I have always been aware of my size. How could I not be? If I wasn't comparing myself to Disney icons and "Tiger Beat" spreads then I was — quite literally — sizing myself up against my friends. I was angry because I couldn't wear cute bathing suits, and I had to cut the tags out of my shirts so no one would see they were labeled "plus size." I felt like the "designated fat friend" of the group, and I convinced myself that if all of us were standing side by side I would stand out for all of the wrong reasons.

Because I refused to consider my body a strength, I focused all of my energy on any other aspects of my life to find confidence. I was "well-behaved," I was responsible and I was intelligent, so I threw myself into my school work to create a distraction. I could temporarily avoid the insecurity, the loneliness and the emotional exile. If I could invest myself in anything other than my weight then it would become less real.

I entered a period of my life where I felt like I had an unprecedented amount of control. I had great grades, I had great friends, I loved being involved in performing and I had a solid idea of what I wanted to do with my future. My teachers thought I was clever, and my friends thought I was sassy. Despite the fact that I wasn't convinced of all this myself, I couldn't see anything wrong with faking it 'til I was making it. I embraced my natural hair, I wore dark red lipstick with thick, winged eyeliner and I wore low-cut dresses to show off my chest. I decided that if I put a lot of effort into the parts of me that I did like then maybe the rest would disappear...

It's still an ongoing process. I am working toward completely embracing my body, but old habits never cease to re-surface. There are moments when the self-loathing creeps back up on me. I think there might always be these moments, and that's the hardest truth to accept.

There's this cultural notion that at a certain point in your life you'll "reach happiness," suggesting eventually you'll plateau and be set for life. I don't think that ever happens. To paraphrase One Tree Hill's Julian Baker, "Happiness is a mood, not a destination," and if being conscious of my body insecurity has taught me anything, it's that all emotional conditions are valid in their respective ways. They deserve to be felt and acknowledged as truth. A brilliant author, Zora Neale Hurston, writes in her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, "No hour is ever eternity, but it has it's right to weep," and I believe this fiercely.

It's a tough job to deconstruct everything that I've learned about how I "should" and "shouldn't" be as a woman in today's world. As I am juggling school, family, friends, emotions, etc., sometimes it's easy to slip into my passivity. It's comfortable to submit to how my peers and elders define me, but I am working toward facing the uncomfortable. I am pushing myself a little more and more each day to love the body that I was given, but I also am pushing myself to validate the dark truths and insecurities.Today I appreciate my body more than I ever have, but despite all of my strength from self-taught confidence, I can still see places where the darkness calls to me again, even if only briefly.