Throughout my life I’ve heard so many times, “Your body is perfect.” or “You should love the body you were given.” Not only did those words make me feel worse about myself, they also rattled around in my brain, a lot. I hated how I looked, I wasn’t confident at all, and I didn’t feel like I could start now. I called myself “fat” on a daily basis because I wasn’t as small as the other girls, so that had to mean I was “fat” which isn’t true at all.
I felt as if I needed to love what I looked like constantly. As if I didn’t have enough issues, people made me believe that I in fact NEEDED to love what I looked like, otherwise I’d never be happy. This started in 5th grade, all the way until now. I was peer pressured into loving myself, because if I couldn’t, how could anyone love me? I hated everything about myself, eyes that looked like the soil you covered a coffin, to every stretch mark on my body. “What could a person love about this?” I would tell myself. With that I would compare myself to any other girl in my class.
I realized there was a pattern to when i disliked myself the most, which was when other things were going on in my life. The most recent example was this past summer I had the worst case of anxiety that I had had since I had first been diagnosed with anxiety. This had thrown off anything and everything I tried to eat. I would pretend to eat things, and only be able to snack once and awhile, otherwise it would’ve come back up. I was dropping weight like I had never seen myself ever do, even when I was working out really hardcore. I had never felt better about myself when I looked in the mirror. Though when I looked in the mirror, I was sickened to who I had become. I was applauding myself with starvation.
At the end of summer I took a trip to Mossyrock, WA with a whole crew of people.
Never had I been so insecure to eat in front of people ever. I would eat about a mouthful of spaghetti and a tiny piece of bread, while everyone else had thirds or fourths on their plates. I watched as people ate, only begging for my stomach to gain an appetite. I had friends worried for me, I was constantly light headed, and completely shocked I hadn’t fainted that summer. I was eating less than any other person I knew. “But maybe if I could convince myself I was fine, I could convince everyone else I was fine.” I would tell myself. I was wrong, because by the end of summer, my ribcage was sticking out so much, you could see each individual bone.
I know this for certain, if I would’ve continued down the road I was going down at the time, I never would’ve made it out alive. There is no doubt in my mind that I would’ve been in a hospital.
Once I got back into the rhythm of school, and having a set schedule, I was slowly getting back to eating the normal amount for me. I was slowly gaining back the weight I needed to not be less than my average self. I have gained back most of the weight, and I’m still not 100 on loving myself, I have my moments like we all do of both good and bad. But the main thing that I have gained from this experience and the ups and downs of this summer with anxiety; I have never appreciated my body more than I do now. I know that this won’t be the last time where I go through a stage of not eating, but I pray and hope this will be the last extreme time of not eating, because I don’t know if I could go through that again.
I wrote this a long time ago after feeling the need to tell people about my eating disorder issues and what had happened to me in what I would consider my darkest moments: Summer of 2019
The song vibe right now: ZenAware — Wasted Worry (feat. Suriel Hess) [Official Audio]
