Wednesday Wisdom: Forgiveness

The other night, I stumbled. Not with my eating or my exercise – though neither of those were perfect – but with my mindset.

It started with me “stumbling” onto a picture of myself. I was actually looking for pictures of myself, for a particular reason, but I wanted good ones. I didn’t find any of those. For one thing, I have evidently made a practice over the past ten years of being extremely unavailable to the camera. I sort of knew that, but…it’s still sobering to realize just how good I had gotten at it.

Still, I did find a few pictures. And I hated them all. But it wasn’t until I found this one, from about four years ago, that I absolutely cringed – and I will warn you now, it’s not pretty. Brace yourself:

What I found appalling is not the way I looked – I was prepared for that – but the fact that I very clearly remember this day, and what I remember seeing in the mirror bears no resemblance whatsoever to what I see in this picture.  I had no idea.  This is, for me, a very clear illustration of the fact that my body image is completely out of touch with reality.  I am not capable of judging my own appearance.  (And of course people aren’t telling me the truth – I mean, who tells someone they love, “Oh, you look terrible, don’t go out like that!”  Come on.  And if they had, or did, I’d be pissed.)

So that scares me.  It upsets me, and it scares me.  And more so because I found another picture – I can’t put this one in because it’s on another computer and I can’t get to it right now, but I’ll add it later if I get a chance – from a few weeks ago that still looks pretty bad, and not at all the way I remember thinking I looked.  60 pounds and a completely different lifestyle and mindset later, and I am still not seeing myself the way I really look.  Again, that scares me.

How am I really going to know when I’m where I need to be?  I have said before that my real, true goal is to be able to take a picture of myself and like what I see.  I am not even close to that, clearly – at least, not a picture from the neck down, and even taking one from the neck up requires intricate planning and positioning.  And I’ve been fighting depression for two days because of this…

And that’s the stumble.  Because I know very well that beating myself up and giving in to despair and self-loathing are the very things that will make me fail.  They are the very things that can and will derail me, if I let them.  I cannot do this to myself.  I cannot mire myself in disgust at my own delusions and fear that I am and will always be disgustingly fat, even when I think I’m not.  We all know what lies down that road, and it’s nothing good.  It’s nothing I want.  I must, and I will, reject that path.

When I realized I was starting that downward spiral that I know from experience would eventually lead to depression-fueled binge eating and lethargy (about ten seconds after I first saw the picture), my mind immediately tossed up a post from GrumpyChair.  She’s talking about her six-week checkup after giving birth and discovering she hadn’t lost nearly as much weight as she felt she should.  The comment that really stuck in my head was, “This did not make me want to go home and pop in an aerobics tape and eat salad.”  (There are other posts in the same timeframe that talk about pictures, and one in particular about how she unconsciously edited herself out of the photographic history of her family.  That one hit home, too.)

Why do we do this to ourselves?  Why is it that, when we are faced with a discouraging truth about our weight, our appearance, our health – our immediate reaction is to binge?  To go comfort ourselves with the very things that made us this way?  I know the scientific reasons…I understand how that works…but it’s not okay, and from a psychological and intellectual standpoint it’s insane.  And for me, the bottom line is that I have got to forgive myself for what I became, and I have to do it now.  I have got to stop sinking into the weeping-and-wailing frame of mind and remember that while I may not be where I want to be, I have made enormous progress, and I have every right to be proud and happy about that progress.  I do need to stop deluding myself that I’m done…but that doesn’t mean I have to feel as though I’m back where I started.  Because I’m not.

I know that I look better.  My body image isn’t quite that skewed.  I know I look decent a lot of the time, and sometimes I even look pretty damned hot, based on other people’s reactions.  I just need to accept that my own glances in the mirror are not going to give me honest information.

I knew this at one time.  I started this process out by taking – or actually, having DH take – regular progress photos so I could see where I was headed and how I was doing at getting there.  I’ve stopped doing that, and I think that was a mistake.  (Evidently, this is one of those lessons that takes several repetitions for me to learn.)  I think had I kept it up, I wouldn’t be facing this dark epiphany again right now.    So that’s something we’re going to start back up immediately.

If you’ve made it this far, I imagine you are despairing of ever reaching the “wisdom” part of the post.  The truth is, you already touched on it.  Forgiveness.  We are taught to try to be the best people we can be.  We are taught to try to do things right and to make as few mistakes as possible.  And there’s wisdom in that, of course, because obviously life is better when you get things right and don’t screw things up for yourself any more than necessary.  But what we aren’t taught is that it is impossible to never make mistakes – we are only human, and we are all going to screw up, a lot.  We will fail.  We will be, at some point in our lives, nearly all of the things we despise the most.  Hopefully, we will catch ourselves before that gets out of hand, but we can’t prevent it entirely, and if we try, we destroy our own joy in life.  One of my favorite lines from a song is from “Unwritten” by Natasha Bedingfield:  “We are conditioned/to not make mistakes/but I can’t live that way…” And neither can anyone else, though we kill ourselves trying.

And we aren’t taught that when these mistakes or stupid decisions happen, it doesn’t make us bad or worthless or stupid or evil or whatever adjective you want to use in your personal self-castigation.  It makes us normal, and human.  It’s how we learn.  Nor are we taught that when it happens, the right thing, the good thing, the personally beneficial thing to do is to take the lesson and then forgive. We do hear a little bit about forgiveness of others…but rarely do we hear much about forgiving ourselves.

That’s what passes for wisdom from me today.  Forgive yourself.  Whatever you did or didn’t do or said or didn’t say or forgot or neglected or just screwed up…it’s not the end of the world. Even if the consequences are grim, you really aren’t the Dark One for having done it.  You are no worse a person than anyone else for having made that mistake, and mistakes are not all bad if they are turned into lessons learned.  So figure out where you went wrong, and (if you can) why, and then forgive yourself.  You’re only human.  And as bad as it is for you to hold a grudge against someone else, it’s a million times worse to hold one against you.  So forgive yourself.  And I’ll do the same.

(I originally said “try to do the same” but then my mindset was saved by, of all people, Yoda.  “Do, or do not.  There is no try.”  God, I love that quote.)

So go, and do!