"Perfect"

I’ve never had problems with my weight before. It was the months before the summer of 2011, however, that really set it off. It started out with my attraction to Hollywood celebrities. I would watch movies and like the way a certain actress looked. Then, I began to notice how perfectly smooth her waist was. I started to become attracted to the sculpted shoulders, the slender arms and legs, the protruding collarbones and long neck. I stared at them with wide eyes. I would look into other actresses and see the same thing. They were different bodies, of course, but they elicited the same idea: they were beautiful.

I would look down at myself with disgust. I hated these love handles. Why were my thighs so big? Where was my butt? I kept telling myself that I had too much meat on me. I began to weigh myself everyday, a despicable 110 pounds. I would cry when it went up to 111 the next day. I was so paranoid about gaining weight that every time I would eat something I would hate myself. Surely enough that became the sole thought in my mind: I hate myself.

I tried looking for solutions and found hope in skipping meals. It came to the point that I didn’t want to eat anymore. What was the point? Food only added onto my weight. I wouldn’t listen to anybody who told me that I was skinny because in my mind, I wasn’t. I kept telling myself that they didn’t know. They didn’t see what I saw in the mirror. I would cry for perfection. I was miserable with my self-loathing. I couldn’t stand it anymore. Why couldn’t I just be perfect?

At that point, I had to do one of the hardest things I ever had to do in my entire life. I had to learn how to accept myself. I had to learn that flaws were normal and that perfection didn’t exist, only in God. By discovering myself, my true identity, I realized that I was beautiful just the way I was. I came to love my body and slowly see how blessed I was to even have one. There were millions of people in the world that were missing an arm or a leg and here I was worrying about my weight. How selfish.

Nowadays, you can see me taking good choices in the things I eat, going out for a run, and dancing in my church with the biggest smile on my face. Life is full of the choices we make. I decided not to let anorexia overtake mine and, with every chance I get, I work hard to make sure other girls make that same choice. Any girl I see that is dealing with that problem, I dispel the spirit that is overtaking them and tell them the truth.

That they are beautiful just the way they are.