fueled by diet coke

Hate to break it to you, readers, but  next week there will be no FBDC posts. My husband and I will be off the grid (that is, in my hometown-in-law Chicago — if you’re in town, holla) visiting family and friends while taking a much needed getaway from our busy lives here in the Sunshine State. I will miss you, and blogging, but I’m looking forward to a week away.

The first time I went to visit the city of Chicago I was a completely different person. For starters, I was only Dan’s girlfriend. I wasn’t even his fiance yet, let alone his wife. (I also made horrible faces on trains, apparently.) But more importantly, I wasn’t a self-love warrior. I was far from it, actually; a broken shell of a girl whose entire existence was built on a sandy foundation of impossible standards and unhealthy, destructive lifestyle choices. My second trip to the Chicago area was just over a year ago. I had just started my blog, completely unaware that it would explode into a self-love movement just six months later.

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Source

Have you ever heard the saying, “You can’t really love someone until you love yourself?”

I’ve heard that phrase a thousand times before. And while I get what it’s saying and agree with the general premise, I (the all-knowledgeable Lindsay Durrenberger) know that it is actually possible to love someone else, even if you don’t love yourself.

I know, because I did it for a number of years.

During the darkest time in my life, the years in which I could never imagine a world where loving myself was possible, my heart passionately beat for others. I had a handful of very close girl friends that I know I really, truly loved. I was also in a real, honest relationship with a boy I loved so much it was almost painful. My heart was so full of love for others that I thought that even if I did get to a place where loving myself was an option, I wouldn’t have room inside my heart for myself. And, usually, I didn’t mind that so much.

Until I got into a fight with a friend or my boyfriend. Then, everything changed.

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THINGS THAT MADE ME SMILE THIS WEEK.

I’ll never forget ordering my first small t-shirt.

When I was in college, my sorority got t-shirts made for pretty much every event we held. I always ordered a medium because that was my size and, courtesy of my twisted ED-wired brain, I was always terribly ashamed of it. I was positive that whichever sister I submitted my order to was judging me for being a medium and not a small, and that everyone who saw me in my shirt thought the same thing.

My junior year, right before I was diagnosed with EDNOS, I ordered a small for the first time. I knew I’d lost a good deal of weight, so I was confident (hopeful?) I’d be able to fit into a small. When my shirt came in, I stood in front of my mirror, held my breath, closed my eyes, and tried it on. When I opened my eyes to see that the shirt fit, my spirits catapulted me up into the air onto Cloud 9.  Angels sang the Hallelujah chorus as I pranced around proudly in a small sized shirt. I felt unstoppable. I felt invincible.

And, of course, by invincible I mean relieved that my starvation was finally paying off in a visible way.

Ergh.

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Happy Friday, loves! Hope you’ve had an incredible week. Mine’s been quite the rollercoaster, but I’m blessed as always. Hope you enjoy this week’s 12-pack!

THE LINKS!

Depression Hotline: 1-630-482-9696

Suicide Hotline: 1-800-784-8433

LifeLine: 1-800-273-8255

Trevor Project: 1-866-488-7386

Sexuality Support: 1-800-246-7743

Eating Disorders Hotline: 1-847-831-3438

Rape and Sexual Assault: 1-800-656-4673

Grief Support: 1-650-321-5272

Runaway: 1-800-843-5200, 1-800-843-5678, 1-800-621-4000

Reblogging because you know, someone out there could use one of these.

Okay. Not going to lie, y’all. Today isn’t super great. Two of my good friends are moving away this weekend, and one of them works in my office. I’m sitting in my cubicle, teetering back and forth between teary-eyed and composed. But, as sad as it makes me to see them go, I am so impossibly happy for them and their new adventures! So today, my TiLT list is dedicated to Jessica and Felicite, and all the wonderful things I love about them. Enjoy.

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Okay. So my headline needs work. Whatever — deal with it.

Last weekend, Dan and I went over to our friend Ashley’s  house to hang out. Ashley’s a professional photographer (probably the best I’ve ever seen, by the way, and I don’t say that because she’s my friend — I say it because it’s true!) and we somehow got on the topic of outrageous Photoshop disasters. Then, Ashley pulled up Photoshop on her Macbook showed me just how easy it is to edit and morph images of people to make them look completely different. It blew my mind. I know Photoshop is powerful, but to see it in action is baffling.

If you’ve been paying any attention to the world at all, or have been following my blog for any length of time, you know that 99.9% of the images you see in magazines are Photoshopped. Maybe it’s desensitization to the issue, I don’t know, but I don’t get the urge to blog about each and every image I come across, pointing out all the obvious ways the image is distorted. I’ve just grown to accept that Photoshop isn’t going away and, if anything, it’s becoming more and more widely used. Sigh. I don’t like it, but it’s not like one little blog out there is going to change anything.

But every once in a while, a magazine will go way too far and piss me too far off to not talk about it. Grazia did that for me this week. Check out these magazine covers from Grazia, showing the same exact image of Kate Middleton.

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