“3 sessions a week and you’ll see the result pretty soon. I’ve been doing it and I’ve lost 4 kilos in 2 months” said the lady I met on my first Muay Thai session. I just smiled and told her that being slim was not my only goal. That what I wanted more was to stay healthy, strong and be more confident. I also told her I read somewhere that self-defense class was a good way to maintain your confidence to stand up for yourself. To train yourself to be stronger. And because more often than not, yoga makes me sleepy. She made something with her face that almost looked like a smile and uttered a sarcastic “mmm..okay mmh-huh”. Pretty much like this ↓
I wasn’t annoyed because I thought she thought I was fat. I was more..baffled. And then I heard that voice that nobody else but me could hear, “why did she react like that, like she didn’t believe that I signed up for the class because I wanted to be healthy too? Did she think I’m that kinda woman who would shame other women who care a lot about their appearance? Did she think I judge her? Etc etc”.
I was about to text my bf about that, but before I hit the send button, I stopped, and then deleted the whole sentences. Because I knew he would say something like..it’s probably just in my head and the “mmm..okay mmh-huh” meant nothing, followed by some encouragement to get over it because it wouldn’t affect my motivation or my life in general. Because I knew that it was just me allowing that kinda imaginary scenario to take over my brain.
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| image courtesy: here |
It’s one of the things that I admire from him, made me fall for him and envy him: he always tries to see the best in people first and don’t overthink what people would think about him, especially strangers.
But when you have some (self-diagnosed) anxiety disorder, you tend to overanalyze things. I’m not trying to make it as a justification for my oddity (well, maybe a little bit, heheh), but it’s still hard to control it, sometimes. And with this case, it’s probably because I still see that some women still shaming other women for being..not in the middle. When you’re too skinny because somehow you just can’t get fat, they shame you. When you embrace your curves or big physique, they say you’re promoting obesity. When you enjoy casual sex, you get slut shaming. When you declare your vow of chastity, some women prude shaming you. When you love make-up, they say you are fixated on your looks and just wanna attract some potential partners. And don’t get me started with working moms vs stay-at-home moms.
So sometimes, those thoughts above give birth to tiny bad thought of what will happen to me about being judged and bullied by others. And when my anxiety and hate of being judged by other people work together to babysit and nurture it, it becomes something I overthink about.
Sometimes, telling myself that “other people’s judgments are actually inconsequential to my life and I’m not defined by them” calms me down. But sometimes, it takes time to tame it. I hope I’m getting better at it.
