We've all heard of anorexia, bulimia, and body dysmorphia before. These terms are so popular that they taught in health classes during high school. We also hear of them in movies or TV shows, magazines, and sometimes music videos. As young women, secretly and deep down we have all struggled with some type of body dysmorphia when we transitioned from young girls to teenage girls. The realization that as girls we all look different can be quite shocking. Not only everyone's appearances around us, but social media and celebrities can have a big influence when coming to this realization at such a young age.

My personal story really began my freshman year of high school. Back in middle school, I struggled with body dysmorphia as I came to the realization that girls around me didn't have "fatty rolls" or "big cheeks" like me. I have always been a pretty normal weight for my height as a tall girl, but these are the "normal" thoughts of a fourteen-year-old when you are growing up and changing. These thoughts of body dysmorphia shouldn't even be thoughts of realization but thoughts of acceptance instead. I personally never asked myself if I was struggling with an eating disorder or body dysmorphia when I began to limit myself to certain meals or snacks when I began high school. One thing is to normally workout with the purpose of a stress reliever or with an athletic purpose, and it is abnormal when one becomes obsessed with "losing weight."

I developed habits of skipping certain meals and limiting myself to the amount of food I was consuming. They became normal, especially when people around me wouldn't notice I had these habits. I have always been pretty tall, so I became quite obsessed with the idealization of being "tall and thin" and to "look like a model." Those were goals I had mentally deep down until a peer of mines was hospitalized as she secretly struggled with Bulimia and no one knew about it until we were informed by her mother why she missed a month of school. I never saw any signs of an eating disorder in her or any "habits." And she never discussed any of these common thoughts we have all shared at some point during our womanhood.

I told myself I wasn't forcing myself to vomit, so I didn't have an eating disorder. This day, while writing this article I'd like to recognize that I struggled with an eating disorder my freshman and sophomore year of high school and no one knew about it. Nor my parents, nor my teachers, nor my siblings, nor my friends were ever aware of this. "Being tall and thin" was totally normal. Although "thick girls" are the new popular in high school, "flat girls" struggle at "staying flat" as well.

I know for a fact that every girl has struggled with some type of body dysmorphia, some have also fallen into a deep state of some kind of an eating disorder. I am here to tell you that I love you just the way you are. Your "fatty rolls," your "big cheeks," your "stretch marks," and with anything else that you have abnormal that other girls don't have. Eating disorders are dangerous and we all know the consequences, the scariest one being death.

Although you feel like you have to look a certain way to be accepted by a certain group of people or to get noticed by someone. That is complete bullshit. It is okay to stay healthy and workout. But it is a completely different thing to fall into an eating disorder. It seems like we talk about body dysmorphia like an issue we can just solve by telling someone to just not care, it is more difficult than that. And I, as one of all of us young women that have faced body dysmorphia at some point in our lives, I totally understand that it is not as easy as it sounds to just quit.

Especially as a college student, you are here right now in college for a reason. You want to make it to graduation day and to have a future with your current degree. You want to be happy and alive. And if someone doesn't like you because you are a certain way I can assure you someone else will.