Mind games with myself

I am going to start off by saying "WOW, IT'S BEEN A WHILE SINCE I'VE BEEN HERE!"  And now I am going to apologize in advance for what I'm about to say...or rather, the way I'm going to say it...but here goes...the other day I finally realized that, for years I have been mindfucking myself.  And not in a good way at all.  Geezus H., I'm a quick study.

So, I saw a picture that was taken recently and I was standing in the background of this picture.  You can only see my backside but this one picture was so much more than a thousand words to me.  I literally stared at this thing for what seemed like hours but was obviously just minutes.

My whole adult life I have been told that I have amazing legs.  They are muscular and for years I hated them.  That is the one place on my body that I doubt I could "pinch an inch."  I have never been one of those people that wanted or liked sculpted muscles BUT the last couple of years I changed in some aspects.  I have made a super-duper friend that has shown me a lot about getting healthy by eating the right way and keeping my body moving on a consistent basis.  I am not 100% at either of these things but for the past two years, I have become a different person on the inside as well as the outside.

While I do not want to be one of those fitness guru/weight-lifting-abs-cut-out-like-marble people, I do want to be able to look in the mirror and see someone that is appreciative of the way her body looks and proud of the work she has put in to get it.  I tell ya, I'm getting there.  I'm nowhere close to being where I want to be but I am...by far... a hell of a lot closer than I was two years ago.

Back to the legs; I have always said I could bench-press a bus but in all reality, it would have to be a pretty small bus.  Maybe a trolley.  Maybe.  -_-  I once watched a video where a group of men were doing wall sits and this little "twerp" of a guy would walk across their legs.  Back and forth; back and forth.  These guys looked like big ole football players and this guy walking across their legs, well he looked like he was built to play stick ball; and he was the stick.  Every time he would walk across their legs, you could see them grimace.

Now I want to be in that lineup.  I want to get a group of girls together and do some wall sits and see if we can find a girl stick to walk across our legs.  Maybe if we can survive that, we could then find a stick man to walk across our legs.  Of course that is going to be more pressure.  Their ego's alone have to weigh a tremendous amount, right?

My arms.  Now there's a joke among jokes.  I call them my noodles and would love nothing more than to develop some muscle there and open my own jar of grape jelly.  Just kidding.  I don't even like grape.  Again, I do not want to be that person that has sculpted muscles bulging out of their shirts.....*note to my friend--the world loves it when you do it**...but a little bit of definition and strength would be amazing in my world.

So the only thing left is that middle area.  The biggest problem area of my life.  I can't walk by a mirror or a window without peeking at myself and targeting what I have always thought of as my biggest flaw in life.  I may as well have a big red target tattooed on my belly and on all my shirts because that is my problem child.  That is what I feel I will never get over.  At least that's what I used to think.

Now...no matter how big or little that stomach area gets on me, the REAL problem child is my brain.  It is my way of thinking.  It is how I perceive myself as a whole.  Let's go back to the picture of me that I was talking about at the beginning.  Here's why I can't get this out of my mind.....because this is exactly what was going THROUGH my mind that whole time I was staring at myself...
"Wow, my legs are amazing."
"I look so slender here."
"Am I really that lean?"
"Can I really even BE lean and overweight at the same time?"
"Are you sure that's you, Shellie?"
"You are beautiful."
And I can't get past this process.  I have never in my life taken a "body shot" where I thought I looked beautiful.  And I almost cry about it.  And that makes me angry and sad all at the same time.  Because all I have ever known is how to critique myself; to find the flaw.

I joined a group on Facebook a while back and let me tell you...these gals are getting to me.  It is these ladies that are changing the way I see myself...and it's so hard for me to accept coming from myself but in time I think I can tell myself more positive things and KNOW that it is true and real.  These gals post regularly (I don't because I'm my own worst critic and still a work in progress) and they are so uplifting that you can't help but keep reading.  They make me smile; they make me laugh; and some days they even make me cry.  I cry because I see they are feeling a lot of things that I feel but am too afraid to mention, even to myself sometimes.  Some of these gals I haven't even met in person and their words mean more to me than my own some days.

I have a plan of action in the works.  We are currently in the process of building a two-story addition to our home and the upstairs room is going to be my "inner sanctum."  My own piece of she-haven!  Well, if it ever stops raining so we can get it finished!  Treadmill, ab lounger, weights, exercise ball, tv/dvd/vcr with discs & tapes, as well as the rowing machine my husband and I just purchased and  a weight bench in the near future.  Hopefully a stereo comes about soon too!  He says an elliptical someday but that's not on my radar anytime soon.  I would like a spin bike some day though.  I'm not sure which excites me more, the idea of setting up my own she-haven or just knowing I am going to have my own she-haven!  Either way, my life is about to change in so many ways.

I have been doing a lot of research and taking a lot of notes and it gets me excited.  My problem is that I am a "list maker" like my mother so until I have the whole plan in front of me to follow step-by-step, I won't even start.  There are a couple of people I need to reach out to that I think are going to help me "win the gold" on this one and I really need to get my mind on the straight-and-narrow for this.

This is not a call for messages asking me to buy your products.  That isn't what I'm trying to do here.  I want to be responsible for myself; I want to be able to continue living my life without the aid of something I HAVE to order.  I want to seriously and honestly work for this.  That is the only way I am going to get that thought process above, to be a continuous thing in my brain.

The only way I can explain how that thought process makes me feel is this...
"That must be what drug users feel like on their high."

I want some more of that.
I want a lot more of that.
And I don't ever want it to stop.
Let's all cross our fingers and say a silent prayer to the good Lord above, that once I start this process, I can see it all the way through.

Thanks for reading.  It feels good to come back here after so long.