My disapearing face

I lost 40 pounds. Good for me. I had gotten fatter and slower with each baby and after Jimmy was born, I resolved to do something about it. I joined Curves and worked out faithfully. Really faithfully. I did the diet. I measured my food. I felt so good and slowly but surely, I lost the weight.

I looked at my face, now slimmer again, and thought "This is me".

Identity is a funny thing. How was that face more mine than the fat face? How could I see more of myself in the skinnier girl than I could in the fat one?

Now I am fat again but it is worse this time. I am not just fat. I am steroid fat. A year of prednisone has not just added weight but has actually changed the shape of my body, my face and even my lips. I am not just me and bigger, I have taken on the anonymous roundness of steroids. My cheekbones are gone. My lips are shaped like slugs. Much of what defined my face to me is gone.

Is this face mine? Am I less myself now? I look at this roundness and feel myself disappearing behind a moon mask. Why? Why is this not me, too?

Why can I only see myself as a woman I may never be again? And how, if I cannot find me in here, can I expect anyone else to? I tell myself the right things. Jeff says only kind things about it. I brace myself, encourage myself, reassure myself.

But then, every time I walk past a mirror or a window, I think, "Who in the HELL is that?" How did who I am become my face? And how do I undo that? How do I do I carry at this face that feels strange and bloated and looks alien and feel whole? Why am I this shallow? And if I cannot have my own face again, how do I make peace with the one that I am left with?