Bathing Suit Season

From April 1:

Years ago, around age 19 or 20, I made a decision not to let my fear of other peoples' opinion prevent me from doing the things I wanted to do. In other words, if embarrassment about my weight was the only thing holding me back, then fuck that, I was going to do it - and that included going to the beach.

Up to that point, I was strictly one of those T-shirt-over-the-bathing-suit types. An oversize T-shirt is like a fat girl's binky; we act like it's a cloak of invisibility but come on, who do we think we're fooling? Trust me, the answer is nobody - except ourselves, of course.

I am not a sunbather; if I'm going to the beach, then I'm going in the water, and a clingy wet T-shirt isn't much more revealing than a bathing suit. So I took what was a huge step in personal growth and gave up the binky, which I still consider one of my proudest achievements because as silly as it seems - as silly as it IS - it was very hard to do.

Fast forward ten years and you would barely recognize me. Oh, I'm still fat - fatter, in fact - but I've got loads more self-confidence, I'm much less self-conscious around other people, and I'm no longer shy. So it was extremely disturbing to suddenly find myself begging off when my friends - my very close, loving, accepting friends - would go to the beach, knowing that the real reason was my discomfort at the thought of hanging out in my bathing suit. What the hell!! I already dealt with this shit, right?!

Apparently not. My theory is that my "big achievement" was not actually acceptance of my body so much as it was a "fuck you" to the people I perceived to be judging me, who were basically strangers at the beach. These weren't strangers anymore, these were people I cared about, whose opinion I cared about, and for some reason it's a lot more difficult for me to feel vulnerable in front of them.

So I never went. For two years I lived in a gorgeous house blocks from the beach; for three summers that house was "beach central" for my best friends; for three summers, I denied myself the pleasure of the ocean and their company, all because I was too chicken-shit to let them see me in a bathing suit.

That ends now. I still live blocks from the beach and by god, I'm going to take advantage of that. I'm done living in fear, and I'm done denying myself things that bring me joy, even if they make me feel uncomfortable. It's been easy so far because most of my beach-minded friends have moved away, so I've been going solo, but the first day I went this summer it was with the intention of meeting up with friends, and as far as I'm concerned, that counts as personal growth.