Which is lying, my brain or the mirror?

Dec 03, 2011

In my head I see a fat, round faced woman.  When I look in the mirror I see a thin, bony faced woman.  Which one is the real me?

In my childhood bedroom I had two huge mirrored doors on my closet, and in my parent's bedroom they have two bigger mirrored doors on their closet.  I grew up surrounded by mirrors.  I had to do the cursory whole body check every morning.  I thought everyone did.  I stared at all my imperfections, lumps and curves.  I hated every roll and pudgy spot.  When I moved out of my parent's house I moved into an apartment with mirrored closet doors in the kitchen (they housed the washer and dryer).  The bedrooms had no mirrors.  So I would check myself out as I ran out the door each morning.  But since I had a roommate I had no privacy when analyzing myself, so the examinations were fewer and less intrusive.  I slowly got out of the habit of staring myself down.  I gained weight.  I don't want to say it was because I didn't have a mirror to stare into, or because I had an overweight roommate, who like me, enjoyed food, so we ate ourselves sick constantly.  But I think the lack of a mirror, and the lack of an overbearing, food gawking mom helped me along on my path to morbid obesity.

Eventually, through multiple moves I finally ended up in the house I am in now.  There are no mirrors.  I had one vanity mirror over my dresser I would use to "check" myself out in the morning, but it only saw down to my knees.  I never had a full view of myself.  And I continued to eat, and I continued to believe I was fine, I mean my husband would have left me if I wasn't still attractive to him.  I knew the scale kept climbing, but I choose not to see it.  I thought I was fine.  And apparently so did he.  But I wasn't.  I was over 350 pounds, a mother of two young boys, and the wife of a man who didn't "see" that his wife was so big. 

After my surgery the weight melted off.  I took joy in the little things I was able to enjoy that I never knew I missed.  Like being able to sit in any chair I wanted to.  In being able to see and feel my collar bones.  Like being able to see a clear jawline.  Like being able to sit in a movie theater seat next to my husband and to have a smaller profile than him.  Or to be able to walk the three flights of stairs to my car and not be out of breath.  I felt those changes, and they were exhilarating.  They were encouraging.  I did eventually have a mirror installed in my bathroom, it isn't huge, but it is a tall mirror so I can see the whole me.  A whole me that keeps shrinking. 

And as you can see from my photo gallery, I have used that mirror to capture my weight loss.  But I can honestly say that I never stare at myself anymore.  I never truly stop and stare, and take in the face that now belongs to me.  I still see the chubby cheek, jawline lacking fat face I once was.  The woman who wasn't beautiful because she could never be more than "cute" because of all the pudge packed onto her face.  The woman who was so huge that she eclipsed her husband when standing next to him.

Tonight I stared at my face in the mirror.  I was crying for a million different reasons, the loss of my both grandfathers in the last 4 years, the loss of my husband's grandmother, the decline of my two remaining grandmother's, and quite a few other things, and as I cried I stared myself down.  I can honestly say I didn't recognize the woman staring back at me.  The woman I feel I am is pudgy, lumpy, bloated, and chunky.  The woman I saw was thin, with beautiful curves, a stunningly perfect face with smooth skin, a beautiful jawline.  A woman with sculpted shoulders, and thin, graceful fingers.  Why does the mirror show me someone so different from the woman I see in my head?  Now I find myself crying for a whole other flood of reasons. 

I have worked my ass off (literally) over the past two years.  And yet I have yet to truly embrace the woman I  have become.  It is like one step forward, two steps back.  I am amazed, shocked, and scared.  Who is Jenci?  Tonight, at this moment, I don't know.  I don't know who I am, the fat faced "cute" girl, or the "beautiful" thin faced woman I see in the mirror.

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