Previous Article of Series: Body Love Part 5: The Ups and Downs of Uppers and Downers
Disclaimer: Those who have had issues with body dysmorphia or are currently experiencing issues with body dysmorphia should be advised as the following article may contain sensitive topics.
When I first started writing this series, I was hesitant about putting something so personal in writing for others to read. I decided to go forward with it, hoping that talking about all the negative experiences I had and how they affected me throughout the years would make it easier for me to finally learn to love myself. I knew I wanted the last article in my series to be about how far I had come so it wouldn’t just be this story about how I hated my body, and nothing really changed. I envisioned this perfect ending about how writing this series finally changed my life and made it possible for me to overcome all my negative feelings towards myself and my body and finally lose the weight, but as expected, that wasn’t really the case. In all honesty, writing this last part of my story was unexpectedly the hardest part. I hoped that writing this series would help me become more accepting of myself, and in a way it did, but not in the way I expected it to. Although this isn’t what I would call a success story, I do have to give myself some credit and realize that I have had a few small victories come out of writing this series.
When I started writing my first article and mapping out the series, I realized that if my final article was going to be this success story that I envisioned, I only had about twelve weeks to essentially get my life together. When I came to this realization, I began to feel a lot of internal pressure build up. I truly wanted to learn to accept myself and begin to outgrow all the negative thoughts and feelings that I had built up in my head over time, but I envisioned a linear change. You would think that by now I would have realized that almost nothing ever goes according to plan and that change is rarely ever linear, yet that lesson still seems lost on me. After my first article was published, I felt the internal pressure begin to rise. Now that everything was out there, I felt like I needed to start healing at that very second. In my eyes, I had failed to make successful changes so many times before, so why should this time be any different? However, I knew I could count on a few unhealthy habits to help me along my way, so it didn’t take very long for them to fall back into old habits. After about a week, I noticed that instead of seeing positive changes in my habits, there were negative ones. Subconsciously, I had started skipping meals again and found myself feeling disappointed whenever I felt hungry. I knew this wasn’t a path that I wanted to go down again, but I didn’t know why this seemed to feel like the only path. This brought me to my first realization: I do not give myself enough time.
It took me a while to realize this, but after a lot of reflecting and many discarded drafts, I started to see it. I’ve always enjoyed being scheduled and I like it when things go according to plan, but it seems that I have a habit of planning everything. I give myself a set amount of time to adjust to a new environment, get over some emotional issues, or even a common cold and when that time is up, things must return to ‘normal’, whether I’m ready for them to or not. I made this mistake in first year while adjusting to university life, and again in second year while trying to manage all my school stress, and even again over the summer when I started medication for anxiety. I tell myself that I have x amount of time to screw up, or feel overwhelmed because I am adjusting, or coping, but once that time is up, things must run perfectly. I made the same mistake while writing this series. I told myself that I had twelve weeks to get over whatever body issues I have, and after that I didn’t really have a valid excuse not to love myself or the body I was in. Deep down I knew that twelve weeks most likely wasn’t going to be enough time for me to undo all the mental damage I had done over many years. Therefore, my only option was to make sure that I was in a body that I knew I would love. I assume this is why I began to fall back into bad habits, which is why I call this one of my small victories. I am beginning to realize that I don’t have to put a time limit on adjusting to a new environment, or healing. Some people do these things faster than others, and it’s fine if I’m on the slower end as long as I give myself the time I need.
My second realization has to do with confidence. Whether you know me or not, have read none of or all of my articles, I’m almost positive you can deduce that I am not the most confident person. Although I tend to be confident in most of my abilities, I have discovered that my confidence projects though all aspects of my life. What I mean by this is that even though I am confident in my ability to cook without setting the kitchen on fire, if I have an area in my life where I lack a lot of confidence, this will affect my overall confidence; therefore I may feel less confident in my ability to cook without setting the kitchen on fire. I don’t know what exactly boosted my confidence these past few months (although I feel like a large part of it had to do with writing), and I think saying that I am confident is probably a pretty big exaggeration of how I really feel, but all in all I find I just care less about the opinions of people who don’t really matter.
I guess that what I’ve really come to realize is that I am always a work in progress, and although I have had some rough times, I did manage to come out the other end. I can’t really give this a good ending because I don’t have one. I still have things that I struggle with daily, but as time goes on, I am struggling less.