The Happy Face

I find it interesting the we as a people are taught to put on faces, so to speak, to present ourselves to the world. It is something that some of us learn at an early age while others take a little longer and maybe a small percentage never learn at all.

Most of us put on the happy face to go out and meet the world, while inside we may be feeling sad, or angry, or bewildered or the like. But it is the happy face we pop on as in society other people really don't want to know how you feel. Your close friends and family might, but sometimes they don't want to know either. And so the happy face means that they are not confronted by what we really feel so they can walk on. Trouble is they have their happy faces on too.

I often get comments from my massage therapist that with my problems she doesn't know how I smile so much, well I suppose part of it is the happy face I put on in the morning as I leave the house to meet the day after all I really don't want to burden all and sundry with my problems but another part is my glass half full frame of mind. If I can smile then just maybe I can convince myself today will be a good day, quite often works as well.

I wonder to if we have faces that we put on for certain people in our lives. Is there a certain person that makes you feel like you should be the good child - always perfect. Does that mean that when you get older you are still fulfilling that myth. After all, none of us are perfect all the time, just like none of us are happy all the time either.

Should we as a society be more accepting of how people really feel. Or does that make us too uncomfortable, is it not easier to put the blinkers on as we walk past and assume that the person behind the happy face really is happy.

Another Boycott

I admit I am overweight and unfit and if I am really truthful I am obese. But I did not get here by overeating day in day out. I don't believe I am alone in this. But I am sick and tired of jokes about fat people and what they eat. I am particularly tired of hearing it on my way to work every second morning on 94.5 (in Perth). I have been a listener of Botica's Bunch for probably 15 years or more - well since he first started on Perth radio really so it may be even longer. But recently the amount of fat people jokes told by one of the Bunch - Captain Paul - and then commented on and made worse by the rest of the Bunch made me turn off the radio. How dare they in their ivory tower judge me. They don't know my story. They don't know what got me here, but guess what, I have chosen not to listen any more. I am just one listener and they don't even know I am gone - but I am. I am not moving to another radio station as their morning shows are all really bad but I have a 6-stacker CD player in my car and lots of CDs to play. So goodbye Botica's Bunch have a great time in what must be your perfect slim lives.

And to the rest of the world who looks at overweight people and thinks they know their stories - well I bet you are not even close. Shows like Biggest Loser don't help - as all the people on there are overeaters - stories on things like Today Tonight are the same - someone loses a lot of weight and they show how much food that particular person eats in a day and so the public's perception is that every overweight or obese person must do that.

Sure some people overeat, some just because they love food, some because they use food for comfort and some because they can. But there are a lot of people like me, I eat what my husband eats and he is not overweight. You go figure. I'm not saying I don't occasionally enjoy chocolate (it is after all the best thing in the world) and other things like potato chips or cheezels but I deliberately don't have them in the house so when I do want them I have to make an effort and it is a conscious choice. Oh and for the record my boss' wife eats a family block of chocolate a night, pretty much every night of the week and she is a size 6.

I used to be a size 10-12 then I had babies and went on the pill for 5 months - that was all and no doctor has been able to tell me why that has made my weight increase, but it has.

So if you are thin and you see an overweight person eating an icecream don't shake your head and think to yourself - I know why they are overweight - it may be the only icecream they have had in a year.

And if you too are sick of being the butt of the jokes - just turn off the radio like I have.

Lost and Found

I've lost this girl
Where can she be
Can I find her
Let me see

I've looked in the mirror
She isn't there
Someone strange
Looks back from there

She's in my head
She's in my heart
Now comes the hardest part

She's in my head
She's in my heart
But can't you see
She isn't really lost to me

She is me when I was young
When my life was full of fun
When I felt filled with grace
Before I found this older face

She is me before I aged
Before my weight
Before self hate

She is me before
When I could look
and like what I saw

She is me and she is here
Somewhere in my soul
She is part of me the whole

She is who I was
She never really left because
She's in my head
She's in my heart

She will always be a part
A part of all the girls I've been
Of the woman I've become

If you look close
You'll see that smile, that face
You'll see she still has that grace

You may have to look hard
But persevere
Cause she is really
standing here