By Anonymous
I conceal my face with layers of makeup hoping that half a bottle of BB cream will be enough to make me as flawless as Emma Chamberlain looks on the cover of Cosmopolitan magazine. I use innumerous acne medications, aspiring to be as unblemished as the girls in the Clean and Clear commercials. I reject bags of M&Ms and fudge brownies and pepperoni pizzas thinking that my sacrifices will make me “love my body” as much as the emaciated Victoria Secret models love theirs. I routinely shave my legs and armpits and pluck my eyebrows with fear of becoming the hairy woman the media deems horrendous. I do everything yet feel like I am nothing. Nothing compared to the beautiful women pictured in magazines and television.
I didn’t always feel so self-conscious. All my life I’ve been considered a “normal” healthy kid. I didn’t know that there was anything “wrong” with my body until I was in 10th grade and a friend felt the need to make it known to me. We were laying on my bed watching a YouTube video about grilled cheese sandwiches when she said, “You’ve got stretch marks on your legs!” and proceeded to take her pointer finger and identify the four or five tiny lines that were starting to form. “Only fat people have stretch marks.” The onset of my confidence issues came soon after that.
Whereas the world saw a young teenage girl who was happy in her skin, laughed a lot, and didn’t care what anyone thought about her, I felt like I was worth nothing on the inside. The truth of the matter was I wasn’t happy in my skin; I laughed to hide my pain and cared deeply what my peers thought of my appearance. I can’t remember a moment when I’d look in the mirror and think, I look good. I’d lose it when a photo of me at a bad angle was posted, or when I was a bigger size at one store than I was somewhere else. Every day, I’d scroll through Instagram with envy, looking at the girls with perfect bodies and be so angry that I couldn’t look like that.
For far too long, I abused my body. I talked down to her, writing down every part of myself that I hated and reading it back to myself over and over. I would look at myself in the mirror for hours, poking the extra fat and pointing out the flaws. I fought with her. I created good and bad food lists for her to live by, obsessively tracking calories taken in and calories burned. I punished her, exercising for hours at a time, secretly enjoying the pain I felt. I refused to nourish her. Mealtime felt like a battle—one that I was consistently losing. I chose to hide her away because I was ashamed of her, wearing oversized sweatshirts every day and making up excuses to not go to the beach with my friends.
Coming out of this toxic mindset has not been easy. Some days I feel like I am on top of the world and other days I feel as if I had made no progress towards recovery at all. I’ve sought help online by reading inspiring stories from women who have somehow found a way beyond this thinking. “I have learned to love my body and accept it and cherish it and worship it,” they’ll write. But I haven’t gotten to that point yet, and it doesn’t seem like I will anytime soon. So, when I read about all these women coming to love their bodies, it all seems like a giant lie because how can I learn to love something I’ve hated all my life?
But maybe it is okay to accept that I am not happy with my body just yet. Maybe it’s okay to hate how I look in the mirror some days because that means that there are days that I am happy with how I look. When I catch myself comparing my body to those I see on social media, I remind myself that my body does so much for me, and I should appreciate it for all the good it brings. Loving who we are is not easy because there can be so many things to hate but focusing on the good—great friends, beautiful art, calming music, a wonderful support system—has helped me make small pushes forward.