I’m not sure what possessed me to make my first new swimsuit since RL was the baby girl in our house be a bikini (except that one pieces are a pain in the ***) but sure enough, that’s what I did. Ordering any clothing item online is a crap shoot, but the introvert in me + lack of stores in my town made a guessed-at size and purchase seem like the path of least resistance. Because, as you may have noticed, it is summer and it is hot and I have small children, and all of those things mean being outside and near water this time of year.

Full disclosure, I am a big proponent of the Wear the Swimsuit camp. Just fly your freak flag and Wear. The. Suit. Lumps and bumps be damned. Pastiness, too.

Also full disclosure? I find it incredibly hard to actually put that mantra into real life action because swim suits are HARD. Hard to find. Hard to wear. Hard to like. At least, that’s the case in my world.

But true to my other forward/backward motion with body dysmorphia, I’m pushing against the hard and doing it anyway. And I’m forcing it to be documented because this is part of the process, too. Essentially, I’m in full-on fake-it-til-you-make-it + be-in-the-pictures-anyway modes here because I can’t hide from summer and I can’t hide from life.

It would be easy to look at this and call it a Before Picture. Before I lose the baby weight. Before I revamp my diet and exercise. But really, it’s already an After Picture. After having five kids in under nine years. After going from 26 (age when I got pregnant with HD) to 36 (current). After getting straight with the notion that I’ve got some warped perceptions of self and body image. After learning that the way I talk about my body matters and recognizing that even when I know better, my self-talk can still spiral out of control for the negative.

Because, ultimately, I know this is neither a before nor is it really an after, either. It’s just what was on this particular day. And on this day (damn it), I wore the suit and I took the picture.