Growing up, I had a really great childhood. I had just about anything a little girl could ask for, though I didn’t realize it at the time. My family was always supportive of each other. My friends were kind, given the fact that we were all young and didn’t know that friends could be anything different. I had moved from a small town in Nebraska back to Colorado (where I was born) at the end of second grade. There I met all new friends, and settled into a new version of life as well as any second grader could. This is where my first memory of self-negativity occurred. Imagine a second grader now, can you believe that a child that young could have negative thoughts about themselves? How could they? Second graders don’t dress themselves, do their own hair, make their own lunches; they hardly think for themselves. So what could I have possibly disliked about myself?
I had a friend who I remember viewing as cool, fun, pretty, and popular. She had so many friends, yet she wasn’t always very nice. We became close and sat together in class, during lunch, and played together at recess. One day she made a comment about my body that has stuck with me to this day. It’s easy for me to look back and recognize how silly it sounds because what could possibly be wrong with a 8- year-old’s body. I was super healthy, involved in sports, and ate balanced meals. But I didn’t know any better than to take what she said to heart. Kids are super impressionable, and I never had a reason to not trust what she told me. So of course this stuck.
Years went on and this comment didn’t necessarily bother me anymore, but I did think of it every so often. In my experience, growing up a girl meant going through phases of being overly concerned with the way you look. I went through these a lot. It got worse during my sophomore year of high school. Even while being in a happy relationship with loving friends, I spent 90% of my day worrying about how my body looked. I wondered how other people viewed me. Every time I passed a reflective surface, I stared at myself for too long and only had negative things to say about the girl in the mirror.
While my thoughts about myself continued to worsen, so did the state of the world. COVID-19 was in full swing, and everything was shut down. Being stuck at home with nothing to do was the worst thing for me. Similar to many other teens who didn’t know what to do, I began to participate in various online workout classes and did them a few times a day like it was my religion. I was always an athlete growing up, so at first it was just to get my body moving and help me feel good, but then it started to feel good for other reasons. I started seeing changes in my body that I really liked. After years of self-hatred, for no reason at all, seeing positive changes felt really nice.
This started my obsession with searching for ways to become “healthier” and change my physical appearance. I can’t even say that it was for my mental health, because it was more than that. The first thing I did was begin to cut out snacking. This was difficult for me because I was always looking for something to snack on. There is not anything wrong with this, in moderation, but I decided that cutting it out would help me reach my “goals”. However my “goals” were unclear because everything I changed never felt good enough. I thought that I could always be doing something more, or differently.
So, it did not stop there. As time went on, I started to eat less and less. Some days I would have one meal all day, with no snacks, and other days I just wouldn’t eat anything at all. To add onto that, I would weigh myself at the beginning and end of each day just to see if there was a change in the numbers, not just my appearance. Although the results of this “diet” helped me work towards the physical appearance I was hoping for, I have never, ever, felt physically worse in my whole life. Up to this point, no one had known that I was experiencing negative thoughts or drastic changes.
I thought that I could live this way forever. I did not realize how unsustainable these habits were for me and even if I had, I would not have cared. As time went on, my hair started to fall out more than usual, my body felt weak most of the time, and I was more irritable. The moment where I knew things were really wrong was when I threw up and almost passed out at my high school volleyball tryouts because I hadn’t eaten in a couple of days. It’s important to note that I have a horrible fear of throwing up and hadn’t done so in many years. This was it. I knew I needed help, but I genuinely didn’t want to change anything. I especially didn’t want a doctor to tell me what to change, because they don’t know how hard it is to feel this way.
My boyfriend noticed that after getting sick during tryouts, something was seriously wrong. I decided to confide in him, I said it all. I was hardly eating, but thought I was eating too much at the same time. I hated the way I looked, and I dug myself into a dangerous hole. After a long and difficult conversation with him, he told me that if I did not tell my mom about this, then he would. I wanted to be so mad at him, and I was. I confided in him, how dare he hold that against me? I didn’t want him to tell my mom because it would worry her and she would make me do something about it. My situation was none of their business anyway.
So of course I didn’t tell my mom. I really didn’t think he would say anything to her about it after all. But he told her, and then I had to have that awkward, horrible, heartbreaking conversation all over again, but with her this time. I could tell that she was beyond concerned because he told her just enough information to make her worried, but not enough to where I really had a lot of explaining to do. With tears streaming down my face, I explained it to her. The not eating, the obsession about my physical appearance, and the real reason why I got sick at tryouts. I could see her body tense up and I knew she was heartbroken. Looking back at this conversation makes me so sad, there was so much raw emotion and I could tell that my mom felt lots of guilt even though it was not her fault.
This was followed up by an immediate doctor’s appointment. As if I was back at square one, I had to have the horrible talk all over again but this time, with a professional. I always loved my doctor, she was so caring and supportive. So talking to her was easy, but releasing my negative thoughts into the real world was hardly enjoyable. Not the first time, not the second time, and certainly not this time. In fact, I think that it just felt worse every time. I was told by her that I would be on watch and would have to come back routinely and get check ups on my weight and other things to make sure that I didn’t start to experience impacts to my overall health. She also recommended different ways that I could try overcoming negative thoughts.
The first thing I did was put the scale away. This was hard for me because it became such a habit. To be completely honest, the numbers on the scale didn’t change drastically. I was not losing weight because I already weighed so little in the first place that there just wasn’t any I needed to lose. But I found so much satisfaction in the fact that there wasn’t change. I didn’t want my weight to go up, but I was also fine with it staying what it was. That’s how I justified it to myself. I’d always heard that maintaining weight is a good thing, so in my mind, that’s all that I was doing.
Another huge factor in my battle with myself was social media. It was hard to stay away from it. I knew that I had to use it differently though because all I would do was compare myself to others online. Whether I knew them or not, they all had something that I wanted whether it was hair, clothes, or their bodies. I had such an unhealthy relationship with social media that it was affecting my day-to-day life. I chose to do a cleanse where I unfollowed, blocked, and removed people that played into my poor condition. It was no one’s fault that their content triggered me, but I also knew that if I continued to live vicariously through others, I would only damage myself more in the end. Unfollowing and disengaging with this content was ultimately beneficial after all.
On top of this, I had to teach myself that food is the fuel I need to nourish my body. This was without a doubt the hardest part. I created such a bad stigma about certain foods that it was difficult to begin feeling comfortable eating them again. This took me the longest to get over. It wasn’t as simple as putting the scale away or changing my social media habits; I had to work on my diet. It was a slow process, but with the help of my support system, I finally got to a place where I wasn’t afraid to indulge in foods I had previously removed from my diet.
It took me many months to get to a point where I felt comfortable with the food I was consuming and where I could live my life without these habits consuming my mind. Even years later, I still fall back into my old ways and I don’t always have good days. I get frustrated with myself when some negativity sneaks into my mind. I am now able to talk myself away from that negativity and I have resources and methods to help me. I believe that this is growth. I have worked really hard to get to a point where I can go out with friends and order what sounds good, not what has the least amount of calories, and I am really proud of myself for that. I would be lying if I said that I love what I see in the mirror everyday, because I don’t. But everytime I look at a reflective surface now, I can proudly say that I am no longer battling with the girl in the mirror. We are proud of each other for where we have come from and where we are headed. We know that we will be okay, and we will always be cheering for each other.