, no matter what shape or size it was?

And therein lies the start of my journey to loving my body no matter what shape I am. I decided that I needed to have a healthy body, one that I was proud of. Not because it was skinny, or sexy or what-have-you, but because it was mine. Because it can do back-handsprings and cartwheels and it can walk and run and bike. I can cook with it, clean with it, talk with it, love with it, and do the every day tasks required by life.

I understand what it is girls go through every day, thinking about whether or not their body is good enough or thin enough or pretty enough. And it makes me incredibly sad to know that that's how we are raised to think. We think we have to be a size two in order to be beautiful. We have to dress in short skirts and shirts that reveal our cleavage in order to get noticed by a guy.

Those are lies, plain and simple.

I struggle with having a positive body image every day. There are things about my body that I don't like, and I am trying to change them. And there are things in my mind that I am trying to change too, because a lot of my doubts about my body are in my head and I am the only one who notices them.

It's important to have the kind of body you want to, and to be okay with whatever kind of body you have. We're not all the same height and we're not all the same shape and we're not all the same color. And advertisers should stop telling us that we should be. Love your body. Treat it well so that it's healthy so that you can have that body for a long time. And most of all, don't hate yourself for not being the right shape. The right shape is a lie. We are all the right shape.


This is what I looked like summer of 2010 on the left and on the right is what I look like now:

I'm the one in the white dress with pink flowers, in case you were wondering. this dress is also like four inches too huge for me now. HA. 

i should have bought this dress, but i didn't. (it was a size three and i couldn't believe that it actually fit)

A SEXY LIE

There are a few things that I am passionate about, but I often do not talk about them here. This is a silly space that I created to share things about myself and my little life here in Idaho. But sometimes I feel like I just need to share some things and get them off my chest.

One issue that really just instantly infuriates me is this idea that woman are sex objects. I don't like Victoria's Secret because all their models in their ads are scantily clad impossibly skinny models who are setting the standard for what I have to look like even though I will never be as tall, as thin, or as sculpted as their pretty little airbrushed bodies in the magazines are. And that just really irritates me.

My body is beautiful just the way it is. There are things that I can do to make myself healthier or stronger, and that is what I focus on. But that is not how all girls focus on their bodies, and I often find myself struggling to keep mentally healthy as well because I am always inundated with what "beauty" looks like.

Living in a culture where I am constantly bombarded with images of mostly naked girls doesn't do a lot for my self esteem or my motivation to keep on being myself. Myself is never good enough, and it will never be good enough for my culture if things stay the same way that they are now.

This is a prime example of why I dislike Victoria's Secret. Those bodies are all the same, just colored differently. That is not a good message to be sending to girls and woman of any and all ages about their bodies, and yet this keeps happening.

It is driving me nuts.

And when I saw this video, I kept saying to myself "this. so much this" over and over and over again because I believe what she has to say is just spot on. And men don't even really realize that this type of marketing affects girls in this way, but it does.

I am thinking of how my legs are placed, how my hair is lying, where the light is hitting my face, and what angle people are talking to me from. I think about how my body looks in a room full of people and I engage in female competition. Are you shocked? You shouldn't be.

Having a positive body image is something that I fight for every day of my life, and honestly, I struggle more days than I care to admit. I used to weigh 156 pounds. For a girl of 5'4" that's quite a bit. I wore a size eleven jean and I hated having my picture taken. My self worth was really low and that had a lot to do with how I viewed myself as well as how I was being treated by PC while we were dating. But then, if I didn't value myself then why should he value me at all?

So now I'm twenty pounds lighter and I'm working to make my body a healthy one, not a skinny one. Plus Nathan doesn't treat me in a way that makes me feel bad about my body. Ever.

I encourage you to watch this video. Take twelve minutes out of your day to understand what it's like for a girl to live in this culture. We are so much more than sex objects. We are smart. We are brave. We are beautiful, fat rolls and all. And if you say anything to the contrary, then you need to do some serious self reevaluation. Girls need to be told that they are enough just the way they are. That doesn't mean that they should be okay with weighing 300 pounds and never exercising, but it also shouldn't force them into skipping meals so they can be a size double zero. There is a healthy balance, and we should try to obtain that instead of being so concerned with making ourselves sexy.