Just another body at the beach...

The other day I tweeted "I wish I hadn’t spent the first 35 or so years of my life thinking I was too fat to enjoy the beach. What a waste. Luckily I’m making up for it now. Life’s too short man."

I've written about this before. It's a paradigm in my life.

A little context into this tweet...

It was Saturday afternoon. It was one of those hot Manitoba summer days-- The kind of day where you literally feel like you might melt. The air is hot and a little bit suffocating, your skin is damp and sweaty and it feels like it's burning to the touch. It's both uncomfortable and satisfying. You don't dare complain because this weather is the antithesis of the frigid winters that we are known for.

I was at the beach with my daughter, her dad and my sister. We were taking shifts cooling ourselves, enjoying the water and each other's company. At the moment I tweeted, I was sitting on our beach blanket a few feet from the shoreline, watching my little girl play and splash around in her pink armband life vest with her dad and her aunt.

It felt like I was living in a memory, like I needed to soak it all in. The sound of people splashing and laughing in the water; that smell of beach and sunscreen mixed with hot air; the sweltering sun.

I stared at my daughter, memorizing the way she looked as she threw her head back and laughed while she rubbed wet sand on her dad and her aunt, yelling "sand lotion!"

I just knew, this was moment that I never wanted to forget.

A moment that I would save for a rainy day.

Surrounded by bodies of different shapes and sizes, taking in the heatwave like we were, I suddenly realized how I'd robbed myself of so many moments like this in the past. It was only in the last five or so years that I started going to the beach in the summer. My visits became more frequent after my daughter was born and I became a stepmom.

It's only been the last two years that I've fully embraced myself as a just another body at the beach. No cover-ups or shrouds hiding my meaty thighs, or stomach and back rolls. No crouching away in a corner somewhere, praying that I don't run into someone I know. No oversized tee-shirts sheltering my insecurities while making parachutes around me in the water.

Just all of me in one of my many bathing suits, exposed in a large crowd of strangers. What's more is that I actually feel good (and liberated) bumming around the beach in a one-piece that accentuates every fat lump of my body.

This wasn't always the case though.

I spent so many years struggling with body image and disordered eating. I wore cardigan sweaters on sweltering summer days, because I believed that they hid my fat rolls better than just a tee-shirt or a tank top. I avoided the beach, pools, and even daytime because of how I felt about my body. My stature. My fat.

In my mind, my fat body was not worthy of being at the beach. I despised myself for not trying harder to lose weight, vowing that by the next year I would be worthy of summer.

When I did find myself at someone's pool or at the beach, I wore entire outfits over top of my bathing suit in the water in an effort to hide myself. If I didn't try to hide I felt like I was proving the point that every person who ever called me fat in my life was trying to make.

It was exhausting.

And yet, settling into middle age and motherhood, here I was surrounded by a crowd of people doing their best to social distance in a heat wave, embracing my body and myself at the beach.

Nobody else cared about my bulk, or how I fill out my swimsuit. There was no spotlight on me, or group of bullies pointing and laughing at my very existence or calling me fat. The only people that even noticed me where the ones who I was with, who were happy to spend the day with me, enjoying the beach and making memories.

My daughter certainly doesn't care that my body looks the way it does. She loves my body, it is her comfort. It's all she's ever known.

She cares about me being the mom who will go in the water and play with her. She cares about me being the mom who laughs and enjoys a hot day at the beach, making sand castles and eating chips with her on our blanket overlooking the water. She cares about having fun.

She doesn't care about my cellulite and fat rolls. In fact, when I've tried to cover myself at the beach she tells me to take off my shirt or my shorts in the water, like her.

Summer is fleeting. My daughter's childhood is fleeting. Life is fleeting. The older I get, the more I realize that every day is valuable.

My time is valuable.

I am valuable.

Life is valuable. Too valuable to waste.

Sooner than you know the leaves will start to turn brown and yellow and the air will slowly start to cool until it bites. The days will turn into weeks, then to months and then years, and those days at the beach, playing in the water with your kids will be some of your fondest memories. I promise.