where the reality is

It's your first experience with your new girlfriend's family.  You're at the movies. You're hoping to make a move and see if she gets awkward. You notice there is only one bag of popcorn and her dad has it. He catches you looking at it and raises his eyebrows and lifts his chin, and you nod as he passes it your way. For a moment you worry there won't actually be anymore popcorn by the time it goes through each set of hands before you. She's got a big family, and they are really close, and that's one reason you think you want to marry her. As it reaches each family member, they continue to pass it down to you without grabbing a handful and you are once again impressed with the gracious guests-first popcorn etiquette. She reluctantly hands it over, taking none for herself. You guess she’s not the popcorn loving type. But you love you some popcorn. The saltier, the better.

But on your popcorn, you add less butter. the edges are just a little soggy for your liking.

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what you find out later is:

everyone in the family knows that dad has never used his hands for the popcorn, and that soggy-ness isn't from too much butter.

maybe that story is real.  and maybe that dad is my dad.

so whether its slobbery popcorn or a guy that’s “just not that into you”, we’ve all had moments where we’ve realized that perception is not always reality.

sometimes we rely on what we look at to know what’s real.  we’ve looked at the scale enough to know that numbers mean good days or bad days (or hours), reflections mean judgments, and magazine covers mean comparisons; but we’ve also seen enough magazine or news articles to know that fame is fragile, perfection is fake, youth is fleeting, and beauty is relative.  

sometimes we rely on experience.  But we’ve loved enough to know that that people can change and and we’ve known enough people to know there is more out there than we alone have experienced in our small bubble we call life.  

The real power to reality is learning to rely on ourselves.  some call it conscience, intuition, God, some call it your spirit.  

whatever you choose to call it, it is that voice deep within you that has been muffled by the sounds of media and even well-meaning friends and family.  that little voice is the only thing that you can always rely on to tell you what IS real.

my purpose of creating this blog is to share my experience with discovering reality through recovery of an eating disorder, that freedom from self loathing is possible, and realizing that perceptions can change, but reality never does.  It is by knowing what is real (and relearning how to hear that voice) that you can find that inner peace that is contentment.  And being content with who you are and where you are is where happiness lies.  

and who doesn’t want happiness.