So this is what love looks like?

When I'm curled up with my lover, I feel soft and warm and sensual. A sort of ethereal dreaminess washes over me and everything is rose tinted. I am the embodiment of love, desire and beauty. My body lets go of all the tension, I feel relaxed, comfortable, and I am full of trust. This feeling makes me wish, from time to time, that I were a small cat . . . so I could curl up in the space on his shoulder just below the clavicle and put my nose into his neck. He loves me, and he respects me. When I'm snuggled into his body, my body feels perfect. In these moments, I see what he sees, and I believe the truth.

Most of the time though, the thoughts circling 'round and 'round in my mind about my body are messy, angry, hurtful, and confused.

When I examine my body in the mirror, I see something that reminds me of the famous Venus of Willendorf figurine, found in Lower Austria. Since her discovery in the early 1900's, people have wondered what she represents. Maybe she is a goddess. Maybe she represents the power the women of her culture held. Her full figure means she was well fed, maybe she was celebrated because fat and wealth went hand in hand. Maybe she's someone's lover with a post-pregnancy body.

All I can focus on are her drooping breasts, her big belly, chubby thighs, and tremendous hips. I wonder if her downward gaze is in judgment of herself or if she feels comfort.  I long for something different. The Venus of Willendorf is a warning . . . She represents what I am afraid to look like.

It's a kind of self-created prison, to understand that my body image is a distortion of the truth and to continue believing.

For years, I've cycled through the same pattern over and over and over again. In therapy I've recently discovered what exactly it looks like:

I hate something . . . decide to change it . . . set expectations for the change . . . set out down that path . . . I believe that I am doing really well for a period of time . . . the unrealistic nature of the expectations I set, comes full circle and I lose momentum . . . I have something to feel guilty about . . . the beating begins and will continue until . . . I hate it enough that I decide to change it . . .

This pattern encompasses so many aspects of my life that I dare say it is now a deeply engrained part of my personality. I do this with the way I eat, the way I spend money, the way I exercise or don't, the way I do my job, and the way I go to school.

I create guilt in my life. I create a reason to feel bad about myself. I expect people to be disappointed in me with little or no proof that they actually ever are. I set myself up for failure and I succeed over and over again.

I can break this cycle.

I am learning how to accept love for something that I don't have love for. I want to find myself seeing truth in my mirror, but more than that I want to be present in my body instead of being someone outside of it, looking on and placing judgment. I'm grateful to have people in my life willing to help, willing to be the mirror, who truly love me just the way I am.