If you asked me when I first started obsessing over noticing my body, I would say right after I turned 13. Up until then, it didn’t matter that my cheeks were chubby or that my thighs rubbed together. I didn’t compare myself to the skinnier girls in the class until I overheard a conversation between some boy classmates.
They teased the boy I sat next to in class, asking him if he liked me, to which his nose wrinkled in disgust followed by, “Ew, no! Have you seen her?”
Of course, he didn’t know I overheard any of that, and I acted as if I hadn’t heard a thing either.
There are several other instances I could recount in middle school of classmates silently judging me for my weight. But as much as those stung, I never found myself wanting to be smaller until the eighth grade.
It was the year I moved from India to the States that I realized being small was all I ever wanted to be. Gone were the days of wanting to be smart, talented, and well-spoken. One thing consumed me for a stretch of 12 months: small-small-small.
My eating disorder wasn’t something that lasted a long time, but those habits from that year, when I went down several pant sizes, stick with me to this day. They coaxed me at times to skip meals, but I knew better than to listen.
Recently, I’ve noticed that as my hips have gotten wider and my thighs a little thicker, those old habits come back to feed on me again. Clothes that once fit me now struggle to fit over my waist.
I look back on old pictures from high school, puzzled that I ever thought I needed to be smaller. I wish I could go back and hug that young girl and tell her to be smarter.
They don’t really tell you about the second puberty and how your body changes again. As strange as it is to admit this, on some days, I miss my old body—the one that was tiny and fit into skinny jeans and extra smalls.
On some nights, I even think I should relapse, maybe starve myself just for a day…? It would be easy, would it not, to give in to those thoughts? To push your body just a little longer until all you are is small.
But I wasn’t put on this Earth to be smaller, to take up as little space as possible. I’m here to create, to love, to mourn.
My body has only been kind to me and weathered enough storms. I can’t fault it for changing to match every season of my life. While on some days I may still chide it for looking a certain way, I hope to embrace it completely someday.
I let go of the girl I once was to become the woman I am meant to be.