In fifth grade, a boy in my class called me fat on the bus ride home from a field trip to Boston. I remember the moment vividly, sitting on the itchy, obnoxiously-patterned seats and eating Sour Patch Kids with my friends, looking through the souvenirs we had purchased at Quincy Market a few hours earlier. Before this moment, I had never really looked at myself or my body with disdain. I was just Jenna, and that was enough for me. Almost immediately after this incident, however, it was no longer enough to just be me. I had to be skinnier. My self-image became painfully present in my everyday life, and it wasn’t a positive one.
In seventh grade, I went shopping with my mom, my best friend, and her mom. We were going to buy our first bikinis, a milestone in the lives of a lot of middle school girls. We each brought an array of brightly-colored swimsuits into our dressing rooms, but as soon as I put on the first one, I started to cry. I thought I was over the stupid fifth grade drama, because now I was in middle school, and definitely not awkward at all (kidding). Plus, everybody carries some extra weight in elementary school, right? I stared at myself in the mirror, unable to shake the feeling that I looked like a sausage, squeezing out of its casing. I was disgusted by my appearance. It didn’t matter that everybody else said the bathing suit looked great. I felt like I looked terrible.
I didn’t realize that a silly comment made by a prepubescent boy a few years before was still on the back burner, but once I thought about it, it made sense. Ever since that day in fifth grade, I never felt confident about the way I looked, I was always comparing myself to girls I deemed “smaller” or “skinnier” than me. I always used to think of myself as “the fattest” in my friend group. Even though I considered myself a happy person, I was never truly satisfied with my appearance or the numbers on the scale.
Last year, my freshman year of college, I lost a significant amount of weight. In all honesty, the food wasn’t great, and I was unintentionally eating way less than I should have been. I definitely didn’t lose weight the healthy way, but for the first time since fifth grade, I felt okay with myself. I liked the way I looked. I could fit into jeans that were slightly too tight in the years prior. I could wear a bathing suit without being completely embarrassed. It felt good to finally be comfortable with myself.
This past summer, I gained back all the weight that I was so happy to have lost. I was catching up with a lot of my friends about our first years as college students, usually over breakfast or lunch at our favorite restaurants. I also fell in love. My boyfriend and I spent a lot of time eating takeout and simply being so caught up in each other, that I didn’t pay much attention to what I was eating or how much time I was spending at the gym. And now, I don’t love my body like I did a year ago. I look at myself in the communal bathroom mirror, and I see the girl in the Target dressing room… but I don’t despise the reflection.
I’m lucky that I’ve never struggled with an eating disorder or other forms of self-harm, but for me, self-love is still a work in progress, and it is always fluid. However, I’m learning to accept myself, and I trust that you will, too.