The list could go on forever, one's history could forever stay under the soil if they diassociated all their other social medias from their Instagram account. (and also disregarding outer forces like paparazzi and obnoxious hackers)
Today I am going to talk about my journey, from the past to the present.
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I think body dysmorphia starts at a young age. For me, it started when I was 14.
Even before I was 14, I had always been bodyshamed by the same few boys.
Perhaps it might sound familiar, the comments of being called fat, a pig, eating too much for your own good.
But before I was 14, it never really hurt that much, because everytime they said that I'd run towards them to hit them and it'd all turn into a game of tag; cancelling out the pain it would've inflicted if I had kept silent.
I think it only began to hurt and sink in when I was 14, when I stopped chasing after boys to hit them, when I developed a deeper sense of consciousness and began to bottle my feelings inside of me. I guess that was when the outside world and people's opinions began to seep in to taint me.
I never thought I was fat, more to chubby, but when comments of such are repetitively pounded upon your head - body dysmorphia forms.
I was bullied throughout Primary 3 to 4, by a group of girls who viewed themselves as superior above all else, especially above me.
Because I adorned wire-rimmed glasses that made me look especially out of fashion, and because I often ran about screaming and chasing guys, I became the pure target of their degradations.
Then from Primary 5 to 6 (11 to 12 years old), I went through puberty and lost a whole load of weight. This was then gained back again in Secondary 1, when I was 13, and when I underwent bullying again.
This time though, it was a cyber attack instigated by a group of girls from my secondary school. The first year of my secondary school life was hell, Facebook was always spewed with so much hatred over me that I had to block so many of them. Even people I didn't know, people who were friends with that group of girls, were joining in to laugh.
Walking to school always made me feel so afraid, I was always terrified out of my wits because the clique always hung out at areas I had to walk pass and they always sniggered insults and degradations behind my back, in a way so loud, I knew it was to ensure I heard them.
Then in Secondary 2, when I was 14, things got slightly better. But at that point in time, I was so pushed to the brink I fell over when another boy said that I was fat.
Even as I type this it all sounds so laughable, but I know the emotions that ricocheted through my entire being at that moment in time, how real it was, how it pushed me over and crushed me rock-bottom for almost 3 years.
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I began my weight loss journey when I was 14.
I was obsessed with being skinny, to shrink as much as I could.
I took up running and I ate less. As the years went by, I ate lesser and lesser and exercised more and more. There was a period in my life when I ate 800 calories a day, my meals went something like breakfast being a cup of coffee, lunch being an orange and a bun, dinner being an apple. It got so bad I lost my period for almost 2 years. My hormones were all out of wack, my mood swung so hard at times and I got so mad and depressed the only time I was truly happy was when I ate. But after I ate, I was always swamped by guilt and a need to get the food out of my stomach. I hated feeling full, because I equated feeling full to becoming fat.
Shortly after, I began binging and it made me feel so horrid about myself I realized I could actually purge to rid my system of the calories I had inhaled. Purging was like cleansing to me.
I know that a lot of girls desire for a body like the one above, and to a lot of people, likewise, they'd think I have nothing wrong because I wasn't skeletal-skinny. But I want to address how you don't have to look like you have a problem to have a problem. A problem starts in your mind.
I have learnt, as I've grown, to:
Never let anyone marginalize my problem.
I had a boyfriend then, and I am so sorry he had to go through my hesitations when it came to food. I could stand in the middle of the food court and take 40 minutes to choose something to eat, stand in a bakery for 30 minutes and then decide I don't want to get anything afterall. I could have a bowl of noodles, run to the toilet and purge and come out red-eyed and sniffy. I think he was the only one who knew about my fears, but he did not and could not understand, he just chidded me and asked me to stop.
But anyone who has ever been through this knows how hard it is to stop. You just can't, because there are voices in your head that taunt, mimic and pick on your deepest fears. Voices that make you hate yourself and instigate you to scream and kill everyone who get in your way. I placed a lot of my hatred into my relationships.
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Body dysmorphia never stopped for me. It only stopped halfway through my weightlifting journey. Even when I was that skinny, I always thought I was too fat. I had the thinnest thighs I had ever had, my tummy was the flattest it had ever been, but somehow it was never small enough. I wanted to lose all the fat. Being so 'fat' made me feel so disgusting that I wanted to die.
As I look at these pictures, I feel so overwhelmed.
I cannot see what I used to see anymore.
I can't see the huge curves of fat on my thighs I used to think I had, I can't see how 'fat' I was.
This is body dysmorphia at its finest, and now I am destroying and burning it to ashes.
Fuck you.
It was a constant fight filled with shame and a need to break free. Through everything I have been through, I have derived so much... Self love being the biggest takeaway.
Now,
I love myself.
I love the person I used to be and I wish I had known what I know now.
I love how far I have come and how it has not teared me apart.
I love how much I have recovered, how the voices have left me.
I am grateful everyday for the privilege to still be alive, to have discovered weightlifting - something that I have never been more passionate about.
I am grateful that I am who I am today.
- C
