The Picture

I got some mail from school yesterday. When I opened it, I saw that it was a picture of me and CTV's Kelly Dehn, taken at a Red River College awards dinner a few months ago.

I looked terrible.

Aside from being ungracefully huge, my hair and makeup looked ratty and tired, and I'm making this face like I'm about to say something. It's an awful picture, it really, really is.

I don't know why, but I started to cry almost instantly after I looked at it. There I was, standing in the hallway of my apartment; I couldn't look away, yet I couldn't look directly at it either. The picture seemed to have this sort of power over me. At that moment, all the denial I have about myself and the way I look was washed away with that raw image. It was like a tsunami of cold hard reality. There I am in all of my glory, holding my coveted award, and I look like that.

Barf.

It's vain to care so much about your appearance, I know that. I also know that an "educated woman" should be smarter than to let something so superficial, like her appearance, dictate how she thinks and how she feels about herself. Logically I am on top of the word; or at least I was that day the picture was taken. Yet looking at the picture now, from outside of my denial, it just seems so awful and embarrassing.

This should motivate me to do something about my appearance. If I don't like it, I should change it. I do subscribe to that mentality, it's what got me through school. Yet, here I am, at the pinnacle of so many unfathomable life accomplishments, being sucked in by my incessant weight preoccupation and negative self image.

My attitude toxic and far uglier than the picture.

I heard this song on the Ace Burpee show the other day. It was profound to me now (more than ten years later...) Sound advice, that I should consider when I get bummed out about stupid things like pictures that I look bad in.

Life is short, right?!