The mirror still shows me what it always showed me

"You look well" landed strangely for a long time. I know it is meant kindly. It still made me feel observed.

Bodies are not projects, and I have agreed with that sentence for years and only recently started believing it.

Nothing to add except that I am glad this thread exists.

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.

What helped was other people describing exactly the same complicated feelings without tidying them into a lesson.

I found this circle at a point where I was reading things that were making it worse, and the change of company was most of the improvement.

Mine has settled into something quieter over two years. Not resolved. Quieter, and much less central than it was.

Strangers commenting was the thing I was least prepared for, and I still have no good response to it after two years.

Thank you. Genuinely.

The changing room was where it caught up with me. Nothing had changed in that room except that I was looking, and the looking was the problem.

What I found was that how I felt about my body moved almost independently of anything else. Good weeks and difficult weeks with no obvious cause.

I liked how I looked before as well. That is a complicated thing to say in most places and it is straightforwardly true.