Revelations...

Some days I struggle with what to write about.  I read an interesting article in The Times yesterday about Elizabeth Gilbert, author of 'Eat,  Pray, Love', an interesting book about her personal journey to finding herself.  She was asked how she could open up her most intimate feelings, thoughts and experiences to  be read by millions of strangers.  Her reply was 'learn how  to reveal yourself'.

'Learn how to reveal yourself.' 

This is what I am trying to do by writing every day. Revealing myself here in print helps me to reveal myself to me. The fewer hidden dusty corners there are in my life, the easier it is for me to be fully present to myself.  It's not that I have a thick-skin. I am incredibly sensitive, indeed some would say, oversensitive, to perceived or actual criticism.  I get defensive and even aggressive when given feedback that I judge to be harsh (and I often judge genuine constructive comment as harsh). Even with my overly sensitive nature I value my ability to be reasonably open with my feelings.

I haven't always been this way.  When I was a teenager I was so secretive and shut down that I didn't express any feeling at all, except maybe anger.  I remember being a sullen, angry child, though I was told that I was high-spirited, bright,funny and had a great spark of mischievousness that everyone both feared and loved and admired.  Mostly I remember feeling wrong.  Wrong in my size, wrong in my ungainliness, wrong in my tailor-made clothes made by my immigrant father, wrong in my home, my parents,my Eastern European food and just generally wrong in my skin.  I also see that with hindsight I was not alone in feeling these things- many kids have trouble seeing themselves and their families as normal or as good  as others.

As I've aged I still sometimes feel 'wrong', though never to the extent I did when I was a pre-teen.  I know that there are times when I chatter too much,too loudly or inappropriately, but so what.  I wouldn't be human if I didn't get it wrong every so often.  The difference between me now and me then, is that now I know that everyone feels this self-doubt sometimes.  Everyone approaches new situations with slight trepidation - it'sjust that as adults we learn to mask those feelings or at least I've learned to minimise them.  No one actually notices and that's a big revelation to me and it makes me feel far more relaxed.

My increasing girth is still an issue for me.  I don't like what I see in the mirror though I do like the way my body feels. I am healthy and strong now and after so many years of illness I feel pretty embarrassed to be hung up about weight. It feels so trivial.  I vow to eat less and do for a while, but the world is so full of good stuff that I lose my resolve fairly easily. Unfortunately I live in a society that values women according to their looks.  Maybe at my age, it's time to give up the battle to be skinny (never gonna happen) and just become more of what I am,  a really ravishing, stylish large woman.

So, I come back to where I began - 'learn how to reveal yourself' - and I see that for me this almost inevitably means learn how to reveal all the bad things about yourself.  I am still at the baby steps stage of learning how to reveal the spectacularly unique and wonderful things about myself.  I can at least begin by valuing how good I feel in this moment - tired, weary and just good.  It's a start and a very good way to approach another New Year.