When I first signed up for belly dancing I was so excited. I had been to a couple of events where they had belly dancers perform. I loved they way they were able to move their bodies. I got ready for class in my comfy loose pants and tank top. I got to the class early and waited out in the hallway for the doors to open. Class began and the 4 of us lined up awaiting instruction. She went over the basic steps and then told us that we would be putting them all together in a dance. She turned and faced the wall of mirrors looking behind her to see if we were following her steps exactly. She couldn't see me because I was standing right behind her, so she had me move over to the left. She started moving and we had to look in the mirror to see all of what she was doing. I looked and I kept seeing this huge woman that barely looked like she was doing the steps. A couple of movements later I realized that was me. I kept messing up the routine, unable to look back into the mirror, I was horrified. She stopped to work with us one-on-one for a while and then some people came in to demonstrate what the full routine would look like when we had gotten it down. I looked over and saw my kids looking through the window. They had been playing at the park and I was glad that they had missed the site of me trying to do belly dancing. At this point I wanted to just go home and throw up.
We left and I held back my tears in the car. When we got home I told the kids I had hurt my knee and needed to go up stairs and lay down. I walked into my room and sat in my office chair. How could I have let myself get this big. I turned and noticed my reflection in the mirrors on the closet door. Then I turned and LOOKED at myself in the wall of mirrors behind me. I realized that even though I had mirrors on 3 out of 4 walls in my room I had actually never looked at myself in them. Come to think of it I had not actually looked at myself in any mirror for the past 14 years. Yea I had pulled a mirror close up to put on my makeup or pluck my eyebrows. I gave myself the daily glance to make sure I matched, but that was it. In my mind I am 125 lbs with long brown hair, perky tits, a plump ass, and a flat stomach. That is who i am when I dream, when I right a story, and when I look down. Every once in a while I would see a picture, get horrified and then forget about it. Not this time the site of all that fat moving when I moved and hiding all of the moving that I thought I was doing has been burned into my retina. That night I dreamt of myself as a fat person. The next day I held up my close before I put them on and they looked like circus tents. The blinders had come off.
A couple of days later we were going hiking and I was excited because exercise would do this body good. We got half way up the hill and I couldn't breath, I felt like I was wearing a fat suit and my joints wouldn't bend. I stopped and thought for a moment. How is it that I could do this hike a month ago with no problem and yet now I thought I was going to die. I don't think that I gained all of this weight in the last month, because all of my close are the same size as they were 14 years ago. So what has changed? Oh yea my perception of myself. How could I go back to thinking thin. Well I definitely wasn't going back to Belly Dancing class. I know I will work on my story and then I will have to think thin. I walked back down the hill and went and sat in the van waiting for the rest of the group to finish. Then when I got home I worked on my story. That night I had a dream where I was back to my old body - the skinny sexy one. The next morning I went back to my ways of not LOOKING into the mirror. I felt better already.
Now I practice my belly dancing in the comfort of my living room (there's no mirror in there).
