Why I'm Feeling Down, part 1

Recently a lot of wonderful things have been happening in my life. I've kept my commitment to keeping musical social engagements, I've been having a very positive phone friendship with a high school friend I reconnected with on FaceBook, and I'm making some significant progress in my process of rediscovering my true self. And yet, at quiet moments I've felt that downward turn that signifies the return of one of my old insidious enemies, depression. It didn't make sense to me, because I'm so much more at peace in so many areas of my life, and I have genuine enthusiasm and strength within myself that usually don't (can't?) exist when I'm depressed. Because of the nature of the disease, I assumed that it wasn't causal; that is, no event had triggered a negative feeling, it just happened because of brain chemistry or electrical misfires (depending on if you're a believer in the synaptic model or the chemical neurotransmitter model).

It turns out that there have been triggers, and very specific ones. As a person who struggles with body image, I was very distressed by photos taken of me at a party in December. I don't feel as large as I look in the pictures, and seeing them and realizing that's how others see me was gut-wrenching.

Let me explain visually, because I find this fun and I don't have to type as much:

In my mind's eye I'm sort of a cross between punk rock girl like this:
and a sort of cute nerdy librarian type like this:

But when I saw the photo from the party, I felt as if I looked like a cross between this and this:

Okay, now you can understand why my self-esteem plummeted, right? Yeah, I felt really crappy, really unattractive, zero sex appeal.Really unfun.



Of course, there are people on the interwebs whose job it is to make me happy with my body right this moment. I pulled the photo of the punk rock chick above from one of them (thethickness.tumblr.com, but DO NOT go there if you're offended by nudity or provocative images, because many of them are NSFW (Not Safe For Work, i.e. sexually explicit]), and the illustration is from JenOaks.etsy.com, who's made an incredibly gorgeous calendar of pin-up art which IMHO is even cuter than the Elvgren or Vargas originals because the girls are curvier.

And lastly, something that appeals to the confrontational punk rocker in me: