Another Woman's Body,

I've been working on the whole #DearJune thing as a project for myself, but this one prompt of bodies makes me want to share it. It makes me feel a little bit sick, but I'll work through it. 

People have very often looked at me and wondered why I would be unhappy with my body. The idea of 'You are so skinny' as a compliment kind of upsets me. I was tiny. Partly it's my frame, but it's also partly fear of ending up having another kind of weight problem like some of the people in my family, but I wasn't happy about it. I wanted to have hips and boobs as well as the tiny waistline, and for a little while it happened and I just had to hate the way my joints looked (seriously, I have properly weird looking knees) and then before I knew it, I woke up in another woman's body.

It's partly that we change over time, of course, but then it's also the fact that I love snacking a bit too much and have never been the biggest fan of exercise so when my metabolism slowed down a bit, suddenly, the snacking caught up with me. Half of my jeans don't fit, I split the zip in one of my favorite dresses and don't often feel comfortable in my own body. I have zebra stripes on my thighs from gaining weight rather quickly and also from the running. I hate my running shorts because of it and swimsuits, but if I don't go running and swimming, I'll never find my way back to the body that felt like it was mine. On the other hand, I know I need to learn to love the body that I have, and there are definitely parts of it that I love (the boobs; I love the boobs. Gaining weight in that area has not been a hardship, except for having to buy new clothes) some parts of it I find really difficult to accept. 

Part of me wishes that it was a Freaky Friday sort of thing, that there was just a little something to learn and then I could snap back into my old body and that would be that, but obviously it isn't that simple.