Six AM Revelation

Last night as I lay comfortably in my bed sleeping, instead of allowing my mind to sleep and wander about mystical far away dream places my body shot up in protest. At five in the morning, my body refused to let me sleep anymore reducing me to laying wide awake at its whim.

What is there to do at five am? Even my most night owl of night owl friends would have been asleep by then, even stumbling to bed around four were asleep! I've read all my books and the only thing on tv was rock of love season two, thanks I'll pass. No my body woke me up at the stragetically most boring hour of the night, so i could think. Sit there in the absolute darkness and think.

Around six when my mind has exhausted all the usual topics, college, the future, the war, ex-boyfriends, global warming, my term paper; I came to the topic i think i was ment to come to, body image.

My entire live I have had a war going against who i saw in the mirror. There are so many things i wanted to change about my self, my nose, my but, my hips, my thighs, even my chin. I hated how I looked which is hard for any one,but it is espically hard for a dancer who spends five hours a week in front of a mirror in tights and a leotard. I've been comparing my self to six foot, 90 pound girls for so long I forgot that doing so was unhealthy. All the unhealthy things I've done to be thin!

But tonight my body rejected me. It said " You sit here and think about what you are doing to me." And i came to the conclusion, I am not my jean size. I am sick of hating my self for being a size four and not a size zero, i will never fit my hips in to a size zero. I am sick of skipping meals and feeling hungry, I am sick of seeing thin girls and feeling like i failed myself. I am sick of calorie counting, I am sick of defining my self as +3 -2 +1 -4.
Say it with me ladies, I AM NOT MY JEAN SIZE!!! Yell it, let all the people who told you have to be like this know, I AM NOT MY JEAN SIZE!!

I am short, I am curvy, I have a big but, wide hips and small boobs,I am not a super model nor do i want to be one. DEAL WITH IT!! I am not having crackers as a meal any more. I will not run on the tread mill on till I pass out because I had the nachos! I have one life, why destroy it on a quest to be a size zero? I don't want this.

From now on I will feel good about myself. I will eat when I am hungry and stop when I am full. I am throwing away my scale. I will not listen to anorexic ballerinas as a source of wisdom as too how i should be!
My name is Amanda, I am not my jean size.