The Man in the Mirror

I'm reading numerous treatises on visualizing the life you want, you know, The Secret and The Nature of Personal Reality, that sort of book. And it's terribly apparent that looking at myself through rose-colored glasses is the prescription. In my case, seeing myself and acting as if I were a thinner, more active person, with robust energy and much less bellyfat (the new buzzword used as a prod to encourage sales of ineffective over-the-counter medications). I think there's merit in this - I've talked about core beliefs before, and this is a component of it.

It goes something like this - if you believe you are "wrong" in some way, if you put your thoughts on what's "wrong" with you, your belief and thoughts will trigger and attract more of what's wrong, whereas if you can shift your core belief and put your thoughts on what's "right," you will manifest and attract more of what's right, or in this case, more of what you want.

It's a chicken-or-egg thing: does the negative belief and thoughts come first, and then the experiences that mirror them, or is it the other way around? Do we label ourselves "unlucky" (consciously or unconsciously) before or after we start experiencing unlucky moments? Does my core belief that I am a hugely fat person trigger my unconscious to make and keep me fat in order to conform to the belief?

I can clearly make the scientific case that I am obese. The number on the scale. My reflection. The size of my clothes. The stares from strangers. The chafing. The huffing and puffing. The list goes on. And I am a realist, generally - I don't believe in fooling myself. But I'm also self-critical, and my impulse is to go to extremes in cataloging my faults. The disgust in a stranger's eyes doesn't come close to the disgust in my own when I look - really look - at myself. Shame. Embarrassment. Guilt. Sadness. Heartbreak. All empirically appropriate emotional responses to the reality of myself, goes the inner scientist and harsh critic.

I'm the opposite of Dorian Gray. My "badness" is on display, 24/7 for all the world (and myself) to see. It's pretty hard to avoid my personal reality.

I used to have a mirror. It was huge, about four feet by six feet. I got it in Palm Springs from a consignment shop. It had a braided natural wicker frame. Gorgeous. And it had a magical quality which I didn't realize when I bought it - it was slightly concave vertically, just slightly, so that when I looked at myself I saw a Stevie about 10% thinner than I really was. It was fabulous. It never failed to put me in a good mood to see myself, and I would twirl in front of it and notice that I looked better, that I was, indeed, losing weight, that my clothes were looser, and that I liked myself more. It was true that I was dieting, and of course I spent hours each day in my pool, and I was really losing weight, but the mirror subtracted that extra percentage and it was such a boost. It I had lost 40 pounds, it looked like 60. If I had lost 100, it looked like 150. It's like looking at yourself under the enhancement of professional Hollywood lighting. Or in an expertly airbrushed photo. You're the enhanced, most perfect, better version of yourself, and it looks pretty damned good.

I want to stress that I knew from the first day I got the mirror that I was seeing a smaller version of myself; I knew I was really 10% bigger. I was my true size in the bathroom, and this smaller version in the living room. Still I loved the way I looked in the mirror, and I could somehow suspend the "truth" and inner critic, suspend the negative talk about myself and just let this rose-colored image of myself bathe my brain cells, flood my unconscious. I didn't realize its positive, almost hypnotic and certainly profound effect on me until I moved to San Diego and needed to place find a mirror for one of the vacation rental units I was hired to decorate. I sold the mirror to the property owner, and in a flash, it was out of my life. Getting rid of the mirror was a self-destructive act, I see that now, but at the time I persuaded myself that I just had to use it for this oceanfront unit and I happened to have one in stock. Plus part of it was I was being a martyr and making the sacrifice in an attempt to make my business partner love me. Sigh. What incredible folly. It looked great at the beach, by the way. I have no doubt people had great vacations because of it - wouldn't you want to look thinner when you twirled in front of a mirror in a bikini? Every Hilton and Hyatt and Macy's and Gimbel's should do it.

