The rise and fall of the bikini confidence

Today was an anomaly and then a disaster.

Last night, I started packing to go home/packing for Thailand and I tried on my bathing suit from this past summer. It was tighter than I remembered (thank you so much, grad school stress!). I felt icky in it and, honestly, a bit devastated that in such a short time I had outgrown my suit.

This morning, I woke up, felt GREAT about my body and decided to run with it and go find a new bathing suit. I was instantly reminded of one of my favorite tweets by Paula Pell:

I headed straight to Target, the enchanting place that does not exist in Vermont and will therefore be forever exciting for me. Once there, I beelined for the bathing suits (blindsiding my peripherals so I didn't get distracted and buy the whole store like I usually do). Picked out a bunch, hit the dressing rooms, and BOOM. One trip to the fitting room and 15 minutes later, I FOUND A BATHING SUIT I LOVE. It's a dark purple two-piece that made me feel awesome. I spent $40 on it, which is almost a week's worth of groceries, but I can justify that if I'm going to feel like a beach goddess. And do y'all know how rare it is for me (and every other woman I know) to actually want to go bathing suit shopping? And do you know how rare it is to actually find a good bathing suit without having to store-hop to 5 different places? And do you know how many trips back and forth from the fitting rooms it takes before you finally find "the one?" Today was actually a miracle. A Christmas miracle.

But then this evening, a friend of mine posted a picture from her vacation and her abs made my jaw drop. My earlier self confidence plummeted and it felt like I was falling alllllll the way back to square one in my body acceptance journey.

And that's what it's like, folks. Body acceptance is hard. It's hard to look at someone else and not compare yourself to them. It's hard to maintain your self-love when your perceived flaws are sometimes what you see first. It's a constant battle to appreciate my body the way it is instead of hating it for what it is not.

I'm sure I'll wake up tomorrow or the next day and be back to feeling like a beach goddess, so I'm not really at square one and I'm not worried about staying stuck here. It's an ebb and flow. But goddamn. I can't wait until the day I can desensitize to things like this.