"Promise me you'll always remember:

You're braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem,

and smarter than you think."

~~ A. A. Milne

Bette Blackwell when someone told her she could never have been fat.

My first thought was, "Why on earth would anyone CLAIM to be that pretty unhappy, unhealthy, severely obese person if they weren't?" Then I realized that hey - when I look at some of the most recent photos, sometimes *I* don't recognize the "new me" as me.

I told the group that there I times when I FORGET that I'm not in the body of the person I was in almost 2 years ago. That I was standing in line waiting for a stall in the ladies' room last week, looked in the mirror and thought, "WHOA! That's ME!" That I honestly forget sometimes, when I'm not looking in the mirror, that the fat lady, on the outside, anyway, is gone. There's this still-strange-to-me skinny lady, with new-found cheekbones, collarbones and shoulder blades, and thin, almost dainty wrists, living here now.

It's not easy, though. The fat girl still lives here, and she fights with the skinny girl every day. She wants to eat when she's bored, tired, angry, lonely, sad, happy . . . hell, even horny sometimes. I've said it before and I'll say it again: this isn't easy. It's a constant battle between the two of them. Most days, skinny girl wins, but not always. Those moments of defeat are the moments when I find myself looking into my reflection in the water in the loo once again. The flesh may be weak, but the spirit is always unbroken, and I'll get back up and fight again.

Jeez. This is getting far too deep and philosophical for me. It's time for a long bubble bath and then, bedtime.