The difficulties of keeping to an ideal

i'm confused. i'm SO fucking confused right now.

i hate my body. i really always have. there are so many things about it wish were different. i hate the lack of curve, the rolls of untoned flesh that pad my stomach and hips and butt. i hate the size and shape of my breasts. i have a slightly overweight and out of shape dancer's build. but always in my mind, a dancer's body was unattractive, not worth having or looking at or wanting as a body. curves and more figure was always what i wanted. i wanted an hourglass, a body i thought was worth looking at. the type of body women are "supposed" to have.

i never thought it was a body males would find attractive at all. never thought anyone could find me sexy or even visually appealing or anything else.

i've thought this for years. i've found my own body unattractive for years, and wished for something else and hated my physical form.

i'm now having a much, much harder time thinking that, since last week.

i was at an sca fest (which was in itself bliss.) and i was sitting in the grass, drinking the weather and the wind and the sun and the life that was there. and i was just sitting, watching the people go past. watching them interact. and because i wanted to, and i could, "checking them out" if you will. (for the record... kilts are YUMMY!) but i sat there, idly watching people, male and female, for a number of reasons, the same for each. (yes, for clarification, i am bisexual, but that's another story for another day.)

so there i sat, watching and drinking in, people.

then i saw her. this woman--girl, more so, but really stuck in that in-between stage. all i really could do was stare and not look like i was staring, because she was gorgeous. she was slender and slightly built, and just WOW. and then she wanderd past and out of my field of vision and was gone. i mentally shrugged, momentarily mourned the loss of beauty, and shifted my attention to watching men dressed in over-glorified tin cans beat the hell out of each other with sticks covered in duct tape.

later that night, at feast... (AMAZING food. absolutely amazing food.) and aside from food there was entertainment. during the first remove (course), a hired professional troupe of belly dancers performed for us. (gods i wish i could move like that. i wish i could move with that grace and that control and that power.) they were quite talented--i'd always before written belly dancing off as ... i dunno. but i saw it taken to an art form that night, and it was wonderful. eventually, i drew my attention from the lead dancer who was currently tormenting one of my male tablemates, and scanned the room to see the rest of the girls as well.

and there she was. the slightest, smallest, and most timid of the girls was the object of my idle and fleeting crush from the afternoon. she of course became the primary target of my observation, then. i watched her move, knowing i'd never see her again, and even if i did have the chance to i'd make nothing of it, for i am in my own bliss already. but i watched her anyways, taking a moment of beauty from the noise and motion and people and just drinking in her movement.

she really was gorgeous. slim, just slightly curved, just enough breast to fill out the costume top pleasingly, but not the huge jiggling breasts of the lead dancer. those were breasts too much for me, and why i refocused my attention to scan in the first place. she was wonderful to watch.

until i confused myself.

for you see the more i watched her, the more i realized something. the body i was so entraced by was nearly a replica of my own. sure, the shape and proportion varied slightly. but the build, the build i hate SO MUCH in myself, was the same. the build i found so entrancing on this girl was the same i'd spent years hating.

i'm still trying to come to terms with this. i've parsed MOST of it, but it's still thought-shattering. i spent years insisting no one could ever ever ever find my body type attractive or sexy or appealing. and *i* proved myself wrong. at least some people could, for i sat and found a body of like set amazing. i thought a thing i never thought i could. i was forced by my own mind to recognise my own ability to at least to some select few actaully BE attrctive, be wanted, be desired, even be sexy.

i'm very confused.

i held myself to an ideal.

and then shattered that ideal, by complete accident.

now i have nothing to hold to.

it feels ... odd... it just feels odd...

i now am rediscovering a body i never realized i had.

it's a freedom i don't yet know how to handle.