Vanity, thy name is (ab)normal

After a few days in Decatur, I came home to a message on the answering machine from a childhood friend.  M lives in Arizona, but, at the moment, she is visiting her sister who lives in a suburb about half an hour away from my house.  M was calling to see if we could get together while she was in Illinois.

My husband listened to M's message.  He was excited when he came in to the family room to tell me that she had called, and I know that he expected me to be excited too.  But I wasn't.

I can't remember exactly when I last saw M.  I know for sure that I saw her in July or August of 2003, but I might have seen her more recently.  In 2003 M's boys would have been 11 and 9.  Now her oldest is starting his junior year in college and her youngest will start college in the fall. 

A lot has happened in the intervening nine years since our probable last meeting and it would be nice to catch up, but . . . I'm fat, and I know M isn't.

It's not as if I was skinny in 2003.  I was definitely heavier than I had been since the previous time we were together -- but I am really overweight now.  When I'm brutally honest, I will admit that I'm not just overweight, I'm obese.  And I am also honest enough to admit that I am a vain person.

M and I have been friends since grade school.  I doubt very much if she will think less of me because I've let myself go and, to borrow a phrase from my father, am "fatter than a hog."  Of course she will notice that I'm fat, and that my skin is horrible and my hair looks like crap, but it won't change the fact that we're lifelong friends -- friends that are amazingly able to pick right back up where we left off, even if it has been almost a decade since we've seen each other.

I need to call M tomorrow and let her know if I can meet her before she leaves Illinois.  If I say yes, I'll have to put my vanity aside and trust that my oldest friend will see and appreciate the person that I am inside, the (ab)normal that she's known since 2nd grade, and not be judgmental of my weight and other physical changes. 

I'm pretty sure that M can do that.  I'm just not sure whether I can be equally gracious to myself.