As I was perusing through my zillion photos this week looking for pictures of myself (there aren’t very many) to show my hair color at various times of my life for this post, I had yet another jarring reality check in self-perception (I do that from time to time lately). You see, all my life, I thought I was fat. My entire life. Never once did I look in the mirror as a child, as a teenager, or even as a young adult and think that I looked even remotely “okay”. Not once. It was like a had a “fatty fat fat” chant going on in my head all my life.

Here I was in 7th grade. I distinctly remember those pants (Don’t be joking on my pants! They were cool. . . at the time) and how fat my 12 year old self thought I was when I saw the picture.

Here I was as a teenager wearing the baggy-ass clothes because again I had that “fatty fat fat” chant thing going on and thought that I simply MUST cover up the unsightly blob.

Here I was as a young mom (Adam was about four years old there) and I remember my thought process that day. I thought I was too fat to put on a bathing suit and go out into public at the beach. I think it was at that point in time that God said, “Well, if you think THAT is FAT, then I’ll SHOW you FAT!” That declaration manifested itself in my 40s.

WHAT THE HELL? What in the HELL was I thinking all those years? While I was never skinny, I see clearly NOW that I was by no means FAT. While I was always bigger than my teeny tiny sister, I still wasn’t FAT. I am just built completely different. What is it that shapes our minds into such distorted self-perceptions?

And what happened to me that NOW you can’t hardly get me OUT of a bathing suit during the summer? That I INSIST on parading around with it ALL hanging out and I not give a flying ****.

In this picture, I had only been wearing shorts in public for a couple of years because I was convinced that my legs were so hideously ugly that it would scar people’s retinas if they came into visual contact. Now, these days, it’s hard to get me OUT of a pair of shorts. I had to wear pants when I went to Seattle last month because it was a little cool, and it about killed me.

It’s not like I look in the mirror these days and think that I’m magically thin, because thin I am most definitely not. Do you see those hips? However, my priority levels in life have shifted, I think. There are so many more things in life to worry about than whether somebody sees me in a bathing suit and thinks, “Wow! She should really rethink going out in public!” or “She really should cover those legs up before somebody stabs themselves in the eye!” Because what others think doesn’t concern me any longer.

Could this possibly be called Confidence? Or is it that I’ve had too many Miller Lites in my day?