Down to all seriousness. For some time in the past two years, I had been extremely self conscious. Every stare was a glare. Every sigh was that they hated me, I annoyed them, I was ugly. Being the daughter of the psychologist I was raised by, I knew this was wrong. But everything that someone did hit me like a truck. I was sure I was going crazy. I was overweight, while every other girl was so much smaller than me. And then health class came along. Seventh grade. You would think that all I learned about eating healthy and how bad anorexia was would snap me out of the thoughts of weight loss. But it only made me long for self control. And then we learned about counting calories. I took this in, all of it. And then it began.
I started not eating breakfast, only eating about half of my lunch every day. Dinner was light. No snack. No dessert. I was only eating about 1000 calories each day. To me it didn’t seem it was working. I thought about becoming anorexic. I really did. My mother was constantly nagging me to eat more. But I didn’t.
Then the extra self-loathing began with clothes. I always didn’t look good, no matter how good I looked. It doesn’t make sense to you, but it did to me. When I looked in that mirror, I saw an ugly person. I hated it, I hated me. I didn’t want to hurt anyone else. But I was hurting my mom way more than I imagined.
Makeup was crucial to me. I wore lots of eyeliner, lots of concealer to hide my imperfections. I still believed I was ugly.
My only escape from my miserable life were books. I hid myself inside of them, not daring to come back into the real world. My friends had no idea what was going on, for I barely spoke.
Hunger was just a fact of life by then. It was almost a comfort. It drew me away from the cruel unreality that my life had become.
I had dropped nearly thirty pounds by the time I was done. I went from 123 pounds to about 93. And then began the cold remarks, yet again. I was now too skinny. Anorexic, they said, though I really wasn’t. They had no clue as to how much it hurt me. Then I decided that I would never be able to please these people. I ate when I needed to eat. I treated myself to whatever I needed. I was looking to myself instead of others for what I wanted. I saw my body as fit.
But still was the issue of how I looked. I had dark circles under my eyes, my eyebrows were too thick. I never decided to myself that I looked good. I wore way too much makeup. And I had to be constantly checking it in the mirror. I wished for male attention. And then it came, with the casual use of the word beautiful. And it snapped me out of what crazed image of myself that I had. He didn’t love me anymore, but it was enough for me to realize that what I was doing was not okay. I found a way to be more natural in my makeup. And I don’t remember when it was, and generally I don’t care, but I decided what I looked like shouldn’t matter. Not many boys like me (that I know of), but that was a great reason for it not to matter. I’m myself, even when I am around someone I like. If they decide to be attracted to me, well then great. Fantastic. But I’m not trying to get them to like me. And, actually, so far many have. And that is my reason that I no longer care. I am my geeky self no matter what, for life isn’t really life without yourself in it. Your real self. And maybe you have stopped reading, and maybe not many people are reading this, but I would like you to know, that sharing this with anyone means so much. And so begins my journey as a new self. If you would like, you can tag along and listen to what I have to say, for next year, my first year of high school, as a cheerleader too, will be documented on my tumblr. But if not, oh well. I’m gonna do it anyway.
