Day 174/365

Last night, i went out with the work folks. We celebrated an amazing month as far as orders booked, we celebrated having new teammates, we celebrated surviving the first few weeks of summer, we celebrated ourselves and each other and the company that we work for.

And it was really amazing. I was tired, and had had a frustrating day. I was a little bummed to be missing out a therapy appointment, and I had to leave a lot more undone at the office than I would have liked. But it was worth it, and as much as I worried when I came in this morning, I actually managed to get mostly caught up today.

I was thinking again today, about how much has changed. And about how recently it seems that the last few pieces really fell into place. I'm not down to my last key yet... I still have some work to do particularly in terms of my abuse-- but it seems like the changes I've made, the shifts that have happened in terms of my body image have really had the biggest impact.

It was the last real piece of resistance. And now that I've finally started to accept myself, physically, the way I AM... I believe that when I start making some of the changes I made last year (when I lost 40 pounds just by changing my diet), when i go back to being on track with what I eat and how much, I think it's going to have an even bigger impact than it did before. Because I've reached a point where the changes I want to make are for my Health, not for my appearance.

My (almost) last key. Loving myself, accepting my appearance, my body, my image has opened a huge door for me. Because for the first time EVER in my life, I can walk into a room without wondering what people are thinking. I can spend time with friends and coworkers without feeling as though I'm constantly being evaluated and judged by my size.
Because I know now that while there will always be people in the world that judge me on my size, the only person who really genuinely thought it made me any LESS of a human being-- was me.

But that's changed now. That door is open and I've walked into a whole different world. And I'm so glad to finally be able to look at that girl in the mirror and see beauty-- Inside and Out.