98 lbs. 

That was my lowest, but it made me the happiest. In a world where beauty is predominantly seen externally, my femininity and well-being were fraying and deniable. Society says a woman’s existence and validity seem to be measured by a scale, a weight scale. The noise of me stepping on the creaking scale replays in my head every single day. My sole existence depended on that stupid metal box to see if I had lost another pound. But I didn’t, I never did, even though I tried so hard to. I was only 10 years old when I fell into it. I was so young and pure when I realized the people around me were nothing like me. They were all skinny. I was only 10 years old when I became insecure, I hadn’t even begun growing up or gotten my period or even gotten to middle school yet. I was only 10 years old when I saw the real world and saw myself as something I hated being. Fat. My own family and close family friends had sparked that realization in me. It was my people. Not some of Victoria’s secret models or pretty Instagram girls, it was people I knew and grew up with. They told me I was getting chubby and fat, that I better stop eating so much and their kids were skinnier than me. “You want to be pretty, don’t you?” “You’re starting to gain a lot of weight huh?” I heard it every day and it replayed in my head constantly because those words have made a bigger impact on me than anything I’ve ever heard in my life. Those were the words that started everything. Those were the words that I blamed for my faults and insecurities. Because those were the words that broke me.

Ever since then, there was not a moment where I wasn’t self-conscious. I began stretching out my shirts to make them seem baggier so they wouldn’t hug my stomach and you couldn’t see my body. I learned how to suck in my stomach and got so good at it you could never tell. I was only 10 years old, a child. the cruelty of the world had grabbed me and took me down with it. There was so much about me that I tried so hard to change because when I looked around, I could never love myself the way I knew I should’ve. Because everybody knows that girls can’t be pretty unless they’re skinny right? I wasted so much of my youth hating myself and hating my body that I forgot to cherish and enjoy the simplicity of my life. Fast forward to my freshman year of high school, I was 14. I had grown taller and became somewhat slimmer. I wore high rise jeans every single day because it was still there, and I knew it. In the first semester of my freshman year, I was constantly stressed and eating as a result, it showed. Although I didn’t realize it at the moment, looking back I looked terrible and it was all over my face. Acne and weight gain in my cheeks as well as my stomach and arms. During my second semester, I immediately lost weight because I lost all sources of my stress and I was somewhat happy with how I looked. My acne had cleared up and I looked slimmer in the face and body, I stopped stressing and eating so much. My sophomore year of high school was the peak in my body, or what I think it was at least. I joined my school’s water polo team and was constantly swimming and working out 5 days a week for 2 hours a day. I would come home and eat my heart out and never gain a pound because I would always go back and work out again the next day. There was never a single moment that I had to think before putting something in my mouth because I always knew that my body would stay slim. At the time I was still insecure because I still felt fat, but I formed a new level of confidence within myself that lasted a while. 

On March 13th, 2020 when schools officially closed, that was the end of it. I became inactive and stopped working out and even quit water polo. There was nothing to keep me from gaining weight. I fell into this cycle of constant binge eating late at night and would wake up feeling guilty. I could not stop eating sometimes, almost like I just couldn’t control myself because I felt like it filled the void. The pattern of guilt kept coming back to me, but I couldn’t stop eating. Until one day I just did. I stopped eating. And I stopped for months and no one knew. I lied to everyone and they believed it. No one suspected a thing, but I was so hungry. Every day I would fight myself to not eat because that’s all I knew. Only skinny girls can be pretty right? I would wake up every day and lie. I lied to myself, my friends, and my family, I tried to tell myself that “this is what you wanted”. and it was what I wanted. All I wanted was to be skinny. I would stare at myself in the mirror for hours sobbing because I hated myself and who I had become. I wouldn’t let myself eat late at night even though I needed it most. If I ever ate anything, I cried and tried to make myself throw up because I was so afraid to see the numbers on the weight scale go up. I couldn’t and wouldn’t let myself get better. The kitchen became my enemy, I couldn't bear to go downstairs because I would have to face it. All the food and all the guilt would stare me down until the void became too big to fill & I gave in. 

There’s still a bottle of apple cider vinegar sitting in my room, just sitting there rotting. It was such a dark period of my life and I knew at the moment I was wrong, but I kept doing it. I kept torturing myself because I thought it would make me happy. In reality, I wasn’t happy, I was just hungry. Every time I put something in my mouth, I thought of that little girl I once was. How she hated herself and the only thing she wanted was to be skinny. She was told every day that she was chubby and needed to lose weight. She was so young. She didn’t deserve that. Why did you do that to her? You crushed her innocence and left her so broken that she grew up with the voice of insecurity living in her head. That little girl still lives in me to this day, and I try my best to forgive myself for what I did to her. I’m so sorry that you let the words of others slash your beautiful soul and spoil your childhood. I’m so sorry you had to go through that. 

I’m 16 years old now and still struggling, it took time, but I began to grow and love myself. I fell out of my bad habits and got help. I’m still not perfect and the thought will always be living in the back of my mind, but I’m trying. I try to eat 2-3 meals a day and occasionally eat late at night. I try to avoid it at all costs because I don’t want to revisit my past encounters, but I am better. Truly I am. There are still days where I will not eat because I do not want to gain weight. I still struggle with insecurities and body image because they’ve made such a big impact on my life. I’m not going to lie and say that I’m perfectly fine now and I eat regularly and have overcome this big obstacle because it’s not true. I still think about it and I have my days of doubt and infliction. I am so sick of hearing that a woman is only good for their body, and their body defines their worth because I think that women are beautiful and have so much to offer in this disgusting world. They have minds of their own and blossoming souls of divinity. But I’m just so hungry, and I struggle to pick up a fork to feed myself even still. Because even after all these years, I regret every bite. I’m so sorry to that little girl that was so hurt because now I am older and I’m so much happier. I have found myself and felt the wrath of society, but I managed to get by. You should never let someone’s idea of beautiful contemplate your own. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. You are so perfect the way you are I promise it’s not worth it. I love you always, take care of yourself, don’t let anyone ever undermine your beauty and brilliance, even yourself. 

      - p