When How You Feel on the Inside is Not What You Look Like on the Outside

Ever go around with a certain air about you, a certain amount of confidence, way you carry yourself that comes from how you feel on the inside only to be dropped kicked with the reality of how you actually look to the outside world?

I've thought about it quite a bit. Someone once said to me (and I think it was about me) that confidence and how one carries themselves (despite weight) was sexy. In fact, another person said something very similar to me about a year ago. They were telling me that they've had a crush on me for years and even as my body has changed over the years it didn't change the way they thought of me and that it was my "bubbly personality" (har har) that is what attracts them to me.

It got me thinking that a lot of the time I do walk through my life...whether it's getting a soda at work...or singing along with the band out with friends...like I am still a young, attractive, happy person who people notice. Something like this...

Va...Va...Va...Voom, right?

Well, maybe it's a little extreme but you get the idea.

But then I'll walk in front of a mirror or the guy I'm crushing on doesn't know I exist and I get kick boxed in the gut with the reality that no matter how I feel on the inside, I am no Jessica Rabbit, and I actually look more like this...

I know this is the part where I'm supposed to know that Fiona is still beautiful and the moral of the Shrek story is there is someone for everyone and that love is all that matters but it doesn't feel like it. It doesn't feel like a fairy tale ending when you are alone. I have great kids, a great job and THE BEST friends in the world but I want more. I want that person to laugh with, to be a couple with, to come home to, to wake up with, to share my life with.

I hate the image I see in the mirror. I don't know that it's always confidence I carry with me. Sometimes it's cloak and dagger. Pulling off the ultimate smoke screen - hiding what's really the equivilent of a scared, nervous teenager half the time. I know that it's up to me to change the image but it's easier said than done. It's hard to get it back. The body, the feeling, the confidence. Maybe someday I'll find a happy medium...