Everyone struggles with body-image issues. Everyone is striving to be the perfect weight, have flawless skin, straight teeth and perfectly proportioned features. We spend so much time focusing on the things we don't like about our physical appearance that it's taking away from our quality of life.
When it comes to our bodies, I've learned that we don't get much of a say in how they look. Of course, there are some things we have the ability to enhance or alter, but sometimes there are things that are out of our control—usually the ones we most wish could be changed.
Over the course of nine years, I've had to watch my body change in strange, and rather unpleasant ways with no rhyme or reason behind it. I went from being horribly and uncomfortably underweight (which was later discovered to be the effect of my severely curved spine compressing my stomach) and walking on my toes, to being of a normal and healthy weight, but in a wheelchair and on a ventilator.
I always hated the abnormally skinny version of me—the version of me who couldn't gain any weight no matter what measures I went to, and the version of me who looked like she was betraying her body, as opposed to her body betraying her. Even so, when I was no longer like that, I hated the new version of me for a really long time—the version of me that was healthy and in a good place, but with a drastically altered physical appearance.
Either way I looked, I just couldn't find satisfaction in any physical appearance. However, when my latter physical appearance came to stay and made me feel the best, health-wise, in what had been about five years, I began to embrace it. For so long, I was so worried about how I looked that I forgot to see the most important thing behind my new appearance—I may not have been walking, I may have tubes coming out of my neck, and I may have gained weight that didn't proportionally spread out due to my unique physiology, but I was healthy.
It soon became apparent to me that it's not my physical appearance that matters, but it's my health, and I think that's something so many people overlook when they're striving for physical perfection. Yes, I still like to do what I can do to "look good" in my own eyes, but it's also not the most important thing when it comes to my life.
My physical appearance does not define me. Personally, I believe in science and the theory of evolution, so what does define me are all of the personality and emotional characteristic traits that have been mapped onto my brain through nature and nurture. I'm not my body, but I am my mind—and as long as I have a body that's able to carry around this mind and let me experience life, then I'm happy.
People are always striving for physical perfection, but at what cost? Rather than striving to fit an image in your head, strive to just have a healthy body. A healthy body doesn't mean you're perfectly skinny, and have all of the other physical attributions that are believed to signify good health. A healthy body can come in many different forms, shapes and sizes—all it means is that everything that's evaluated at the doctor's office when you go for your annual physical is looking and feeling the way it should.
Your quality of life shouldn't be wasted on trying to achieve an image of perfection, but should be spent taking care of your body, and enjoying every moment that it gives you. Beauty is just an idea, and only you can decide if you're beautiful, so don't let anyone tell you otherwise. I'm able to leave my house, tubes and all without a single thought—and that in and of itself some people find beautiful because I'm not letting something I used to be so self-conscious about keep me from going out into the world and living my life.
My body betrayed me, but that doesn't mean I should betray my body. I'm going to love it and care for it as best as I can, because I want this body to keep me around for a long time.
We need to stop putting so much value on beauty, and start putting more on quality of life. Beauty doesn't mean happiness, and anyone who says it does isn't truly happy.
At the end of the day, if you were to not wake up tomorrow, would you want to be remembered for what you looked like, or who you were and the life you lived? The answer seems pretty simple.
