I was scrolling back through my year, by which I mean pictures on my phone, in preparation for some sort of 2019 Top 9 type post (mine usually become more like Top 81, as I can never pick) and I realized that I was spending much more mental energy obsessing over how thin or not thin I was in the pictures, than I was reveling in my accomplishments / adventures. (The above picture, from Jan 2019, makes me ANGRY, because I think I felt fat? But I am way more cupcake-y, even since then.) Two years of fertility treatments and failed pregnancies and baking and eating and drinking ALL OF MY FEELINGS means I have basically gained the amount of weight one gains when one actually has a baby, yet I currently have no baby to show for it. My jeans are stacked like unread books in my closet. I don’t even look at them anymore. I should be easy on my myself, but it’s hard. I spent my delicate formative years very overweight and hating myself for it, and then MORE formative years jogging and counting and spinning and restricting. It’s hard for me to just accept that my body has changed and that it’s not the end of the world. But, also, it’s not as hard and I thought it might be? Because I know it doesn’t matter as much as I once thought it did. Because I don’t have the space to care? Because I’m basically happy, and well-fed? Because there is a time to worry about how much one’s gut cupcakes when one sits down, and then there is a time for self-care, for self-kindness, for Doritos, for mercy.