Crappy suck crappyness

I’m having a bad couple of days, emotionally. Well, emotionally I’m alright I think, but my self esteem which is barely there at the best of times has been utterly erased. Utterly. To the point where I can’t bear the thought of walking out the door tomorrow morning to go to work. I have a class to teach in the morning, so I can’t take the day off, but I’m terrified.

At the same time, I’m incredibly annoyed with myself. I’ve been fat since I was about 11, so it’s now 20 years and surely I should have better coping mechanisms by now. I should be used to seeing skinny models and diet ads without feeling like a waste of skin, but I am not. What triggered this plummet? What else – wedding dresses.

When I shop for clothes, which I honestly do try to avoid as much as I possibly can, the first thing I ever look at is the neckline. Anything lower than a shallow scoop neck – say around t-shirt level – is instantly dismissed as unsuitable. This is because I have, thanks to PCOS, hair on my chest. Yup, I’m fuzzy and it’s probably the thing that depresses me most about my appearance.  No matter how gorgeous, flattering or amazing a shirt or dress is, I will not buy it if the neckline is wrong. I simply can’t wear it.

Now, logically I know that the chances of anyone even noticing this chest fuzz are very slim, but we live in a society where billions of dollars are spent on hair removal because women who dare to be a bit beardy are subjected to humiliation on a grand scale.  I often wish I was a stronger person and able to just say “Fuck you too!” but I cannot. All I can seem to do is crawl into a cave and hope it all goes away. Which it doesn’t.

So poking around for dresses starts as “Don’t any of these have a high neckline” and moves to “God I wish I could look that good” which leads to “I hate how all these women get to show cleavage” which leads to “I’m hideous and cannot have a wedding and I need to tell Matt we’re eloping so no one has to see this mess”. Not logical, and hard to escape.

I don’t actually know how to make it better though. After almost 20 years of being as covered as possible, avoiding hair dressers, dentists and doctors and giving up on swimming and other fun things, it’s difficult to now say “I don’t care any more, I’m fuzzy, YOU deal with it”. Instead I’m going to start the hair removal cycle over again. Because it’s just not okay to be a hairy woman.