I have a specific memory of the first time I looked at myself in the mirror. I mean, really looked. Looked at myself as not just a reflection but as an observation of everything I could see. I looked at my skin. I looked at how my body curved, what poked out, what caved in. I remember a thought popping in my head: "I look like a flamingo."

I was five.

I'm guessing I thought this because I've always had a sway back, and it was accentuated even more when I was little. I remember that there were no ugly or hurt feelings about looking like a flamingo; I had thought it as nonchalantly as if "I have brown hair" would've entered my brain instead.

Fast forward five years, and I'm a bony fourth-grader in dance class. We're in the middle of the rehearsal process for our recital dance, and my teacher gets the idea for the costumes; we were to write an insecurity with fat black sharpies onto stark white T shirts. She explained it should be something deep, something we wouldn't necessarily talk about otherwise. One girl wrote "braces". One girl wrote "shy". I'm pretty sure I thought it was cheesy; we were probably dancing to a Sarah Mclachlan song, like come on. But I saw what other girls kept excitedly writing, and I couldn't think of anything, so I went to the wall and looked at myself in the mirror.

I wrote "skinny".

"Skinny" was the biggest insecurity I had. Not my glasses, not my crooked teeth, not that I sometimes didn't fit in or felt like a nerd. I wrote "skinny" because I thought I was supposed to have curves at ten years old.

Fast forward eight more years, and I'm a freshman in college facing the wrath of dorm life and the biggest period of physical self-hatred in my life. Like high school, I was still getting straight A's and I found my group of friends. But I wasn't on the dance team or doing four dance classes a week, and I couldn't embrace the unfamiliarity of the gym. I was stressed. I was eating a lot of microwavable dinners and cafeteria cheesecake. I didn't feel healthy, so I felt guilty, so I felt ugly. Honestly, I felt bad about everything. I was looking in a mirror around fifty times a day, expecting something to change to make me feel just a little better about my body, or I was avoiding them altogether because I knew how hopeless I would feel.

I never got an eating disorder. That wasn't the issue. I loved food; and no matter how bad I felt about my looks, I knew I could never bring myself to starve or binge then purge. My problem was the mirror; the silly pieces of reflective surfaces that began to control my life. That, and cameras. If I could feel good for one minute in front of the mirror, that was usually killed by the reflection of my disgusted face off my laptop after seeing a photo someone tagged me in on Facebook. They saw my smile, my outfit, the friends I was with. I saw my stomach, my chin, my arms, my thighs. I spent my first two years in college untagging myself in photos.

Fast forward one year more, to when I was spending a semester in Italy. I had lost about twenty pounds over the past summer and had kept it off. I was at a healthy weight, a number that was natural for me. I felt great. I had never been so complimented in my life...and that was a problem. All I heard was "you look so good" and "you must be so happy". I also heard "more attractive" and "better". As much as I appreciated the support, these words created a strong, mental hold of the idea that I wasn't attractive at all before the lost weight. I became concerned if I fluctuated even half a pound, afraid that my newfound self-worth would be taken away (yes, I actually defined my self-worth as my weight. Let's move on).

This mindset simply transferred to when I was in Italy, so every single day, before running off to a new city to see art and culture and have the time of my life, I looked in the mirror. My body was in a new country, but my mind continued to stay in its reflection. I was fully experiencing the people, food, and beauty, yet I couldn't leave my room without jumping up and down in front of our room's small mirror placed high on the wall, just so I could see how my waist looked.

I went from gaining three pounds from the sudden intake of pesto pasta, to losing more than three pounds from walking the lengths of ancient cities, to gaining again and losing again and...I had had enough. For the first time, I made a conscious effort to stop looking at the scale in the laundry room, and started to focus more on being the best I could be in my mind, not a mirror. I aced my classes. I traveled in five countries and 22 cities. I laughed and ate and drank and lived.

Four months later and I'm back in America (in New York, then Chicago, to be exact); picture me at a friend's place I was staying at, eyeing the scale placed next to a mirror in the bathroom. There it was. I felt like I had grown so much, like I had this four-month-long epiphany that would cure a two-and-half-year-long mess, but this simple placement of household items brought back all the same self-doubt and degradation, and it was rising like hot lava (please ignore my cliché metaphor, I can't explain myself on that one). Suddenly, a thought popped into my head–it wasn't "I look terrible", or even "I look like a flamingo", but something different. It became clear that I could act the way I had been acting since I became body-obsessed, which would put me further down that hole–a possible ED hole–a place that I knew I'd never been in but also knew was still possible.

I stepped on the scale, saw the number, and told myself, "okay."

I looked in the mirror, ran a hand through my hair, and repeated myself, "okay."

I kept looking in the mirror. I kept looking. I looked into my own eyes. I assured myself, "okay."

It wasn't a giant step for me-kind, but it was a start. I made sure I said "okay" more and more, then "great", then "beautiful". I've never said "perfect", and that's a good thing. I need to know that I am not perfect, but I am close. Girls saved onto my workout-inspired Pinterest board are not perfect, but they're close. A mirror itself is not perfect, so why have I expected to be when I looked into it?

Fast forward to now. I exercise and lift weights with the goal of being strong. I put food into my body with the goal of being healthy. I focus on friends, school, my career, and really cute dogs with the goal of being happy. And sometimes, when I look in a mirror, the feelings and voices come back, telling me I can't be anything but ugly. I still catch myself counting the zits and scars on my face and pinching the excess of my stomach. Those beats of time suck. However, I now have a counteraction. I let myself absorb the flaws. I let myself think about them. Then, I get the hell over it. I look in my eyes, and I say, "okay".

Or I say, "a damn cute flamingo".