Monday, August 30, 2004

Old photographs

Sitting on my desk right now are a lot of pictures, populated with friends from college and graduate school, family weddings, and vacation pictures. Here is the thing, I am in a lot of those pictures dressed in everything from formal wear to shorts and I don't recognize myself. I know that it is me but the face is wrong, there are extra rolls of fat under the chin and no cheek bones. Don't get me wrong, I still carry a little extra fat under my chin but not in the same way and I don't look like a possible choice for a young jolly Mrs. Santa Claus anymore. My face is interesting now where before it was rather swollen and unremarkable except for my eyes. More than anything though I look at the girl in the pictures and I close my eyes for a minute and try to remember who she really was and what she really felt in that body. I expected some level of transformation when I started down this path, some level of alteration, not an entire rebirth. I expected to be myself but better, I didn't expect to be an entirely different person, that was never the goal. The reality is that more and more I am becoming an entirely new entity, someone I never was before, and not only do I not physically resemble the girl in the pictures, I don't emotionally resemble her either. Some days that is scary, but I wouldn't go back to who she was, still I wonder if she (the old me) had known how much would change would she have started the whole weightloss process in the first place? I don't know, but I know that the girl I am now would have made that choice and maybe it is time that I start taking pictures of her.

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