Every once and awhile, I get the urge to browse through old pictures. I love looking at the pictures of my siblings and me when we were younger, but I always reach a section of pictures that I don't really enjoy looking at: my middle and high school years. I was not at all comfortable with myself or my body and it definitely shows in the pictures. I look awkward, and when I remember how I felt when the pictures were taken, I feel uncomfortable that it took me until college to become comfortable in my skin. I think most people have an awkward stage in middle school, but I think a lot of the negative thought processes that I have continued to foster into my early adult life started in my awkward stages of middle and high school.

My negative outlook about my body was undeniably reflected in the clothes that I wore. I would often wear the same sweater every day in middle school because I hated my arms that I thought were too flabby and the sweater also concealed my stomach, which I had identified as my problem area. Even now, I'm tempted to pull on a cardigan so that I don't have to show my arms. I would wear my hair parted straight down the middle and, unfortunately, I was still at a phase in my life where I thought it was a good idea to brush my curly hair when it was dry. I dressed that way because I didn't really want to call attention to my body. I craved attention but often because of how I felt about myself, I would draw away from everyone else and hide behind a book. Thankfully, these behaviors and feelings are no longer part of my every day life, but that doesn't mean that I don't still deal with them on occasion.

I am not sure that I will ever be one-hundred percent comfortable with my body one-hundred percent of the time, but I know that my time in college has helped me foster a better mentality about the way I view my body. I know that it is okay to not always love my body; however, I have had to balance my distaste with that aspect of my body with body-positive thoughts so that I don't go into a downward spiral of self hate because of that one small part of my body. I still fight the urge to hide areas of body that make me uncomfortable: my stomach, my arms, my thighs, but the difference between how I used to respond and how I respond now is that I wear the piece of clothing that I never thought that I would. I wear it even though sometimes I would much rather hide that part of my body that I used to refer to as a "problem area." College has taught me how to reclaim my body and wear the things that I want to even if other people don't think I have the body for it. I never thought that I would wear crop tops or a two-piece swimsuit that shows my midriff, but I do, and I love it.

A huge part of how I have gotten to where I am now in my journey to a more body-positive life is due to the people I have surrounded myself with. Most importantly, my roommates have encouraged me at every step of the way. When we go shopping together, we show each other the clothes we try on, and I know I can count on them to tell me if something looks good or not. Unlike the awkward days of middle and high school, my friends are honest in a positive way. I hated in my adolescent and pre-adolescent years when I would call myself fat and my friends would deny that I was. I knew that I was, and I didn't need to hear that I wasn't fat, but that I was beautiful. Fat has a negative connotation of being ugly, but the words beautiful and fat can, indeed, go together.

I love that my friends and I have created an environment where we can talk about our bodies in positive ways even when we are talking about what we don't like. We talk about our frustrations with our bodies, but we don't allow the conversation to stop there. We are freer with our compliments so that we can build each other up when we are so often tearing ourselves down. I have written several articles about body positivity and I will continue to do so because it is something that I continue to struggle with every single day of my life, and I want to normalize loving yourself wherever you're at physically, emotionally, or mentally so that the next generation of middle and high schoolers won't feel as uncomfortable and awkward as I once did.