To Those Who Judge

Last night as I lay in bed trying to sleep but actually flipping through my Facebook newsfeed, I came across an article.  The title caught my attention immediately:  A Call to Action: Your Fat Friend Is Going It Alone.  It was an interesting and very relatable piece for me.  It got me to thinking about how society views and treats fat people.  It brought to mind things I don't really focus on anymore; the little comments I sometimes hear or the criticizing eyes as I walk about minding my own business, all because I'm fat.  I've learned to brush those things off, to not focus so much on the negative, but some days it can be hard to ignore it.

I don't think people always realize just how damaging, how lasting the comments they make are.  I can still remember shortly before my ex and I broke up, asking him something along the lines of did he wish I was thinner or was he proud of the way I looked and him responding, "I wish you were thinner so I could show you off to my friends."  Six years and I have never been able to forgot those words.  They didn't just hurt me, they devastated me.  Many times I wish I had told him how much damage those words caused.  My already fragile self-esteem shattered and it has taken me years to build it back up.  I relied so much on him and others when it came to my self-image.  If my own boyfriend didn't seem to think I was good enough, then clearly I was a hideous creature.  Now I know better than to put such stock in other's words, but that doesn't always make it any easier when I hear the snide remarks people sometimes make.

Never Take Friendship Personal

So I realize it's been quite some time since I've gotten on here.  My life has simply not been interesting enough to write about (I work at a dry cleaners.  Can you say boring?) and I haven't had any profound thoughts to talk about either.  So I ended up just letting things slide.  As I have often said in the past, we'll see if I can't do better.  Don't hold your breath though, you might be holding it a very long time!

So life really has been fairly boring.  I work mornings, go home, and stay home.  I go out with a select group of friends once or twice a week, but that is literally the extent of my social life.  I'm actually going to see a Christian romance film that's showing for one night only on Monday night and I'm actually kinda terrified because 1) I won't really know anyone there and I don't know the people I do know who are going very well, and 2) it's a romance which is the kind of movie I always avoid because they depress me.  Aaaaah!  Freaking out in 4...3...2...1...days. We'll see how it goes.

In any case, I find my lack of a social life to be rather ironically amusing because I was so much more social when I was younger and I always figured I would have even more of a social life as I got older.  Nope!  How things change.  I think that point has really hit home recently with checking out my Timehop the last couple of weeks and seeing all the friends I used to have and all the people who liked and commented on my various social media posts in years past.  It's just made me realize how much, as I've gotten older, I've fallen out of touch with those people and failed to really make any other lasting friendships.

I Am Not A Wallflower!

As some of you all may know. every semester UNM does four shows with the theatre department.  In the one year that I attended UNM previously, I only saw one of those shows and I never even considered trying to audition.  This semester though, with starting back at school, one of the things that I determined is that I didn't want to be a wallflower anymore which is something I've been pretty much since I started college.  I would sit at the very back of the classroom, and despite, usually, keeping up with reading and homework and what not, I never really participated in the class.  The biggest part of my issue was because I am overweight, I didn't want to bring any further attention to myself.  I felt if anyone noticed me, they would judge me and possibly make fun of me which was the last thing I wanted.  So I did my best to make myself invisible.  I didn't make a whole lot of effort with my appearance or clothing choices and I think I did succeed fairly well with just blending in.

Chance of a Lifetime

One of these days I'll stop blogging at midnight, but I doubt it'll be anytime soon.  Pretty much all inspiration comes to me sometime around or after midnight.  It's really bad.

In any case, I did want to share a really amazing opportunity a very dear friend of mine shared with me.  She and her husband have a passion for working in disaster areas to help rebuild.  She just recently got back from spending several months in Japan working at rebuilding homes.  It is truly her passion and she shared that passion with me.  Hearing her talking about her experience made me remember how much I used to love going down to Mexico and doing missionary work down there.  Now granted, Japan is very different since it's Samaritan's Purse and they're doing construction whereas when my church youth group would go down to Mexico, we mostly did VBS and outreach with very little construction work.  Well, as she was telling me about her experience, she asked me if that would be something I would like to do.  My answer:  Heck, yes!

Chivalry Is Not Dead

Years ago, before my family moved and when I was still going to church on a regular basis, I had several guy friends that I would hang out with on a regular basis with some of my other friends.  Whether we were at church or out somewhere, they would always insist on holding the doors open for the girls.  It was one of those simple little things that I just got kind of used to.  A good guy will hold open the door for the girls to go in first.  That was probably at least three years ago.  Since then I've fallen out of contact with most of them.  The only guy I see on a regular basis is my best friend who's like a younger brother to me and the group of friends that we hang out with doesn't generally actually go out anywhere, though if we do, he grabs the door for us young women.  Being the only guy in our little group, he has to act the gentleman which he does perfectly.  But aside from him, the only guys I see are at work and unless you're some really gorgeous girl or an older woman, you get the doors slammed in your face.