Quote:
Originally Posted by LW12
I also find that when a "handsome" man has shown an interest in me & we've engaged in a relationship I find myself just waiting for him to leave me for a prettier, thinner girl. As I've grown older I've tried to change my attitude, to realise that I deserve happiness as much as the next person. Its a work in progress.
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So true.
I dealt with social anxiety for a very long time (and still do). It was probably the worst when I was in high school. I hated walking through the lunchroom every day, imagining what other people were saying and thinking about me. My face would literally heat up and my cheeks would redden when I had to stand up in front of the class & give a report or something. I was a great student, with awesome grades and I was very intelligent for my age but I was so worried that people were judging me and making fun of me that I couldn't focus on the assignment and my grades suffered.
Like others have mentioned, I would intentionally remove myself from social situations and go out of my way to avoid them at all costs.
To this day, I'm not really sure when it really began. Being overweight is hard as it is, but being an overweight child is even harder sometimes. I remember back in middle school, we had to go out onto the field for some function and sit on the bleachers. These bleachers were these small, old wooden ones and I was first in line, talking to one of the cute popular guys I had a crush on. I had finally worked up the courage to talk to him and it seemed we were hitting it off. It just so happened the bleacher I was to sit on was rotting and I didn't know that until I sat down and it collapsed beneath me, in front of the entire school.
Of course, I was a big girl and everyone assumed it broke because I was too heavy for it so they cracked up laughing. I remember one of the P.E. coaches coming over to make sure I was okay and all I could get out was, "It was rotting.." I kept repeating that over and over again but it seemed no one believed me. Me being too heavy for it was more entertaining. I could've crawled in a hole and died right then and there. I quickly muttered to a teacher that I had to go to the bathroom and I walked as fast as I could back to the bathrooms and locked myself in a stall and cried for an hour before the bell rang.
Kids are cruel and I have many, many more memories where those came from. Later on in middle school after I managed to lose 50 pounds (by starving myself), my anxiety seemed to get better but then I gained it back and by the time I was in high school, it got so bad I got put on anti-depressants for it.
They seemed to help somewhat but like most anti-depressants, they can make you gain weight, which only depressed me more so I got off of them.
I still see a therapist every so often to help me with my self-esteem and social anxiety issues and they've improved significantly, but that little voice still pops up in my head out of nowhere from time to time.
I never thought any man would ever want me and those that did, I could never really be with in public because they would be ashamed of being with me.
I was fortunate to find a man at age 15 who saw me for who I really am and appreciated my curves and I've been with him ever since. I'm 23 now and we've been married for almost two years now and he's very supportive of my journey to lose weight. He insists that he wouldn't want me any other way and that it doesn't matter if I blow up to 500 pounds, he would still find me attractive, but he knows I don't want that. In addition to wanting to be healthy, he knows I'm not happy at my current weight and he tries to help keep me on track when he sees that I'm losing motivation.
He's half my size and has always been very genetically very skinny, so when we're out in public I still feel the judgemental looks and that little insecure voice pops up in my head. I look at pictures of us together and see how disporportionate we are and I know what others must be thinking.
I have some very attractive (skinny) friends and even though I trust him and know he wouldn't leave me, I can get a bit wary about him becoming too close to them. They wouldn't do anything like that to me either but the temptation I'm sure is there. I know he has noticed how I've let myself go in comparison to my friends who are my age and still partying it up at college but he doesn't bring it up unless I do first. Just the other day, a female friend of ours that guys flock to came by after a break-up with a boyfriend and got completely plastered on our living room floor. She said she wasn't sure she could walk to the bedroom, so my husband, trying to be the gentleman he is, picked her up without so much as a wince and laid her in the guest bedroom. And even though the situation had nothing at all to do with my weight, it stung. When we were teenagers, he had no problem throwing me over his shoulder despite my size, but now that I've ballooned to over 300 pounds, he's straining to pick me up and opts not to.
I worry from time to time about outside influences (his friends who are all into thin pretty girls) pressuring him into something when we're not on the best of terms and I'm not around, but I've learned that's what trust is all about and I can't live my life in fear. I don't want to live like this anymore, so I'm taking the steps to build my self-confidence again and lose weight the healthy way. But I know, it's gonna take more than the numbers on the scale dropping to feel comfortable in my own skin again. It's gonna take some work on my part to change how I see myself, not just how others see me.
