I’ve lost like...40 pounds since my heighest weight ever (when I was 18 god) and like 20 of that since April and so everyone around me is talking to me about my weight and my body all the time now and it’s just like. I’m disturbed by how many people feel so positively about me losing weight. Their enthusiasm is weird and I have a hard time matching it, my happiness back at them is out of politeness, I feel vaguely neutral about my body changing outside of wanting to feel more agile and graceful. I was fairly happy and comfortable where I was before. I didn’t think I was that unattractive and my weight had sort of been slowly downtrending on its own. A little part of it has to do with my breakup, I chose this as what I was going to do to take my mind off of that. And I’m turning 25 in October of this year, it’s like...it feels like this is the last problem left of this quarter of my life. Everything else I wanted to do for this part of my life I did, I left my suburb to go away for school even if it was in a small catholic school in a small little city. How many brown girls do you know go away to college?? Not very many. But my parents and I, they let me go. And I got my degree and I came back and now I have a job that I’m very serious about, I’m so consumed by it in a very exciting way. I moved back and am independent in the city I grew up in, which is the only thing I ever really dreamed of doing at 16-18. I think that whole process: moving, studying, graduating, moving, working gave me a lot of self worth. My job too. I know in my core that I have so much to learn but that I am also good at what I do, that knowledge is filling a gap that has been in me a long time. I almost never leave working feeling like I didn’t try my absolute best to help people, and that’s all I ever really wanted from my work. And also now too I’ve fallen in and out of love enough times to not settle for something that is not right, I have enough self worth to have expectations of others. It’s funny because I always thought losing weight would make me feel like I had more worth, but it was always the opposite. I had to feel good and stable and like I was a person worth being alive to then be able to not use food as a quick dopamine rush to not want to actively die....I guess. And it took me until 24 to basically feel like I had some amount of rights in this world, that I had control over my life, people can no longer mistreat me and do whatever they want to me because I’m on my own now and I’m not allowing it. That I was deserving of good things, like a love that gives what it takes, or feeling healthy. But I can’t tell people that when they ask me what I’m doing. Whatever. Point is weight is the last problem I guess, it’s been a problem since I was like 6-7, I don’t think I really have memories of when my weight wasn’t a problem to someone, first my mom, then the people I was around or just like idk just how the world is. It’s easier to adapt. What I really want for the next part of my life is to just experiment with what life is like at a normal “healthy” weight or whatever, if I’ll be happier, if things will be easier, if people will be nicer. What’s life like when you can fit into any store you’d like? Or not being the largest person in the room? Or when you can do any activity you want, when you can keep up with other people your age, when you don’t feel like your body limits you? Is life better? I don’t know. So anyway. I’ll update you