Accepting Responsibility For Being Yourself (long and philosophical)
Accepting Responsibility for Being Yourself
When you are larger, you are forced to accept both physical and social limitations not of your choosing. The physical limitations are a matter of the condition of your body and the weight that it needs to bear every second of every day. The social limitations you endure are almost entirely imposed by others and are rooted in their own biases. We get accustomed to those limitations, frustrating as they might be, and orient our lives around them. Upon losing a substantial amount of your excess weight, wondrous things happen…..you feel better, you look better, you have more energy, and you are more socially visible.
Some find that these dramatically changed cir****tances enrich the fabric of their lives and they settle into a state of greater happiness in better health. Others discover that their world of possibilities is much more expansive than it used to be and/or that they hadn’t been true to their own needs and interests when they were larger. It is not uncommon to feel restless and compelled to explore a world with fewer limitations. Others go on inner journeys of self-discovery and growth. The end result may be that you conclude that you can actually be content in the life you already lead or, conversely, that parts of your life aren’t consistent with the way you want and need to live now.
The most substantial part of figuring out what you want and need out of life as a thinner, happier and healthier person is accepting what and who you are, in all your resplendent glory and weirdness. I have known for a very long time that I didn’t and don’t fit very well within the bounds of “normal" in a lot of ways, but I had never really accepted myself as I am, so I lived as an increasingly obese person within the physical and social limitations imposed on me. Now that I am no longer obese and those limitations have mostly evaporated, it has occurred to me that the consequences of whatever changes I choose to make in my life will be my responsibility alone; I can’t blame cir****tances outside of my control any more…there is only me. Considering that I am a person with needs and goals that some might deem unseemly or at least unconventional, I know that I will suffer the judgment of others, not due to their biases about my size or their expectations based on previous history with me, but about my value and substance as a human being. Even the thought of anyone making such judgments about me is horrifying.
If you are a particularly sensitive person, one of the things you fear most is the judgment of others about the inescapable truth of who you are. Yet it is the awful and pervasive cruelty of self-doubt based on your fear of those judgments that gnaws away at your soul, not those judgments themselves. What it all seems to come down to is whether or not you can accept your own truth, your own identity, the glaring reality of yourself just as you are; not how anyone else expects you to be. There is great strength and power in that tenuous toehold of self-acceptance. From it you can change your life to better fit your true needs and goals, even in the face of harsh judgments from the people with whom you have spent your days and years. It won’t be easy and it is unlikely to be expedient, but it can be done. You can find your rightful place in the world. So, accept responsibility for being yourself in a thinner, healthier body and I think you will find the thread of hope for a better, more fulfilling life.
RP
