Confession, I have a poor body image. For most of my life I’ve hated one thing or another about my body, seemingly always wishing something was different. When I was a kid in junior high, I always thought I was too tall. I sprouted early and was 5’11” in 7th grade. At the time, all I wanted to do was blend in and not be noticed. I can probably blame some of that on my introvertedness, but it was still there. By the time I was in high school, I felt I was too skinny and that my arms were too thin. In some ways I was ok with that, but it did bother me. When I went to college I started drinking more and put on the freshman 15 and sophomore 30. At that point, I started to feel like I was over weight. I began to work out and restricted my food intake. I went from a fairly healthy 180 lbs to 165 lbs, sometimes working out for 3 hours a day. A quick note on the weight, I’m also just shy of 6’2″. And even as I’m writing this, I don’t think any of the weights matter, what really matters is how I felt about it. Throughout my life I’ve battled with things I don’t like about myself, mainly weight, but I was also self conscious about other things. Can you be self conscious about being self conscious? I think so lol. For a time I had a mentor in my life and he had me stand naked in front of the mirror and just look at myself. It was a weird experience. I noticed now much I tended to focus on the extra weight around my stomach, and how much I hated it. I focused so much on it that I never really noticed other things about myself, until that day. As I stood there in front of the mirror I noticed something that amazed me. My eyes are hazel. Or more distinctly, my eyes are both green and brown. Depending on the day and my surroundings one or the other is more obvious. I was in my mid-30’s and had never noticed that before. My drivers license even said brown. When I got it at 16 the woman asked my the color of my eyes and I told her brown. She started to say they were more of a… I cut her off and told her to put brown. Apparently I was enough of a dick that she didn’t argue and just put brown. So there I am, 30 something, standing naked in front of the mirror and I realize my eyes are hazel. That was a pretty amazing moment. Today, I really like my eye color. I’ve heard it can change as you get older, but I hope it doesn’t.
I’d like to say as I looked in the mirror that day that I accepted everything about myself that I previously hated, but that wouldn’t be true. I still work on accepting things. The current thing I’m working on is my hair. I’ve always hated it, in case you haven’t caught on to the theme. It seemed too curly, and would never do anything I wanted it to. Many women have told me they would love to have my hair, but I’m a guy, and I think it just looks bad when it’s longer than finger length. And that’s how long it’s been for close to 20 years. Until now. Right now my hair is the longest it’s been since I was in college. And I’m growing it longer. I hope it looks OK, but in the end it really doesn’t matter. The idea is to accept it and just go with the flow. I think the confidence to accept it, and rock it, will make all the difference in whether it looks good or not. At least that’s the theory.