Being treated differently by strangers, and hating it

What surprised me was that the difficult feelings did not follow the timeline I expected. My hardest month was much later than I would have predicted.

The thing that has helped most is spending time doing things where my body is useful rather than looked at. Swimming, mostly, badly.

Reading this at half past six with a cup of tea and nodding at every line.

My therapist pointed out that I was describing my body in the third person, and I had genuinely not noticed I was doing it.

Somebody in this circle wrote that a body is a place to live rather than a thing to display, and I have thought about that most weeks since.

What I got wrong was expecting a change in circumstances to change how I felt. It did not. The feeling had its own history.

Nothing here is medical advice and nothing here is therapy. If this is taking up most of your attention, please do speak to somebody qualified.

I had assumed this would resolve itself and it did not. It needed actual attention, and in my case some therapy, and I resisted both for a year.

Something that helped was reducing how much I looked. Not as a punishment. Just less often, and it made the looking less loaded.

Quietly agreeing from the other side of the country.