Is it a coincidence that right about the time I got rid of the mirror I started to regain the weight I had lost? Which came first, the pleasant image of me ten percent thinner, or losing weight? Or did I get rid of the mirror because it was counter to my self-destructive core beliefs? Without the opportunity to suspend the "real" vision of myself, I saw the truth, and the truth didn't set me free - it sent me into the kitchen to look for a comforting bowl of ice cream.

In the six months since I started loving myself again and treating myself kindly, in order to put into play some of the "as if" thinking encouraged by the books I've read, I was able to avoid most reflections of myself. Like lots of people, I have big mirrors in the bathroom, and the closet doors are mirrors, but I can keep my eyes averted pretty much all the time and never really look myself over. I use a little mirror in the shower to shave, it's about six inches in diameter, so all I ever really look at is my face - and not all of it, either - just my face without the double chin. In a steamy environment.

As I type this, there's a full-length closet mirror door just to my left, and if I turned to it, I would see my full-length profile. I could also swivel my desk chair toward it and get a full-frontal. I call it the Buddha shot. In harsh light. No ten percent reduction. Just me in all my cascading fleshness, my enormity. My yeasty doughness. I manage somehow never to look. Almost never.

I've been thinking lately about that magic mirror from Palm Springs. I've been thinking about it because I've got Spring fever. Awhile back I posted about it, the time each year when I come out of hibernation and start looking around for a little sumpin-sumpin. It's as inevitable as ragweed pollen. I frequently have to stop myself from whinnying, like Carol Burnett in a skit about horsey girls.

My friskiness gets me roiling, gets me boiling, and it takes me to the online land of the big'n'gay. I activate a few personal ads, take a picture or two of myself with my cam, sit back, and see what the cat drags in. Part of the irony of it is that in the world of chubby-chaser cyber hooking up, my calling card - my fetishized characteristic - my selling point - is my ginormous belly. Pictures of myself (clothed) in the most unflattering angles are my ticket to generating lots of hits, lots of drooling guys who look at my great big belly and see pure happiness. Seriously. I'm Raquel Welch in their eyes. I'm Jayne Mansfield. The sexiest sex toy in the world. A 440-pound breast.

And, of course, it's obvious that I am unable to suspend belief in myself being thinner and being more active if I am immersed in imagery of myself in all my humongousness. If I decide to do a little cam-2-cam play, where I remove my shirt and manipulate my belly, you know, bounce it around a little for some guy out there, I get this incredible positive feedback, grunts and moans and money shots being the norm, and at the same time I'm just staring at myself - seeing myself in the cam shot undulating around, the cam focused in close up on those parts of me I want most to change. I tell myself, "Stevie, they think you're beautiful and sexy, and it's better to get compliments than looks of disgust, isn't it?" But it's not better. It's eroticizing a debilitating fact of myself, rubbing my nose in the images I most need to eliminate from my view. And if the ads and cam play result in a hookup, isn't it even worse? Yes, it would certainly be fun to kiss and cuddle, to see a handsome naked man in front of me. To touch and be touched. But at what cost?

I am like Raquel Welch in this respect also: I wanna be appreciated for my brain, not my breasts. I can cause pandemonium in the hearts and minds of chasers everywhere by putting myself on display, but what I really cannot do is feel good about myself while doing it. I can score me a hot guy who will worship my belly. But I cannot hold a positive view of myself at the same time. Degrading myself is a recipe for weight gain, not weight loss. This much I know is true.

So I am disabling the ads and unplugging the cam. I am pulling away from this land of cross purposes, where I think I'm being flattered and appreciated but I'm really demeaning myself. My Spring fever is real - it's a true part of my mechanism, and it can be embraced, but in a different way. It needs to manifest itself in walks around the neighborhood, not trolling for sexual attention.

Just so you know, I just took a tablecloth and covered the closet mirror door to my left. There will be no data input and emotional despair from surreptitious glances at my current physical reality. I can willingly suspend belief and "see" a better me, a thinner me, a more happy and healthy me, like I used to do in that magic mirror so long ago.

Now - where the HELL can I get another one??!!