Compliments

woooo! I could live on a good compliment for three days. I think Mark Twain said that. I know that is true for me. I usually keep them close in my heart for weeks. 

Now that my 38.4 pound loss is beginning to show, I was complimented a few times last week. Yay! 

One sweet co-worker saw me in the hall and said, "Oh, you got some new jeans. I've been praying you'd get some new pants. I was afraid they were gonna fall off 'ya."  I laughed and assured her that they were always tightly cinched. 

Another co-worker called out to me as I was walking by, "Heather, you look beautiful today. Your hair's all dark and you're wearing pink and your cheeks are all rosy. Just beautiful." woow! I'm starting to blush. I'm not used to any kind of compliments, let alone such specific ones, so I ate it right up. I gave him a quick half-hug. "Maybe we should go out sometime," I could barely get that out before we roared with laughter. Both of us have Serious Boyfriends.  

It's funny how a compliment can change your mind about how you look. I wasn't feeling particularly confident about my appearance on either of those days, but both those wonderful people made my day. 

Overall, I have been feeling better about my looks lately. I tried on many, many tops at Beall's last Saturday. Surprisingly, only about 60% of them looked crappy on me, way down from the usual 98%. (Hence my tiny wardrobe.) 

The odd part is that even though I feel I look better, I know that many others don't see it that way. Friends can see my recent improvements. And thank God, they mention it.

But if I ran into someone who hadn't seen me since the Massive Re-gain, he or she would think I look terrible. And of course the strangers at the mall think I'm just a big fat middle-aged lady.

And each of us is correct. I look better than I did 6 months ago, but not as good as I could/will and certainly not as good as I used to back in the day (for 15 minutes.) Could beauty really be that relative? *Gasp* Could it be in the eye of the beholder??

I often think about a special I saw on Princess Diana. The reporter said that she was quite insecure about her appearance and suffered and agonized over it for most of her life. I was floored. How could Princess Di possibly think she was an ugly duckling? How could she NOT see what everyone else in the world saw? And if she could be so wrong about herself, maybe I could be a little wrong about myself. Maybe I should be a little kinder to that moon pie face staring back in the mirror.