I’d just snapped the above picture and punched the button in the side of my earbuds to silence the music, thinking, “I just want to listen to nature,” when a familiar voice filled the momentary void.
“Jen, is that you? Girl, you’re looking skinny!”
There it was: The sweet yet shattering sound of my sickness. I know it so well.
Turns out the speaker was an old friend from two gym memberships ago. I hadn’t seen her smiling face in years, and she was pausing her run to pay me a compliment.
It’s not her fault I still struggle to accept one.
Let me just be clear from the jump: This post isn’t about blaming others for my own deep-seated issues.
It’s actually about progress in the weakest part of my recovery “game.” It’s also about messages — the ones we send others, and the ones we tell ourselves. It’s about stopping that cycle of skewed interpretations, where we assign meaning to what someone else says based on our fear, insecurity and need for external validation, instead of our own unshakable personal truth.
I guess, then, it’s really about shaking out what’s true.
Continue reading “Appearance”
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