I am a 26 year old single mother to a three year old. I have anxiety, depression, and PTSD. This is the only place I feel I can express myself.
Truth Bites
I told my ex today that I had been looking at pictures from before I had our son and I wanted to be thin again so I was trying to lose weight…
He said, “When you lose weight, you just don’t eat,” and looked at me with concern.
I defended myself by saying I was doing it through healthy dieting.
Actually, I am doing a mix of not eating & binging and purging.
No one knows.
Ugh
Another guy that wants me but I don’t want to be with is saying “We need to talk.”
“WE” don’t need to do anything. I asked you to respect my wishes and leave me alone. There is nothing to talk about.
Dick…
Part Duex
ANYWAY…
For the most part I am detached from my own self portraits, but today I suddenly connected with one. I had loaned my camera to a friend and when I got it back I couldn’t find my rechargeable batteries so I didn’t use it for a while. Finally I got some and I’ve been taking tons of pictures.
Usually I do a “shoot” then post the photos in a folder. Lately I have just been posting one or two that are my most favorite directly on my timeline. People are more likely to look at those and give better feedback. Recently I took a self portrait that I felt came out really well so I posted it and made it my profile picture.
In my personal life, I am seeing someone but we are not officially a couple. We are friends with benefits with some emotions mixed in. Neither one of us wants a real serious relationship right now. It works. However, one of the problems we both share is jealousy. We don’t want someone else making the other more happy than we can. He knows people like me and I know people like him. I feel particularly insecure because I am older than the girls who like him, so I feel like I have to try twice as hard.
There is one that I was feeling specifically threatened by. They’ve never met in person but know each other from online gaming. When I first met him, they were flirting a lot. Things seemed to have died down now but I hate how she still throws herself at him and ‘likes’ everything he posts. I can’t help but feel territorial, especially against these young bitches.
It never occurred to me that they might actually be just as or more threatened by me. For one thing, I’m the only girl he has pictures of himself with posted on his page. I’m pretty sure most of his “fans” only know him online but there are some he hangs out with in person, yet they are not up there either. Then today I went to that specific girl’s page and noticed she had changed her profile picture several times in a day. Each photo earned a few likes but they all looked more or less the same. Just blurry head-shots. One person commented, “MODEL STATUS!”
I laughed. The picture quality was grainy at best and even in black and white I could see a rash of pimples on her face. Some of her features are cute but as a whole I wouldn’t rate her very high. Plus, I was looking at the photos as an artist, too. Model?? These pictures look like they were taken in the dark with a shitty webcam!! Maybe her friend was just being nice or maybe they honestly believe that. I don’t know. I started to wonder why she changed her profile picture so many times in a small period.. then I realized it probably had a lot to do with the photo I had just posted the other day and made my profile picture. Girls like to stalk profiles when they like someone.
In comparison, her picture looks like a 12 year old playing with her cheap camera phone compared to my crisp self-portrait with smokey eyes that whisper, “Come hither…” The camera I use is good quality (Fujifilm S700) and I can further edit the shots with basic free software to give better colors and lighting. First I felt smug about being a better photographer, then I felt smug about being a better model. You can only edit so much; natural beauty wins in the end. It felt weird to connect with the picture that way, to know that it’s a picture of ME and people think I look good. Even beautiful. This girl here is trying to compete with me and failing miserably.
I’m still having a hard time believing that’s what my face really looks like…
