29 3/12: The Once Loved

When I look at this pic­ture, I see the flaws. The stretch marks on my back, and espe­cial­ly promi­nent on the side of my ass. Those strange red blem­ish­es on my shoul­der that I don’t remem­ber hav­ing. The lack of junk in the trunk so com­mon in Asian peo­ple. I did­n’t even know I had a mole down there.

I used to have body-image issues. Always think­ing I was too skin­ny, and too ugly.

Self portrait at 29 3/12

 

Then some­one made me feel dif­fer­ent­ly. She treat­ed every part of my body with as much atten­tion and love as I treat­ed hers. She was the first per­son to ever make me believe that I was attrac­tive too. Some days, I felt as hand­some as she was pret­ty.

I turn 30 in nine months, and now that she’s gone, I won­der if any­one will ever see me that way again.

The Turning 30 Series

14 comments

  1. Flaws? We all have them, but you have a very nice body and should be proud of it! I don’t know how much junk you want in your trunk, but it’s not like you have no ass :P

    And you will be loved that way again, as soon as you can love your­self for who you are, you will find a woman who will love you for the same rea­sons :)

    • It’s hard to com­pare ass­es, cause I don’t real­ly see many of oth­er guys. I guess I’ve always been a prod­uct of my over­ly-crit­i­cal par­ents.

      Your com­ment made me won­der if I actu­al­ly do love myself, and I don’t think I do, not com­plete­ly at least. But I’m not sure if I’d ever be able to do that, because I always use that idea to make sure I always improve and nev­er get com­pla­cent. It’d be a lot eas­i­er (and fun) to chan­nel my love into some­one else.

  2. You are very spe­cial Jeff, inside and out.

    Jennifer

    P.S.: you can have a lock of my hair for your col­lec­tion (if I read that tweet right?) As long as you promise not to voodoo me!)

    • Ah, I did­n’t real­ize what a huge typo I made in that tweet…it was meant to say have the word “col­lect­ing” or “sav­ing” and it looks like peo­ple under­stood any­way. Didn’t you get your hair cut short late­ly? Not sure if you’d be able to spare a lock. ;)

  3. I have a large amount of hair … my hair dress­er cut it off in a neat pony­tail — because I am donat­ing it to Locks of Love.

    http://www.locksoflove.org/

    About: Locks of Love is a pub­lic non-prof­it orga­ni­za­tion that pro­vides hair­pieces to finan­cial­ly dis­ad­van­taged chil­dren in the United States and Canada under age 21 suf­fer­ing from long-term med­ical hair loss from any diag­no­sis.

    I like to think of my head as a hair farm. This is the third time I have cut off my mane of blond hair. And donat­ed it.

  4. You are one of the most attrac­tive e‑people I know. Exterior/interior.

    You’re awe­some.

  5. I’d be hap­py to give you some of mine, I’ve got it here in a pony­tail some­place.… ::sniff sniff::

    And BTW, I can tell you from expe­ri­ence that 1) you’re far hard­er on your­self than you should be, you have SO much going for you that a lot of men don’t; 2) not to men­tion the inter­nal com­plex­i­ties which are a delight to most women; and 3) You have no idea how eas­i­ly love can write off any flaw of the loved one when you love them. I’ve writ­ten off some HUGE flaws in the name of love, and it actu­al­ly nev­er entered my mind that the oth­er per­son con­sid­ered it a con­stant source of embar­rass­ment. I real­ly, hon­est­ly, did­n’t care. They were too amaz­ing to me in that place where we were then.

    • When you said, “I’d be hap­py to give you some of mine”, I thought you were refer­ring to junk in the trunk until I read the word “pony­tail”. :D

      I sup­pose I am hard­er on myself than I should be. But that mind­set is what dri­ves me to improve, instead of keep­ing me com­pla­cent. Maybe I need to find a bet­ter bal­ance.

      • Oh gawd, I’d be delight­ed to give you some of my junk from the trunk too. HERE! ::plop::

  6. WHY????????

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