I can remember it clearly. I was about 13 or 14 years old, a day outside at the pool laying out with my best friends sipping iced tea, also playing some volleyball – all the things you do on summer break with your besties when you’re a fresh faced teen. As the day wound down, my friends and I came back in the house and my younger cousin (maybe 5 or 6) exclaimed to my very petite friend loudly, “How come you’re so skinny and Trish isn’t?”
Every eye in that room turned toward me, mouths agape. No one really knowing what to say. I didn’t blame her for it. She was a child (then again so was I, but still). But, I couldn’t stop the feeling of shame for my own body starting in my belly and spreading outward. I could feel the guilt, the shame, crawling over my skin like a million fire ants poised to bite.
I swallowed hard to push down the lump in my throat and walked into the bathroom without a word. I locked the door, took one look in the mirror at myself in a bikini and promptly lost. my. shit.
I remember hyperventilating on the floor, trying to keep my sobs as quiet as possible as I heard people outside the door whispering wildly to my little cousin about how that was inappropriate, you don’t comment on people’s bodies. I heard my friend saying over and over again that she wanted to go check on me but didn’t know what to say. My family and friends all discussing how I was handling it without ever actually coming to see how I was handling it.
I remember standing up and looking at my stomach. Staring at it until it became this misshapen thing, this blob of fat right in my center. I took my index finger and thumb and pinched any spare ounce of fat that I could find and wondered what would happen if I took a pair of scissors and just cut it off. I wouldn’t actually do it, of course, but what if.
I think I stood in that bathroom for hours after that. Not crying, just numb. Staring and criticizing my body. My wide hips, wide shoulders, thick thighs. These were all things that up until that moment I’d liked. My wide shoulders and strong arms had made me good at volleyball. My strong thighs had made me a powerful runner, the fastest of all my friends if I was being honest. I’d never given much thought to my stomach but, staring at it I’d realized it was thicker than my friends. They were all double zeros, skinny little things – I mean we were 14. And me? I was a dreaded four. How could I be so fat?
Looking back, I wasn’t fat at all. There wasn’t an ounce of fat on me. I had always been incredibly athletic, have been for as long as I can remember. I wasn’t fat – I was muscular, athletic. And, I was taller than them. All of my friends were short and petite. Me? By that age I had hit my max height of 5’7 and towering over them. As an adult I can look back and understand that my body was just different, it didn’t mean that I was large, or fat, or obese, or any of the other derogatory terms that flew through my head that day but, it would take me years of honest conversations with myself before I could realize that.
If I could dial back all of my struggles with body image, that would be a pivotal moment. But, there were many, many more. You see, I also developed early. And, I’ve been dealing with comments from men on my body since I was about 10 or 11 (yes – you read that right – grown men have been making comments on the development of my body since my age entered the double digits). This made me yo-yo from wanting to hide, chop off all my hair (which I did) and try to make my body as unappealing as possible to keep them from noticing all the way over to dressing overly provocative for my age because “fuck it”. They’re gonna say shit anyways so I may as well feel pretty while they’re doing it.
All of that combined with an unhealthy relationship with food led me down a very real and very tumultuous road of self-loathing, border line eating disorders, and extreme insecurities. All through high school I loathed the fact that I was taller and broader than my friends. I went prom dress shopping with two of my best friends and, we were all in the same dressing room. The two of them were swapping dresses and then handed me something to try on. I knew it wasn’t going to fit but, the looks on their faces led me to slip it on anyway. As I attempted to zip it and it just wouldn’t budge, I felt both of their eyes widen as it dawned on them that I was bigger than them. “I always thought we were they same size, guess I was wrong”. I couldn’t even begin to tell them how much that comment that seemed innocent to them stung me all the way to my core.
In my adult life, I’ve struggled a lot with binging and purging. I will go days eating the actual bare minimum to survive. I’ll be getting by on so few calories that I frequently feel faint, I’ll actually be sick to my stomach because my body is in chaos from a lack of nutrients. And then? I’ll binge. I will eat more food in one sitting than I have in the last week combined. And after that I completely spiral. I will hate myself so viscerally that I can’t even look at myself in the mirror. I’ll find myself in the bathroom leaning over a toilet wondering if it’s worth it to make myself throw up just so I’ll feel hollow again.
And, if I don’t make myself vomit… I’ll take a laxative. One way or another I have to get it out of me. If I don’t I can’t even stand myself. I feel so heavy and unattractive and a feeling of shame so deep I’ll carry it with me for days. During the worst breakup I ever went through I was so upset I couldn’t eat more than ½ a bagel a day (if that). I lost 14 pounds in one week and, on my already thin frame it caused my clothes to start falling down, even my belts were too large. And I glorified that weight loss for so long. In some of my darker moments, I’ve even wished that I would go through that kind of heart break again just so I could find the motivation to lose weight quickly.
About 5 years ago, I decided to go on the birth control shot. I only had it twice but, in that 6 months I put on SO much weight. It made my cravings so unbearable and, my hormones were entirely out of whack. In that half a year I put on over 50 pounds. I was disgusted with myself. Which lead to even more spiraling and abuse of laxatives, dietary supplements, and purging. I used to wish that I had the willpower to be anorexic….
Since that 50 pound weight gain, I’ve continued to yoyo. I’ll lose 20, then gain 35, lose 15 and gain 10. It’s been all over the place. A part of that is the binging and purging, a part of it is the mental state all of this puts me in, the reasons vary but, it all circles back to me – hating myself and not really knowing how to deal with it.
I promise this story has a happy ending, though. Well, happy-ish. A little over 2 years ago I began taking Krav Maga classes. And, as I delved into Krav I started to realize that on days where I ate better, my performance was better. I started to acknowledge the strength in my body, instead of being hyper focused on its shortcomings. I liked the way it felt when I felt strong, instead of feeling so undernourished I was getting black spots in my vision or, so full from a binging session I wanted to vomit.
Over the past 2 years I’ve been focusing on intuitive eating, learning to love my body the way it is on every step of the journey, and trying to stop negative self-talk as soon as I identify it happening. I’m in a much better place than I was. I’m not in a perfect spot and, I backslide from time to time. But, I’m finding it easier to get back on track when that happens.
I wish that this wasn’t a lesson that myself and countless others had to learn. I wish so hard that we would start teaching more kids that beauty comes in all shapes and sizes. That “skinny”, “fat”, “curvy”, “athletic” isn’t who you are, it’s just a word used to describe your appearance. As meaningless as “brunette” or “blue eyes”.
I wish we could teach more kids to celebrate your bodies in their natural state, to love what your body can do and revel in the miracle of it instead of comparing every inch of you to another person. I wish we’d stop harping so god damn much on the physical appearance of those around us and more on their soul.
Maybe then we wouldn’t have people like this… people like me. People who have to battle every day with what they see in the mirror. People who had to check themselves into rehab for an eating disorder because someone told them they looked good after they lost 10 pounds from not eating and they thought “well if 10 is good then 20 must be great” and then they found themselves unable to stop. I yearn for the day that we can educate ourselves and future generations on how to have a positive relationship with food and eat based off of what our body needs and throwing in what the mind wants only in moderation.
With the current state of our country, I don’t see that happening any time soon. I’m hoping beyond hope that if enough people like me share their stories, people who don’t aesthetically fit the mold of someone battling an ED, that more people will start to listen. But, until then I’m just going to continue fighting my fight every day – my fight to self-acceptance and love as a woman who has battled insecurities so deep I’ve been ashamed to speak them out loud for over a decade. If you’ve battled them too, know you aren’t alone. Know that we’re all just out here trying to do our fucking best – and that’s good enough.