“Troll, to thyself be - enough!”

  Edvard Grieg: In the Hall of the Mountain King 
If you read my latest post you will know that I recently went out wearing a dress that showed off a little bit more skin than than I normally would, and probably than some people think is appropriate for a person of my size. You will also know that I did not do so feeling completely confident.

That is where my tale begins, with me standing in the supermarked wondering if a completely random, slightly below average looking, guy is juding me for daring to wear clothes that reveals that I have both fat knees and fat thighs. On top of this somewhat painful pondering, I am also beating myself up for not loving myself enough. Because, if I could just love myself, including my body ("The way normal people do," a completely unhelpful part of me chimes in), then that guy's opinion couldn't touch me. Instead, because my body and I are not yet in a healthy loving relationship, his opinion could hurt me. And I'm scared of how that hurt might affect me. How many steps backwards can I afford to take before I step completely away from the light and back into the darkness?

What am I supposed to do then? It's not like I can lock myself up with only my body until we have resolved all our issues. That's when the quote from the title fell into my head. You see, in Henrik Ibsen's play Peer Gynt, Peer (a human) is discussing the difference between humans and trolls with the Mountin King (the troll king), when the Mountain King says: "[...] among men the saying goes: “Man, be thyself!” At home here with us, ’mid the tribe of the trolls, the saying goes: “Troll, to thyself be—enough!”" And I realized that I don't have to love myself 100% right away, I just have to love myself enough. So I am deciding that, until I love myself the way I wish I did, I will love myself just enough - just enough for my love to be a little bit stronger than the negative feelings or opinions anyone else may have. Just enough so that I won't have to worry whenever I leave the house. Loving my body would be awesome, but until then I don't mind taking a leaf out of the Mountain King's book.