It's Casual (Not Heartbreaking)

Ouch. This is also me, but from pretty much the whole of my life.

Socially dumb, yeah, but yeah, me. Same.

This is me. Often.

Same here. I think there have only been two or three people in the world who have sought me out first and I'm even counting my mom here, whom I serve as her primary caregiver.

I lived this for so long it permanently damaged my psyche.

Ouch. This has been the dialogue inside my head for far too long.

So true to life.

Boy do I know this feeling.

I had no fucking idea this ever happened, and this was supposed to impact "my people".  As in, I'm a Chicana -- a Tejana, to be specific (an American of Mexican descent who hails from Texas), and my family came over during the 1910s and '20s, when my grandparents were children or teenagers.  This could've happened to one of my antecedents.  Perhaps a family member I interacted with when I was small.  They would've been of an age where it could've happened to them.  Fucking hell.

Q:  Are these the manliest men you have ever laid eyes on? A:  Undoubtedly, yes. (Keep on being awesome, beskirted activist men of India!!)

I reserve the right to bitch about Valentine's Day while not having a father on this plane of existence to celebrate Father's Day with.  I can still "celebrate" that day with him by visiting his grave and leaving him an arrangement of flowers.  He died ten years ago this July so there are moments when I'll forget what he sounded like.  But I still have the right to moan about Valentine's Day because I've never had the privilege/pleasure of getting to celebrate that day.

Amen to all this! I support a lifestyle which encourages eating as many servings of fruits and vegetables as possible (with the magic number being 5) and drinking at least 4 glasses of water a day.  I also support a lifestyle that includes at least 15 minutes of aerobic activity, 4 times a week.  I don't support going on diets and think the dieting industry needs to be at least as heavily regulated as the pharmaceutical industry, if not MORE so. I slacked off on doing all of the above during the holidays, but you know what?  I don't beat myself up over that.  I just know that I now need to get back to that kind of lifestyle.  But you want to know what else?  If I were to crave a 4-piece steak finger country basket from Dairy Queen (DQs in Texas = you have no idea what you're missing out on, rest of the country) this weekend, I'm getting me one.  If I want a couple of Snickers from the vending machine at work tomorrow, I'll get them.  To me, there is no such thing as a "bad" food.  There are ideal foods in the form of fruits and vegetables -- life-giving foods -- but life would be not worth living if you erase pizzas, cheeseburgers, chocolate cake, cheesecake, fried chicken, buttery biscuits, or lasagna from your diet. I did lose weight a few years ago.  I did it for my own reasons and based purely on the lifestyle rules I set for myself.  The only thing it benefited me was when I stopped being prediabetic.  I'm still asthmatic, still have PCOS, and my high blood pressure was out of control until very recently -- within the last six months -- when I was put on a third medication and finally I achieved normal blood pressures.  But my health is pretty much as it's always been as an adult.  When I stopped being prediabetic, I continued losing weight just so I could wear "cute" clothes and fit a certain aesthetic.  But I don't feel at all that I should be pressured to maintain that aesthetic, and in fact I'm still quite a bit chunkier than the people the media holds as societally "attractive". I hold that beauty is a vanity call and should not be an indicator of one's worth as a person, nor confused with "health".  "Healthy" people are not thin people -- they're just people who measure normal levels of all the biometrics found in full blood workups (e.g. BUN, creatnine, potassium, and blood glucose levels) as well as one's blood pressure and resting heart rate levels and few to no medical conditions.  I'm not necessarily "healthy" based purely on the aforementioned medical conditions, but I do tend to receive beautiful lab results and I finally love my blood pressure and heart rates, so as long as that's the case then I'm happy with who I am. So... long story short -- long live HAES and body acceptance and down with diets and body/fat haters!