Last night, my sister and I stayed up late looking through photo albums from 5, 10, 15 years ago. At one point, we came across a photo of me from when I was fourteen, the summer before my eating disorder started.
Trigger warning: Descriptions of eating disordered behavior.
I remember how I felt when the photo was taken: disgust and loathing toward my body. But when I looked at it last night, the only thing I could think was that there was nothing about the girl in the photo that was worthless.
But back then, I felt it. Throughout my childhood and early adolescence, I suffered with body image issues. And while I could blame a lot of that on the media’s portrayal of women’s bodies, or body talk I heard from adults around me, bullying was a huge reason that I had such negative body image.
Young kids are excellent at taking what other people say and internalizing it—that’s why, in many cases, our beliefs mirror those of the people who raised us: we integrate what others say into our own ideas and beliefs. The problem with that comes when the things that people are saying are hurtful, mean and untrue. The things that people said to me, starting at a very young age, engrained themselves in my brain. When I looked at myself in the mirror, I was seeing the world through bully-colored glasses—nothing was clear. More importantly, nothing was real. The way I saw myself wasn’t how I looked…
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