I've just had an apostrophe.

("I think you mean an epiphany.")

So we've been discussing the whole body-image/anorexia topic to death on the Brunching Board. And in discussing a particular dieting behavior that amounted to an eating disorder, I said (reasonably) that the problem with it was not that it was unusual, but that it wasn't healthy. And, I qualified, by "healthy" I meant "emotionally healthy."

And it didn't occur to me until somewhat later to look askance at that knee-jerk qualifier.

For thems of you as has never met me in person: I am short and overweight. I have been short and overweight my entire life.

I had really awful body-self-image trouble when I was younger. It got to the point where the only way I could be at all comfortable living in this body was to ignore it completely -- I didn't care about it, I didn't care what other people said about it, and I certainly didn't care what it looked like.

It took me a long time to get to a place where I believed that I could look good, and where I would bother to try -- things as simple as taking pains with color and style of clothing, or taking care of my hair.

To this day, I have still refused to go on any weight-loss or fitness regimen, because I have not yet gotten to a place where I can do that without feeling as though, after all these years, I were finally caving to body-image pressure.

Essentially, given the choice between taking care of my physical health or my emotional health, I chose emotional without a second thought.

And what hit me, when I finally put it that way to myself, was what that means.

I still put my mind ahead of my body.
I still think of my mind as who I am, and my body as ... well ... where I live. I am my mind; I inhabit my body.

And when I asked myself "well, why do I do that?", the answer was obvious: I still don't want to think of this body that I hated for so long as me.

How's that for a kick in the head?
And where do I go from here?