I discovered something definite about myself: I don’t really care about being the sexiest or being the prettiest or being the thinnest girl in the world.
A month ago, I started really working hard on training for a marathon. Actually, I’m still in the pre-training stage and on good days (when I’m not with cough and colds from my allergies) I can run for 10 minutes straight. I hope to improve that soon. At first I was preoccupied with how small my waist was becoming from the exercise and I was eating less and less. But I caught myself in time and corrected my thinking. I focused on the goal at hand (30 minutes of pure jogging) and just kept at it. And slowly… ever so slowly… thoughts of thinness and conforming to society’s idea of beauty left me. I just became happy that I was getting stronger and happier and more content with myself. That’s something really huge for me because I’ve waiting for a long to feel this way. And finally, I’ve found something that makes me feel complete.
Jogging makes me focus less on the world and more on myself. It’s made me realize that I am strong. I am full of determination and full of self-confidence. I know I can do anything as long I put my mind to it. I’ve learned to drown out the tapes and voices in my head that keeps trying to tell me how useless and weak I am. Jogging has made me see the person I am and can be for the rest of my life. It’s something that’s mine. Not my sisters’. Not my parents’. Not anyone else’s. Mine. Jogging is mine and I’m very very inspired to know that I finally have something that’s mine.
[...] Today, I realize that I needed something to reaffirm my existence here on earth other than how I measured up to society’s idea of what beautiful is. I wrote about that in my previous post about jogging. [...]