Persistent Marks

 It's feels like everytime I look at Youtube, some other creator is pregnant or trying to get pregnant (while I'm here still hoping to not.) It doesn't really matter what genre they're in, so many of them are in various states of growing a human, and mentioning the things happening.  Among them, was one girl, in her early twenties, who tries to post a lot about body positivity, and everything with it.  And in one video, she mentioned that she has more stretch marks now, and that while she's working on it, she's finding it difficult to love her body while she's seeing them.

It reminded me about how I felt during, and for the first few years after my pregnancy.  I hated seeing the stripes forming on my stomach, and then noticing them all over my body.  Where I had been making some progress with my dysmorphia, I had some of the worst body image issues I had ever had then, although I know it wasn't helped by any of the people in my life at that point.  I was hyper fixated on them, and trying anything I could to get rid of them, with little success.

Since then, I've gotten older, and I've seen a good number of people in various forms of undress.  And something I've noticed on almost every single one of them is that they also have stretch marks.  While I do notice them more on some occasions than others, for the most part, it's just a part of their body, like any other scar or freckle.  I've never found someone less attractive for having them, but also never had that sort of celebratory concept some people attach to them.

And that helped me feel less concerned about my own.  I've found that more than anything, I still have some hard issues with the extra skin I have, which never did go back after having Squishy, and is becoming a bit more apparent again with my dropping weight (at least to me).  I'm hoping that with losing weight more slowly this time, maybe it will encourage the skin to tighten up a bit more than last time, but if not, it'll be something for me to work on mentally for a while.

Nothing is easy, and nothing is quick, but it's nice to learn that I'm making some progress mentally.