Do you ever wish you were someone else?

I was thinking about that this evening.

Keys jingling and dangling from my fingers in the moonlight, as I traipsed across damp grass and wet pavement, I felt confident. I stood tall.

Breathing in the night air and the thick loveliness of nature and life surrounding me, I felt content. Content with my self, my life, my situation.

I wondered if that was me.

As soon as I turned the car on, I turned the radio off. I drove home at the speed limit and as soon as I could, I took the long way so that I could drive below the speed limit. I drove at 30km/h the whole way home. (If you’re American and don’t speak km/h ;) then that’s just under 20m/h.) I even followed most traffic laws.

Because I had to think this one through.

The disordered eating

The longing for emaciation

The dissatisfaction with my body

It all came together.

I wondered if it was me- that confident, content girl- and I realized that it is. And then I questioned myself again. Who am I? And it hit me. I have always known of the fact that there is great potential lying within me. It’s a task to realize something like that.

Here it is:

I have got to grow into myself. Everyone has. Everyone has got this amazing potential and amazing talents and abilities that they, themselves, cannot fully understand until someday they are able to realize them… to glimpse the reality that could be.

We’ve all got something immeasurable to grow into.

If you don’t know that yet, and you don’t know of your potential… then all you know is that you want to be somebody else. Somebody that you aren’t – yet.

That’s where the disordered eating and body image comes from, for me. The longing to be something that I’m not. I picked it. I chose that. I focussed enough on that, for years, that I managed to mask, even from myself, what I really wanted. Maybe that had to do, in part, with the fact that I was confused about what I really wanted. The only thing that I knew for sure was that I wished to be something/someone that I was not.

And I still do. But I can see (as I think I always could, deep down) that my body has absolutely nothing to do with that. And now I’m willing to face that. Now I’m ready.

I could dwell on regrets and the time and energy that I’ve put into the masking of it all. But dwelling never solved anything. So it’s face up and forward. I’m taking a step out of the dark and into the light. I’m happy and I’m excited and it looks good from here.