Still Myself

I have seen all the things that are done under the sun; all of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind.

—Ecclesiastes 1:14

I thought a lot of things would get easier once I lost weight. And some have. But many haven’t. I thought that losing weight would set in motion all the parts of my life that seemed stuck and stalled. I thought seeing that magic, dreamt-of number on the scale would turn me into a person who revels in her own skin, dances in her underwear, walks into every room fearlessly and shamelessly. I thought it would protect me from the vulnerability I had always felt, that it would secure me, once and for all, my place in the world of successful, happy, confident people.

What I found, though, is that if you’re not chasing one fantasy, you’re chasing another. If it’s not your body, it’s your bank account, or your résumé or your nose or your boobs or your car or the perfect marriage or the perfect vacation or the perfect child. For two decades, I believed that if I could just get this one thing under control, the whole of my life would magically bloom like a perfect, lush flower. But to my dismay, I realized that my life was still my life, and I was still myself, just in smaller pants.