Love, Yourself (February)

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Dear Jia,

A year ago you started writing your love story. You know the one. How you met the love of your life, your best friend and eternal companion. This was a good outlet for you. It brought the creativity back in your writing. You need to keep writing. It's good for you.

Now, let's firs talk about your weight. Because this month last year, you started to notice things. You realised that this didn't happen over night. It was progressive. And that there was more than just "being fat" at stake. You were very unhealthy and you could see it happening. Please keep this perspective!

Now. Let's talk about the elephant in the room, shall we? This month last year you had a breakdown. It was really bad. Let me remind you just how bad. You fell into a compulsive cycle and had to leave a job because of it. Because you couldn't control your OCD. Certainly it was a bad job, and you had good reason for what happened, but this was the low point. You crawled into your closet to "feel small" because the world felt too big. And you scared a lot of people. But you also started to get a grip on things and talk about what was happening. You admitted your OCD. Your depression. Your panic attacks. And that helped so much. Please don't take any steps backwards. Keep moving forward.

This month last year you also received some news: your baby sister was pregnant. And that news was hard to take. Because as happy as you were for her, and as much as you knew you would love your nephew (and you do), you were depressed that you still were not a mother. It was very hard news to take. And you knew that somehow, your health played into this but you still did not make the right changes. You tried to hide from the truth instead of fight back. Please fight back.

This month you weighed 250 pounds and you were too tired to do anything. You thought you might even have diabetes but you did nothing to test for it, prevent it or fix it. Stop thinking about bad things without doing anything to fix them.

This is what you looked like in February 2010. This is a screen capture from a vlog you made. You thought the video was really funny but because you looked like this, you ended up hating it. Stop wearing Matt's sweaters to hide your fat. Stop not wearing makeup and using a pony tail as a default hairstyle. You have a flat iron and lipstick: use them!

So take a picture of yourself today, February 2011 and post it tomorrow along with the progress you have made.

Love,

Yourself