It has been said by my friends and family that I have an overly healthy self-esteem.
I'm not the thinnest girl - but I do have great calves (but my thighs are chunk-o-rama.)
I'm not the prettiest girl - but I do think I have style. (And good hair).
I'm not the smartest girl - but I do have a degree from Queen's University to prove I've got some brains. (Although truthfully, I was too busy working at the student newspaper 80 hours a week to actually go to class.)
And yet, even for me, this idea of having my own blog is all a bit much.
At first, when Osprey pitched the idea to me, I was thrilled.
By day, I'm the features editor at The Kingston Whig-Standard and I write a weekly column on my love life, dating, my family, my friends and pop culture.
It's essentially a 500-word peek into my life.
My blog, the company said, was supposed to be like my column. I should talk about fun stuff. Pop culture. Dating. Whatever I felt like. It should be about me.
I would be playing it down if I said delusions of grandeur consumed me for a day or two.
(OK a week. Month tops.)
I'd get a blog, then a publisher would want me to write a book based on my life. I'd topple Sophie Kinsella from the bestseller lists. The Shopaholic series? So yesterday. Oprah's bookclub will be touting the The Sarahaholic series. Maybe I'd win the Giller Prize, or, better yet, Ellen DeGeneres would invite me to do a spot on her daytime talk show. The other guest would be Adam Brody from The O.C., who'd tell me he was a fan.
Ashton Kutcher would consider me for a Punk'd episode.
It all seemed so fabulous.
So fabulous in fact, that VHI would bump its planned segment on The Fabulous Life of Sarah Jessica Parker for The Fabulous Life of Sarah Elizabeth Crosbie.
Soon though, blog thrill turned to hesitation and hesitation to panic.
What did it say about me that I wanted to share my life with all of you?
Yes, I share a little glimpse of my life with people in our Saturday newspaper but those people are my people - they're Kingstonians.
Putting a blog on the world wide web meant that people (people world wide!) could read my stuff - and that all seemed a little much.
Writing a blog means there are ex-boyfriends who will be able to be in my life again.
Writing a blog means when I go to the gym, I'm not some random girl trying to work off her cottage cheese thighs; I'm Sarah Crosbie, trying to work off her cottage cheese thighs.
And writing a blog means that my parents, oh my poor parents, will be able to see just exactly what it is I'm up to when I'm out and about in Kingston.
See, even assuming that ex-boyfriends, gym-goers and my parents will actually read this blog, is arrogant. So, again, I'm back to the idea that this whole exercise is horribly self-indulgent and questioning the value of doing it.
But you're reading this so I'm obviously decided to go ahead and become a blogger, so what changed?
Well, it's actually what hasn't changed.
My thighs made me do it.
I remember being 12 years old and staring at my bestfriend's legs one day at school. Our calves seemed to be the same size but inexplicably my thighs were much fuller.
I ran home as fast as my fat thighs would carry me and sobbed to my mother who thought I was being insane (and if you could actually see pictures of me then, my thighs were a perfectfully healthy size for a 12-year-old girl who ran cross country, played volleyball, basketball and swam for hours every summer at her cottage.)
But they seemed thick and they rubbed together.
I thought I was the only fat kid whose thighs rubbed together.
And though I was a straight A student in high school, I had this uneducated belief that I was the only teenager whose thighs did Eskimo kisses every day.
It wasn't until one day in university when one of my best friends was bemoaning the fact that she had to throw out her favourite pair of cords.
Why? I asked.
The cord, she said, had all rubbed away around her thighs.
Why? I asked.
Because her thighs rubbed together and rubbed off the cord, she said.
It was a light bulb moment for me.
I thought then and there that if I had just read one story or heard one friend admit her thighs rubbed together sometime from age 12 to 22, it would have saved a decade of agony when I was trying on clothes, going swimming in a bathing suit or secretly kissing boys in my parents' basement and wondering whether they thought I had chunky legs.
This is the truth about me: Despite my thigh stress, I do have a pretty healthy self-esteem and I like sharing stories.
So maybe you'll find some of my stories funny. Maybe I'll enrage you. Maybe I'll share something with you that will make you a feel a little less alone in this world.
