To Mean What I See

Hi! Here’s a post I have been trying to write for a long time, and if I don’t finally just get some combination of words on to a (web)page I will never say anything at all. My apologies if it’s jumbled.

NOTE: Body Dysmorphia affects many people in ways both similar and drastically different from how it has affected me. I cannot and do not claim my personal experiences with it to be the majority, or the rule, or universal. It is mine, and—as I have understood with conversations both online and in person—reminiscent of others’ as well. Please take this into consideration as you read the following.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I spend a lot of time examining myself in mirrors. I’ll stare at tagged photos, I’ll sit on my bathroom counter and look in the mirror for hours, and I’ll constantly be checking my appearance at every glass pane I find. I did this before, during, and after my bout with Anorexia and Bulimia, and I still do it today. I remember my brothers making fun of my vanity at the dinner table as I stole multiple glances at my reflection in the kitchen window over dinner. I also remember sitting in front of the mirror that hung over my bedroom door, crying, asking God why he let me lie to myself, asking him to show me something real. I spend a lot of time in front of mirrors trying to figure out what I look like. What I really look like. This is how I experience Body Dysmorphia.

I wrote a piece in 2014 on this subject that I never published because I came to the decision that I didn’t want to quantify my body’s size so directly on on PM, and the post was too measurement/weight/size specific. Since then, it has taken me four years to get even the smallest grasp on how to address this issue in a helpful and uplifting way–and I still am probably getting a lot of things wrong, not including all voices, etc. I want to share, however, the perspective of someone trying and succeeding and failing and learning to love her body and appearance when she is unsure whether her perception is truthful or not.

My weight fluctuated a lot during my recovery during high school and college. It drastically affected how I believed I looked, what I wore and how I did my hair and makeup, and the way I operated in everyday life. And as I came to realize that I was living with Body Dysmorphia, I lost trust in what I saw when I looked in the mirror. I learned that it is really, really difficult to understand and come to terms with recovering from an eating disorder when you can’t trust yourself to have an accurate view of your body.

In the spring of my freshman year of high school, my best friend helped me make a Pinterest account. And, as many teens did at the time (do they still do this?) we made a wildly premature wedding board to build our fantasy best-friend-double-wedding of the century. While we were scrolling through pictures of dresses, I came across a photo of a woman who was obviously very thin. Because everyone’s body is different, there was no way to know whether or not her weight was healthy for her or not, but it was obvious that it was the type of thinness I had aspired to in months previous when I was deep in my ED. I was proud of myself for recognizing it as an unhealthy weight for me, and I told my friend so. She paused, looked at me, and told me that my body matched the woman’s in the picture before my recovery began–and that I still wasn’t that far off.

That moment sticks out to me as the first in which I felt my eyes and mind had betrayed me. For upwards of a year I had actively been pursuing such an unnatural physique for my body and hating myself for being “too fat” no matter what I did–and nothing was the way I thought it was. I don’t mention this moment to say “wow I was at my goal all along!! :)” or anything of the sort. I bring it up to say that in order to understand the complexity of ED recovery, we have to understand the confusing and often convoluted way in which those trying to recover see their physical progression.

The 2014 post I mentioned earlier was about how switching shirt sizes was the only marker I had of how big or small I actually was. I wasn’t sure what I looked like, but I knew that I had been refusing for months to go up a size in tee shirts because I couldn’t come to terms with the fact that I was putting on weight. I knew I was getting uncomfortable in the tight fitting shirts, and started feeling insecure about how broad I my shoulders felt and how big my torso was getting. But to go up a size was to admit that, despite the inaccurate image of myself I had, that I was growing. It felt very decisive, public, uncontrollable, terrifying. The struggling part of me counted the switch as me giving up or letting myself go. The healing part of me knew that it was a gesture that would move mountains for my future recovery. I finally made the change, and patted myself on the back for choosing comfort over false satisfaction. But the idea that my size or shape could change so much that I required clothes of different measurements—yet every time I looked in a mirror I couldn’t grasp where or how the change occurred—frightened me into hiding my body from myself. My self-image was to move on without the body’s awareness or consent, and to live independently of it. My ED recovery, then, only progressed in halves.

Your worth as a human being is in no way attached to the size of your body or the smoothness of your hair or the clarity of your skin. I understand this, and I promote this. But I also believe that it is very easy for people who have never struggled with Body Dysmorphia to discount the importance a conscious, active, and positive relationship with the body. So much of recovery relies not on forgetting the body but embracing it, seeing it for what it is, and saying “I accept this”, whether that be in reluctance or enthusiasm. That part of the healing process is so vital and so coveted.

It has always been my personal goal to love myself unconditionally and to be confident in myself no matter how I look. But it is also my goal to love my body and appearance not in spite of my size but including it, no matter how big or small my tee shirts are. I don’t want to look at myself and say “that’s not me” anymore. I want to confidently recognize myself. I want to trust my eyes and be content with what they tell me. I want to own myself, wholly, always.

I will continue to examine myself as I always have. I will continue to steal glances in windows, perch on bathroom counters, search my Instagram and pick apart my photographs. If part of that is vanity, then so be it. Let me, and others like me, have this. Let us figure things out. We just want to know how we look.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Thank you for reading! As always, you can like the PM Facebook Page by clicking the button on the right side of the screen if you are on a desktop, or by following this link if you are on a mobile device.

Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest: @ProjectMaganda

Snapchat: @ErinKaelie

Much Love,

Erin