The Naked Truth

So I made a realization while I was getting in the shower this morning…I avoid mirrors when I’m naked. In fact, it’s like a race to see how fast I can get naked and into the shower before I have to encounter the image of my naked self in the mirror above our sink. Sad, huh? And I kid you not when I say it’s like a race because I almost tripped over the side of the tub and injured myself from trying to get in there so fast this morning. Almost injured myself! (That would one hell of an injury story though…).

And you would think that this wouldn’t be any sort of surprise to me given all the other forms of self-loathing that I partake in (while clothed, mind you), but honestly, it is a surprise to me. I’m surprised that I can’t stand in front of a mirror without cringing, never mind trying to stand naked in front of a mirror without cringing. I’m surprised that I can’t stand naked in front of a mirror without homing in on all of the things that I think are “wrong” with me from my hips to my stomach to my face to my arms to my hair to my EVERYTHING. I swear the list never ends. And when standing naked in front of mirror that list just gets bigger and bigger and bigger until it engulfs me like a conflagration of self-loathing, destroying any little bit of self-esteem that I may have built up, and that’s before I’ve even had breakfast! And I’ll tell you right now…that does not make for a very good day at all.

And honestly, I’m surprised that I never noticed this until now. I mean I’ve been dealing with my naked self for like 21 years now, and today is the first day that I truly realized that I have a phobia-ish-thing of mirrors, especially when I’m naked. And, frankly, I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all. I want to BE NAKED and BE OK. I want to be able to face my naked self in the mirror every morning and tell myself that I am beautiful and wonderful. I want to be able to tell myself that and leave out all of the “despites.” I want to actually say something nice to myself without automatically following it with “despite the fact that (you’re fat, have almost zero hips, you have blotchy skin) or any other number of mean things that I say to myself. I just want to say something NICE and leave it at that.

So I’m going to make a goal to say something nice to myself, with NO despites, every day. Hell, I might even write them down for future reference. And I’m going to try to become chill with my naked self because honestly there is absolutely no sense in almost breaking a leg when getting into the shower just to avoid seeing myself naked. And when it comes right down to it do many of the things that I avoid doing turn out to really be that bad? No. So here’s to becoming best friends my naked self because honestly it’s LONG past due. J