boot laces and fire

     What do you do when you have a really bad start to your day? Not something along the lines of someone cut you off in traffic and now you're angry before you've even finished your morning java, but something a bit more existential?

Yesterday I noticed something that started this quasi-meltdown; I noticed that while sitting down I couldn't get comfortable around my gut. Usually, despite it being ever-present, this extra tire around my waist doesn't bother me much. No matter what I did yesterday though, there it was. Sitting standing, sucked in, leaned forward or back, it would not cease to annoy. At least it was just a casual annoyance though, not something to dwell over much.

This morning I hit the bad day wall. I put on my skull patterned shirt in the thought of rocking grey for a grey-day (it's supposed to rain quite a bit here). When I was all done up I looked in the mirror for the whole 'photo' thing and my, my, what a change from last week. What I saw was my gut stressing the integrity of the buttons on my shirt to the point of ridiculousness. That hit me like a shovel to the face and it was a pretty quick spiral down from there. I can say that maybe the shirt shrunk when i washed it. I can say that perhaps something else was at play. In reality though the reason was in front of my face and it wasn't going anywhere.

At this point of course is where the self-loathing kicked in, the inner quips from my brain started firing off and the shirt was unbuttoned and tossed to the side, reviled for it's part in this whole mess. Two shirts later I find something that didn't make me feel like a bloated zombie corpse in a button down and slacks, and tried to press on as best as possible.

So I picked myself by my boot laces, put my boots on proceeded to continue the day; however, the day still seems soiled by the whole experience. I don't know about many of you but for the most part I'm somewhat comfortable with my body. When something like this hits me it stays with me, like a worm in an apple, boring through my thoughts. I loath being self-conscious about my body because it's a sort of cancer that spreads until you are angry, depressed, and worst of all unhappy with your 'self'.

Crap-tastic way to start the day.