But, What About the Inside?

It. Is. Time.  

I was about 22 years old and had achieved the best body of my young life.  Having been a young girl tortured by the scale, at war with food, and completely ruled by the "never good enough" spell of the mirror, this was quite a feat for me.  Finally, I no longer felt like a "mutant woman".  At long last, I wasn't crushed by the shame of having a body that society considered less-than ideal.  I'd worked hard for it, too.  My then-boyfriend was a fitness enthusiast and in bang-up shape himself, and he and I took an interest in working out together.  With his well-intended guidance and my fierce determination to change the way I appeared, I was down 25 pounds, bursting with toned biceps, and was in a size 6 for the first time ever (besides, possibly, when I wore size 5/6 jeans for approximately 4 seconds as a sophomore in high school - but that doesn't count).  I bought a triangle-top bikini, like I'd always dreamt.  I got "looked at" by guys in the way I longed for them to look at me (make no mistake, I wasn't looking for another boyfriend, I was just desperate for reassurance from as many sources as I could get it).  I didn't any longer have to duck out of the conversation with girlfriends when the topic turned to sharing clothes.  I could (and did, with boatloads of pride) shop with ease from the single-digit size shorts section at Marshall's.  I had arrived, and it showed.    

People commented on my new appearance seemingly everywhere.  "Wow, are you a runner?" they'd ask.  At the gym, men were mesmerized (or disgusted?!) by the veins in my forearms (thanks, genetics, I look like Arnold between the elbow and the wrist!).  Women in line for lunch would ask how I got so toned.  My coworkers were looking for diet advice.  And, truth be told, I was probably offering some advice to people who weren't looking for it at all.  One day at work, a wonderful friend and coworker struck up a conversation with me I'll never forget.  It went something like this:  "Hi Geri, I saw you all dressed up last night, you looked beautiful," my kind and wise friend noted.  I must have offered some kind of awkward reply.  Something like, "Yeah, huh, thanks...I've just been working out really hard.." fell out of my mouth.  What I was thinking and what I said were probably two very different stories.  Then my friend, with all the love in her heart, said, "You really got the outside figured out, now you just need to work on the inside."

"Wait, what?!" I said to myself.  "What about the inside?" I wondered, as this question pinged around the deepest, darkest depths of me for a millisecond and returned with an answer.  My memory has abandoned the rest of the actual conversation I had with my sage and compassionate friend.  But, the only answer that I could accept at the time was that there was clearly nothing wrong with the inside and that I'd obviously had it all figured out.  Oh, and that she was crazy.  

Although pride and other mountains in my mind wouldn't allow me to face it back then, there's a hollow place deep in me that took that question in.  It penetrated my soul profoundly.  So much so that almost half my lifetime later, I can still feel the insecurity well up in me when I go back to that moment.  I remember exactly where I was standing, what I was wearing, and who was there when we spoke.  The question would be pivotal for me.  What about the inside?  I know now that the answer is love, and now it is time to explore the chasm between the question and the answer.