A recent conversation with a friend early on a Friday morning:

Friend: I’m having one of those days. Where you just feel blah and things feel off. Like, you just don’t want to look in the mirror.

Me: Oh, I’m not going to respond to that.

Friend: Why?

Me: Because you’ll yell at me because of what I have to say.

Friend: Oh, because you’re going to say I look like shit?

Me:, um, NO!

In fact my friend looked absolutely fine. But I completely understand the feeling of thinking and feeling you look awful. Especially if you had a long night from being up late or because you indulged. You probably feel awful as well.

And just what exactly would my response have been? On the tip of my tongue was the response of saying that I feel this way a lot of time. Well, probably all the time. Looking in the mirror sometimes only happens because I’ve decided for some reason to put on some makeup and I have to see what I’m doing to not look like a clown. Of course, maybe one day I will master the art of applying it without having to look at what I’m doing. That I should just stay away from the mirror and not look in it. Because I know what is going to be reflected back won’t be pretty.

Now, I realize this is totally crazy. Which led to further discussions of clothes shopping (I was recently at a fashion show for sports attire again), how women are really hard on ourselves and what guys might be thinking about rough, calloused hands. I can say I have been working on my issues, but boy is it hard. Especially when you are inundated with all the images from the media of how a beautiful woman should look.

Am I too hard on myself? Maybe, but of course, I don’t really think so. I know a lot of people would probably say I look fine and that it is all in my head. However, sometimes, that is really hard to see. Especially when things happen that reinforce what you already believe about yourself. And unfortunately for too many people, we have lots of experience with our beliefs about ourselves reinforced. So hearing something that is quite the opposite is hard to comprehend.