A haunting in Austin...

You can run away from your past, or more specifically, who you used to be. You can leave everything familiar behind, move to a place where nobody knows you and start over. You can hide from yourself and hope the old you never finds you again. Good luck with that. Hiding doesn't work. I can attest to that.

While I believe I have made huge progress in changing who I am at all levels, I have a way to go. Lately, I've been tortured, tormented, taunted and yes, haunted by the girl I used to be.

She really has never gone away. I have, for the most part, ignored her for a few years, as best I could. Lately, though, she's been haunting me. She wants me to remember how much control she had. She is trying to control my thoughts again. Because the bottom line is SHE is still how I see myself and how I think the world sees me. And worse than that, I haven't been able to accept her. Somebody recently told me how she struggled to accept the girl she used to be. But now, as much as she's glad she's not that girl any longer, she loves her and accepts her for what she was. I burst into tears. (Right in the office. It was lovely.) Because right now, I hate the girl I used to be. She ruined my life. Or a good part of it.
And although I often say (and truly believe) that I couldn't be who I am now if I wasn't who I was then, there is a part of me that wishes I could have been anybody BUT her. I just want so badly to be normal. To have been normal. Instead, that girl had control of me for so long, I will never be able to escape her. My legacy, it seems, will always be "the girl who lost all that weight". Which means acknowledging I was "the girl who was really that fat".

And not only that, but my non-existent self esteem was very much tied up in my weight. (Chicken/egg--who cares.) But now that I have so much less weight, I get more attention. And people tell me how awesome and inspiring I am. Do you know what that says to me? I was right all along to think I was worthless BECAUSE I was fat, since now my worth to the world is dependent on getting rid of the fat.

So, here's my task. You can run, but you can't hide. So instead of hiding, I need to "bring her along on the journey" as I've been told. But I can't do that until I stop hating her. I hate her. Going to bring in the professionals on this one.

But for now, in all her glory (said with great sarcasm), here she is. And know, as everybody who I've personally shared this picture with lately can tell you, this picture makes me cry.