A Trip Down Memory Lane

Annie - you are going to kill me for posting this but we'll both have to live with it. Here is a picture she sent me from her graduation party after senior year of high school.

I am the one in the back right with my hair up and I'm wearing a tank top. This picture made me a bit ill - look at the elegant skinny arms, little bust and skinny (okay maybe a little bony) upper body! My coworker just came by and I was instantly like, omigosh I was so skinny then. But then she reminded me - do you see the high school girls and how little girlish they look these days? Do you really want to look like that? She said I look a lot better now than I did then.

That gets me thinking. Our bodies go through so many changes depending on the stage in life. I think women especially get fixated on how they used to look. If you're like me, you think that high school was just a little while ago. We all think, if only I could fit into my favorite pair of jeans that used to fit me, or I was so much prettier when I weighed (insert some amount of weight here) less.

Our bodies all change for various reasons. Most likely, we had a lot more time to spend exercising as kids, and many kids take part in activities and sports that naturally help you stay fit. THAT was our job back then - to have fun in those activities. Now, we all have responsibilities and jobs (most of us unlucky folks, desk-jobs). To not expect that our bodies would change with such lifestyle changes is naive in some respect, as if expecting that your body won't change or you won't gain wait when you're pregnant.

So what do I want - to be so skinny again and be back in that stage in life? Not in a million years. Now, I don't want you to think that I hated my teenage years of innocent love and most weekends filled with all-girls activities - most likely obsessing about some innocent love. I love the friends I made during the years and many of the people and experiences during that time have helped shape me into the person I am today. But I've grown up, experienced new things, and am still experiencing things. So although my initial reaction was, holy hell I should put this on my refrigerator to help encourage me to get back to being that skinny, I can't really say that'd I'd want to be back there. I love who I'm with, what I do, and where we all are going.

That being said, I'm still on my getting-in-shape kick. I'm loving it - not because I look forward to ever looking like I did back then, but because it's a good thing in general. It puts me in a good mood and makes me feel like I'm taking time for me, and taking care of myself. I don't think I'd want to trade that even to look like that girl I can barely recognize in the picture.