Skinny Girl Syndrome

Toasteroven's comment on my last post got me thinking. I've been doing an awful lot of thinking about certain things over the last few weeks, just because I'm making some big decisions right now and those always seem to inspire a lot of thought and introspection. For now, I will spare you all thoughts but one.

The aforementioned comment made me contemplate outside perceptions of personal strenghts, weaknesses, and trials. Like the fact that I expressed a very genuine fear in my last post, an issue that I've personally been struggling with for quite some time and that is very important to me. But someone else might read my post and think, "Oh yeah, life is so horrible for Leibniz because she keeps doing well in school. What a trial."

And this made me think about the rather thin girl who moans about how fat she is, or at least how she could stand to lose a few pounds, to friends who are heavier than she is. The question is always, "Well, if she thinks she's fat, what does that say about the other girls?" It's an idea that pops up all over the place in life. Not only does one person's trial seem trivial to someone else, but the very fact that it is a trial to that one person has the tendency to push other people down. The "Skinny Girl Syndrome," maybe.

I've been on both ends. I remember standing in the Metro in Spain talking to some of my study abroad girlfriends and when someone told me that I certainly didn't need to lose weight and I replied that I certainly didn't need to gain weight either, I was surprised that my statement seemed to cause offense. Since that time I have been very cautious about how I talk about my weight because despite the fact that I have some anxieties surrounding weight and eating (unfortunately, I think that's fairly common), I also know that I am relatively thin and I just don't want to offend. And one of the reasons for all those fears I just wrote about stemming from my academic successes is that I don't want to place myself on a pedestal relative to other people who do not have the same achievements for whatever reason.

And then there have been times that I have been the one looking in on someone. Like my roommate over the summer who was stressing about engagement and marriage. I love her and I genuinely listened to her and gave her my support. But I was bothered by the fact that there was this little part of my mind that felt just a little resentful because I can't even seem to get a date and have never even been involved in a serious relationship in all my years of "eligibiity." I would think, "Sure, engagement and marriage are stressful - but I just wish I had that sort of stress in my life!"

But here's where I want to go with all of this. First, it really is all in perception. Just because things are going well for me academically doesn't mean these fears aren't very real problems for me, and just because I'm a relatively thin person doesn't mean overcoming my issues with weight and food isn't important to my ability to live a happy life. And just because my friend was thrilled to death to have found the guy she found and was in one of the happiest relationships I had ever seen didn't mean that the decisions surrounding her decision to get married and the concerns surrounding her engagement and wedding weren't pressing issues and matters that she needed to spend time, thought, and prayer addressing. And the fact that these things are concerns for us when they are blessings for other people is not because of a failure on our part to take into account the other people's perspective. I mean, my friend would not have been less worried if she had been able to look at it from my point of view and realize just how blessed she was to have a relationship at all - she already knew that it was a blessing, and was grateful for it. And I would not be better off if I could look at my fears from the perspective of someone who has never had a scholarship and realize how blessed I am to have these opportunities - I already know this, and I am astounded and grateful for these blessings on a daily basis. The magnitude of a person's trials (and blessings) cannot be viewed in relation to the experience of another person entirely.

Second, I became more aware of my own perspective as I thought about this. Going back to "Skinny Girl Syndrome," I realized that I am not really offended by the girls who are thinner than I but still complain about losing weight, because that's not who I want to be. The girls I most admire are the girls who are comfortable with themselves even when (or maybe especially when) I might not be comfortable with myself if I were in their position. Similiarly, I admire people who can be comfortable with their accomplishments and their weaknesses while still striving to overcome them, more than I envy people who have what appear to me to be great accomplishments or trivial weaknesses. It's not that I don't sometimes covet another persons' circumstances or abilities. But overall, what I'm really striving for is not good circumstances or great talents, but rather happiness and satisfaction with what I have and with where I'm headed.

And despite all my insecurities and perceived trials, I really am getting there.

My apologies for another long, rambling, unedited post :)