TW: Eating disorders, mental illness, depression

When I was in 5^th grade, I decided I was fat. I had heard people use this word before. I heard it especially during the holidays, when my family would huddle together in the corner of my great-grandma’s house and speak in hushed tones. I heard it every time I would be fed smaller than normal portions. I heard it whenever I would fight with my mother or father. Eventually, I started to tell myself it when I’d see actress and models on TV, or my mother’s tiny frame next to me.

In 8^th grade, My dad and I finally decided we needed to do something about it. We had this epiphany one day when I went to the pediatrician and saw I weighed over 200 pounds. Seeing the numbers light up in bright red mortified me. I didn’t even want to look at myself in the mirror- I felt every piece of fat hanging off my body like wilting flowers in a bouquet of roses. After that day, I went to see a nutritionist. I had a meal plan and an exercise plan, and stuck to it obsessively. For almost an entire year I worked out sometimes five days a week for an hour, ate 1500 calories a day, tracked my calorie and meal intake, and dropped almost 40 pounds. I would work-out during vacations, tell my friends I could only eat certain foods when I slept over, and honestly felt really great about myself.

During my freshman year of high school, however, things began to change. I had lost so much weight but, it wasn’t enough. I wasn’t my goal of 160 pounds. I was too fat, too big. I was almost 6ft and weighed 175, but I was not good enough. My size 8 shorts were just a little too tight. I began to be obsessed with seeing my bones. At night, I would lay down in bed and suck in my stomach, trying to feel my hip and rib bones. I was angry at myself because they weren’t prominent enough. My depression and anxiety got worse and worse, and finally, all of my feelings culminated and I began starving myself and binging/purging. I followed Twitter and Tumblr accounts about anorexia; I was obsessed with being nothing but skin and bones. One of my most stark memories of this was at Tijuana Flats (one of my favorite Mexican restaurants in South Florida) one night with my dad. Usually we got two tacos with light chips and iced tea. Most days, I’d eat one taco and a couple of chips, or would only eat half of my food at dinner. If I ate both tacos at dinner and all of my chips, I'd drown my food in hot sauce as a “punishment.” When I did this, I felt powerful. Usually when I didn't eat all of my food, my dad would applaud me for "portion control"- he didn't realize how out of control I had become. He was so proud of me, and that was the worst part. He, of course, didn’t know how badly I treated my body. He didn’t know I still self harmed and starved myself. Even so, his words egged me on. Every compliment from my dad, family, and friends, pushed me further and further into my disorder. Every calorie I put in my body felt shameful and wrong. I hated myself, I hated food, I hated how big I felt. Even writing this now, I hear voices in my head telling me how easy it would be if I just stopped eating again, how skinny and thin I would become. How beautiful I would look. It's something I battle with every day.

Eventually, my friends caught wind of my eating disorder and continuing self-harm. Towards the end of freshman year, I got an anonymous text from someone who told me they saw my Twitter (I had created basically a “poetry” twitter, where I posted about my ED and depression) and were concerned. We talked, and throughout the summer, my friends helped me get better. I started eating more and stopped going to the gym as much. By my junior year, I had stopped self-harming and counting calories. My sophomore year was its own insane whirlwind of mental illness and self-destruction, but I was eating normally. I gained most of the weight back and got a little taller, and, I began to be okay.

Every day is still a struggle. Somedays I think about how good it would feel to just stop eating, or how skinny I would become If I began to count and limit my calories again. I don’t know if these urges will ever go away, but I am working, hard, on loving myself. I am a college student with a job and a mountain of extracurricular activities, and I can say with utmost certainty that learning to love myself has been the hardest thing I've ever had to do. However, it is essential to my well-being. I will always have hips and big thighs. I will always be taller than most people I know. I will probably always feel larger than my peers, and guess what? That’s okay! It is okay. We are so much more than our reflection in the mirror. We are so much more than if others see us as beautiful or ugly, skinny or fat, big or small, tall or short. If you have ever felt worthless, ugly, fat, or just not good enough, know this: you are made from the stars. Born from chaos. You are alive, have survived a host of problems and have jumped over more hurdles than you probably should have had to for your age, and yet, you are still here. If you are suffering from the same demons, know you are not alone. F*ck how much you weigh and how tall you are. You are beautiful, a child of the universe. Never forget it.