I am in a constant state of wondering if I am living to my fullest potential. Most of the time I’m thinking that I’m not because I’m not as happy as I could be and I continuously wonder if there is something else out there for me. I am hardest on myself and as I have mentioned before I do compare myself to other people a lot of the time. I have no idea where this attitude came from. I just know I have done it for the majority of my life. It’s possible it happened sometime in elementary school. All of my life I’ve always been fat. I was a fat little kid who turned into a fat teenager who then became a fat adult. I’ve never known what it was like to have a small body. When I was young I never really thought there was anything different about me. Yes, I was the fattest kid in my class but it didn’t bother me. It wasn’t until I was seven or eight when I began to think my fatness was bad. I was picked on and had rocks thrown at me by some kid on my way home from school. I hadn’t done anything to have rocks thrown at me so I only assumed since the kid was calling me Fat Albert’s wife that the rocks came along with it. Pretty soon after that my Mom put me on a diet and my relationship with food got screwed from there. My Mom went well, she’s kind of old school anyway.
It wasn’t until I was 11 when the thoughts of just being a fat girl became the thoughts of because I’m fat I can’t do x, y, and z. That I don’t deserve this, this and that because I am fat. It didn’t help that at the time I had someone in my life reinforcing these thoughts on a daily basis. Unfortunately this thinking has followed me throughout my adult life and to this day I’m having the most difficult time trying to reverse this way of thinking.
I am 33 and I’ve never had a relationship. This makes me the 33 year old virgin.
I think about this all the time. For years I have beat myself up over it, making myself feel like I am a complete loser. If you ask any of my friends, I throw that label around so easily about myself and now, I’m really tired of it. This is just how my life has turned out and when I really think about it I know it’s for the best. I’ve had so many issues that I’ve had to deal with and overcome to get to this point and I think had I had a boyfriend during that time bad things would’ve happened. I’m just now learning who I am and what I want and gaining so much confidence. Unfortunately, it took an article and a few stupid comments to get me all riled up about this and REALLY get me thinking.
A few days ago I was checking my twitter (which I do obsessively. HELP!) and an article was posted on Frisky.com about that age old question all us single ladies keep asking ourselves, What The Hell Is Happening to 30-Something Guys? It sparked my attention because I often ask myself that same question over and over again. Of course I live in a very… interesting part of California. It’s one of those places that you want to escape from unless you are one of the lucky people to find a good person to settle down with, a good job to keep for the next millennia and raise a family. Not all of us can be so lucky and yes I have left this place twice but I keep coming back because it’s comfortable. Anyway, for single people this place is really sad. The good ones were snatched up a long time ago and I do not have the time and the patience to wait for the young ones to become good ones. Anyway, I digress…
So this article basically went on about how the good 30-something men are all taken and blah, blah, blah. You get the picture. It one comment that set me off. A reader when on to write about how “there are three kinds of 30-something men, the career driven ones, the second spring ones and then the mess ups.” Apparently the “mess ups” are the ones who don’t have a stellar career, having had a long term relationship and are single for a reason, they suck at life. This struck a very huge cord with me. Suck at life? I mean, really? If I wasn’t hard enough on myself as it is, reading that just threw me for a loop. Part of me immediately wanted to agree with this person and think about how I must suck at life because yeah, career wise I’m struggling and no I haven’t been in a LTR and if I’m single for a reason it must be because I’m fat. Of course then the smart part of my brain kicked in and I thought to myself, WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU?
This time last year I wouldn’t have thought that. I would’ve kept with the bad thinking and berated myself until I was is in full on depression mode but now know. There is obviously something wrong with that other person to have that kind of mindset. No, I don’t have a “career” and I haven’t had the pleasure of being with someone but I’ve done so many other things in my life that there’s no way I suck at it. I’m not the best, I’m human and I make bad decisions but to lump someone in the loser category because of one aspect of their life!
Sometimes I wonder how many other people there are out there just like me. Older and still trying to find themselves. I wonder if there is anyone who read those comments and felt like a loser when they really had no reason to. Society is always trying to fit us all into categories based one the most inane things, telling us we can have or do certain things because of our looks, where we come from or our education. I am so very tired of actually listening to this nonsense.
Trying to reverse years of low self-esteem is pretty exhausting most of the time but I am committed to it. I feel the need to prove people like this reader on Frisky wrong. No, I haven’t been focusing on my career for 90% of my life making me miss out on dates and all those other things but I am 100% sure of who I am and if it took me 33 years to get there then whatever. Thing is now I feel like a new door has been opened for me and there’s this whole other adventure waiting to happen. Yes, I am still dealing with bad days which I probably will have all of my life but that is just something that happens.
No one sucks at life as long as they are living it.
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