Growing up, my insecurities started early. I was nine years old already thinking that I was ugly and fat because others would say so. I was nine years old with a list of insecurities that stretched as far as the ocean did.
I didn’t like my nose.
I didn’t like my lips.
I didn’t like the way my body was shaped.
I didn’t like the glasses I had to wear.
And so much more. Since age nine, I’d been fighting with these insecurities and self-esteem issues until I turned eighteen years old. I wouldn’t look in the mirror because I was terrified I’d hate what I’d see. But when I did get even just a glimpse, the hatred I felt for myself was overwhelming. It felt like a tidal wave washed over me, and doused me with insecurity after insecurity..
I was ten years old when I started starving myself. That didn’t last very long because my parents had figured it out. But the idea that I was even THINKING about starving myself was insane. I was ten years old. My focus shouldn’t have been on looking the prettiest and the skinniest. My focus should have been on hanging out with my friends and binging on ice cream or whatever food I wanted.
When I was eleven years old, I got braces. I felt I looked so ugly that I cried myself to sleep that night for the upteenth time. I would try not to smile that much or laugh that much and if I did, I would cover my face with my hand. I was twelve years old when they came off and I was the most grateful I had been in years. My teeth were straight and I felt better about my appearance and my smile.
When I was thirteen years old, my body changed. I mean, it had been changing for a while, but this was when everybody else noticed. My breasts were bigger than others and my body more curvaceous. I hated it, which is funny when I look back on it because I was in the best shape I’d ever been in. But at the time I hated it because everybody looked at me. People that age are vicious, especially the guys.
Something big had happened in my life a couple months before my fourteenth birthday. I became a big sister to one of the sweetest little boys I know, but I knew at that moment, I wanted my life and my thoughts to change. I wanted to be happy so I could be able to make him happy too. I had been miserable for five years of my life. I didn’t want to talk to anyone, I didn’t want to be friends with anyone, and I definitely had no intentions to tell anyone about my problems. But when that little boy was born and his tiny fingers wrapped around my index finger, I bursted out crying and I promised I’d get better for that angel, that whoever was up there had blessed my family with.
So at age fourteen, I began my steps to change for the better. I had gotten accepted into a school I had applied to and I made the decision to go. It was a clean slate, one where no one knew me and that was what I felt I needed.
When I started school, my whole attitude changed. I acted happy and cheerful, even on the days I really didn’t want to. A lot of people knew me as a sunny person, as someone who was always happy. You know that saying “fake it until you make it”? Yeah, I faked it all the way until I made it.
I forced myself to look in mirrors and compliment just one thing about me. I forced myself to eat three meals a day. I forced myself to put myself out there and be kinder than who I used to be. But soon after, I actually started believing those compliments. I stopped letting what other people were saying get to me, and my mind started to crave the food I wanted to put in my body.
At sixteen, I began to do different stuff too. I got my bellybutton pierced and I dyed my hair and I loved how I looked. I loved the idea that I could change my appearance but I also realized that I didn’t NEED to, to be happy, I just wanted to. That made my shoulders feel lighter than they ever had.
At eighteen, I turned around and I looked back at the path that I had come from. And with one of the craziest revelations I had in my life, I realized I was happy. I was truly, incandescently happy and I figured out how to fall in love with my life again.
When you’re a child, you find everything sunshine and rainbows because you don’t have the experiences you have later on. You never noticed the rain before the rainbow and the clouds before the sunny day, you just looked on the bright side of things until one day, that changed. It changed fairly young for me, but I found my way back to that type of happiness, where you look for the best instead of looking for the worst.
I realized when I would look at myself in the mirror, I wouldn’t grimace at the sight of me. I would smile and say, “wow, I look pretty today,” and move on with my day. I wouldn’t cry every time I looked at the rolls on my stomach or my thighs. I would just smile and poke them because this is what protects me, it’s the body that fights to keep me alive.
I was truly in love with not just myself, but with my life. It was hard and grueling and sometimes I still hated looking in the mirror, but I was better than the month before. And really, that’s what it’s about. You don’t have to be better right away. You don’t have to feel like your healing process goes through a timeline. My healing process took nine years, from when my insecurities took a hold on me until now, when I’ve finally let them go.
A healing process is messy and it hurts and it makes you feel like you’re getting nowhere when you don’t see progress in 24 hours. But a healing process takes time. It could take weeks, or months, or years, but it’s always worth it in the end. It’s worth it to feel that smile on your face or the laugh that makes you feel like you’re cramping from a lack of oxygen. It’s worth it to feel the weight of the world fall off your shoulders and to feel like you’re a brand new person.
Your healing is exactly that. It’s YOUR healing. Don’t feel discouraged if you don’t get better in a year or two. Healing is not linear and it’s not always going forward either. Sometimes it’ll feel like you took two steps forward and then seven steps back. That’s okay because if you keep fighting to heal, those seven steps back will cut down to five and three and even to zero. To love yourself is one of the hardest, most difficult things to accomplish especially when society norms and other people are consistently trying to tear you down, but it’s one of the most rewarding tasks. .
Just remember one thing throughout your healing; flowers grow back even after they’ve been stepped on and so will you.