Hugging my inner fat girl

Running Revolution is about to start. This is the 12 week, women-only running program in Warren that is designed to turn non-runners into runners and help women who are already runners improve their times, speeds, and all-around running style. I signed up for this not having the slightest idea of what I’m getting myself into.

Last Monday, I attended the Pre-Rev class and got my first lesson in running. I learned that I have the wrong kind of shoes, my arms are too stiff when I’m running, and that my stride does something called “overpronation” which means that when I am buying new shoes, I have to find some shoes that remedy this. Who knew? The class also included some horrendously difficult ab work, stretches and rolling around with a large cylinder of foam, and some goal setting with our fearless leader. This week, after turning in a 12 week fitness plan that I constructed, I believe we are going to do Pilates. Yay!

Something else I learned? I have a lot of repressed gym class memories. No, really, this isn’t me making a joke. We were sitting in the wrestling room of the middle school (not even the middle school that I attended, mind you, or I probably would have had an outbreak of hives) and all I could think about was former gym teachers and classmates and that overwhelming feeling of “Can’t do this...too fat...too out of shape...too short...not good enough...not fast enough...not strong enough” like I remember having the whole time I was in school. Not the kind of positive self talk that is needed when beginning a fitness regime such as this.

This made me realize two things:

1.) Smell is definitely the strongest sense connected with memory (as it was the smell of a school gym that triggered these thoughts and feelings)

2.) That despite my best efforts over the last ten years, that chubby, insecure teenager is still a part of me, still living inside my head.

I had almost forgotten about her over the past week, having my head full of stressful work stuff and wedding plans, while still trying to find the time to put my fledgling fitness plan into action. But this morning, after hearing about some serious negativity directed at me, she shuffled away from the corner I normally keep her in and stood in my place once again.

This is what she does. She comes out when I need her the least, when I should be able to toss my hair and say, “Who cares what those assholes think?” and really mean it. She comes out of hiding and she takes my place so that instead, I think, “It makes sense that they’d say or think those things. We probably deserve it.” It’s that part of me that is always waiting for the good things in my life to go bad, for my boss to decide someone else would be better for my job, for my friends to come clean and tell me they’ve just been stringing me along because they felt sorry for me, for my fiancé to tell me this was all just a joke that went too far. She’s the reason I always feel just the faintest hint of surprise when someone tells me they like me, they love me, they want me around.

In a perfect world, she doesn’t exist at all. In a perfect world, I overcame my teenage-insecurity on all fronts and am a totally well adjusted young woman with a lot of really positive things happening in her life.

Yeah well. I don’t live in a perfect world. Not outside my head and certainly not inside. I wish there was a way to get rid of her for good...to send her and her Backstreet Boys t-shirt packing somewhere where she can’t mess up my good vibes anymore. But I’ve tried that. I’ve tried not listening to her, I’ve tried banishing her, I’ve even tried directing her at other people and nothing’s changed. What I really wish I could do, though, really and truly, is hug her. I wish I could go back in time and visit her when she had that first thought of “Not good enough...not fast enough...not strong enough” and I wish that I could put my arms around her and hug that thought right out of her. I would tell her, “Don’t think like that. You are a beautiful, wonderful, loveable person. Those people who are making you feel anything less than that are so insignificant it’s unbelievable.” I’d show her how great her life is going to be after awhile and all the good things that are coming to her.

But since I can’t really do that—can’t go back in time and visit a younger version of myself—I guess I’ll have to settle for telling her all those things when I feel her lingering inside my head.

In the midst of all of this self-love, self-discovery, self-rejuvenation...whatever it is, I have come to realize that becoming comfortable in my own skin has more to do than just accepting my plus-sized curves. It’s not going to be enough to say “I like the way I look” if I can’t think “I like the way I am” at the same time. I want to accept and feel that I deserve the love people give me and all the good things in my life. I want to be happy just the way I am and know that if I make any changes, they will be changes for the better and only make them because it’s what I want, for me. Not because I want fit into someone else’s measurement or ideas.

So I’m going back to the Pre-Rev tonight, and I’m going to learn how to run before summertime. Because it’s what I want and because I want to show that chubby, insecure little girl just how fabulous we can be when we put our mind to it.