Growing up, I was always on the chubbier side. I was never deemed medically "obese," but my doctor did occasionally slip a word or two that implied I should be cautious about what I ate. I lived in a household where "fat" was synonymous with "ugly" and "unworthy," but being "skinny" was praised and accepted. Having this mindset before you even enter middle school can be detrimental to your health.

I remember being in the fifth grade and having to go to the nurse's office to get my weight and height checked. I heard "one hundred and one" mumbled underneath her breath and I began to panic. I returned back to the classroom and heard a series of girls sharing their numbers: four feet, six inches, seventy-three pounds. Four feet, three inches, sixty-five pounds. I was five feet, one inch, and one hundred and one pounds. No one else was at a hundred.

I felt like the odd one out, the one that didn't belong. My Mom was skinny, my sisters were both skinny, the women in my family had an ongoing history of being slim. Everything became about what I ate, portion sizes, and calorie crunching before I reached my tenth birthday. At first, I did not do anything extreme, just small adjustments. Instead of five scoops of pasta, I would take four, and I would try to go on walks more often when my mother offered (since she noticed I was on the heavier side).

For a few years, my weight-to-height ratio basically stayed stagnant. I was not skinny by any means, and although my growth spurt started to redistribute the extra fat, I remained unsatisfied with how I looked. Before I could even legally enter a gym (since I was underage), I would sneak in with my father to use their bicycle or elliptical machines. Skinny meant power, skinny meant happy.

By the time I was a sophomore in high school, my siblings were no longer incessantly teasing me about my weight. I was now simply average, perfectly in the middle of the chart that the doctor shows you. Yet, I envied one of my older sisters who were numerously told she was underweight at her visits. She never really exercised, but she could eat three brownies and lose two pounds the next day (a scenario that actually occurred after we went on a vacation). I, on the other hand, gained half a pound by smelling a cookie.

I stared at myself in the mirror: forwards, to the left side, to the right side, studying every curve of my torso. If I suspected a change in my figure between one day and the next, my anxiety peaked. Despite what my doctor had told me, my reflection continued to show the same image: a ten-year-old chubby girl who was unworthy.

It was around my junior year in high school when I began to associate "underweight" with being healthy. A practice of going to the gym transformed from a rare occasion to a four-day ritual. I'd eat a small meal before so I would have some strength, but that small meal turned into a handful of almonds, and those almonds disappeared into an 8-ounce cup of water.

Months went by, and the eyes of the young girl trapped in the mirror fell into deep, purple craters. Her thin hair now laid on bony shoulders, but she still traced a protruding stomach with shaking fingers. My mind screamed to stop, I knew what I was doing was unhealthy and immoral, but the image encouraged me to keep going. I wasn't skinny yet. If I wasn't skinny, I wasn't happy, either.

It was not until my life was in jeopardy that I realized what I had done. My doctor informed me that I was bradycardic, meaning my heart rate was so low that it could potentially stop at any given moment. I was sixteen years old and a few steps away from a heart attack.

I hid in a bathroom after the appointment, hoping to escape the damage I brought to my body. The light was dim, yet I could still follow the outline of my reflection in the dull mirror facing me. This was the first time I had seen my body for what it truly was since I was ten years old. I was a junior, but I weighed significantly less than my fifth-grade self.

Skinny is not an accurate word to describe my body composition at the time. I was not physically "skinny," and I was not the definition of "skinny" that I had crafted: happy, worthy. I was a corpse. I had never met this girl before, she was never trapped behind that mirror. The image of my past self had been replaced with this new, dying being.

I will not lie and say I have never seen that ten-year-old, chubby girl in my reflection again. I am recovering, but I can and will not say I am "recovered." Recovery in an ongoing decision and process. Being diagnosed with body dysmorphia is something that will never go away. There are days where she is all I can see, and I am convinced that she is all I can ever be.

I am stronger than my dysmorphia. I recognize that I may not ever know how I truly look, but that is not an excuse to abuse my body and my mind.

I am not skinny. I am worthy.