Worth It.

I recently had a revelation about myself. Sometimes, I think, like a lot of women, I have days where I feel bad about myself, specifically about how I look. However, for some reason, us women, put our self worth hand in hand with our confidence about our appearance. If something doesn't fit the way it did 5 years ago, we torture ourselves in our heads and beat ourselves up to no end. The thing that I realized though was that this was affecting my relationship and probably so much more. I realized that if I was sulking in my feelings of insecurities I was convincing myself that my partner felt all the bad things I felt about myself. I would convince myself that I was completely unlovable and that my partner would naturally see all the things I was destroying myself over. Why would I completely disregard everything good I've ever felt about myself as a human because the way I look in a bathing suit? Why does that one act of trying on a swim suit completely undo the work I've done on my self worth. These are questions, I'm not sure I will ever truly be able to answer, but it's something I'm willing to explore. 

"You looks so skinny, have you been running? You look great!", a family member said to me. I was 14, just joined the tennis team and was exercising 5 days a week, 3 hours a day. I loved it. I was good at it, and it was fun. I was playing with one of my best friends, and we were making new friends. "Have you lost weight? You're so skinny!", a friend said to me while grabbing my backpack from my locker. "You're so so fit, I would kill to have your back. It's so muscular!", my cousin uttered while trying on clothes in a fitting room. All of these were welcomed compliments in my 14 year old brain, what these people did not know was that at the time, while I was exercising 3 hours a day, in the sweltering heat of the border, I was also not eating. I would not eat breakfast, I would not eat lunch and come home and eat a bowl of cereal. Occasionally, someone would notice that I skipped lunch or had nothing on my plate but I would excuse it to being so picky,that I did not care to eat the cafeteria food. I would not go so far to categorize this as an eating disorder, but it was incredibly unhealthy. But how could I stop when all I was receiving was positive feedback from peers and loved ones? After a while, like most of my "diets" go, I start to reward myself. I do not know how to reward myself with out including food in some way. To this day, if I have a great day or bad day I look to ice cream as a treat to myself, because I deserve it, right? So, as a 14 year old girl welcoming all of this positive feedback, I began to treat myself. And by "treating myself", I mean eat. Eating 3 meals, meals my peers were eating, and my family.Normal food that others around me were eating. I started to gain the weight I lost and looking like my normal self. The compliments started to dwindle and I started to think, why do we as a society consider " Have you lost weight?" a compliment? 

I've heard many a times women say, they would rather be blank, than "fat". At the time, I would of rather of been starving and unhealthy, than "fat". Why at such a young age was I willing to make myself so unhealthy to be approved by others? I look back at that time and I remember still feeling so uncomfortable in my own skin. Wearing clothes to hide my body, and slouching and straightening my naturally curly ( eventually destroying it) hair, to appear more like my peers. So, what was the point? It didn't actually make me feel better about myself. I still was crippled by my own self doubt, and here I am at 27 and still facing these issues. Don't get me wrong all teenagers go through of phases of desperately wanting to be accepted amongst their peers, but there's something about how we condition women to think about self worth. Is loosing weight an accomplishment? Let's look at it two ways : 1. Stacey looses weight, after finding out she could develop heart disease and diabetes if she doesn't. She goes on to loose 50 pounds and starts excising regularly and eats more nourishing foods that compliment her diet. 2. Marla looses 50 pounds after restricting herself of carbs and sugar. She obsesses on every bite and works out everyday thinking still, she has not met her goal weight. I bet, these women will receive compliments from outsiders not knowing the true story. They are both legitimate and worth while reasons to these women to lose weight, but the obsession, the restrictions, that's where to me it begins to border on unhealthy. 

Today, body positivity is filling our Instagrams. Pictures of girls, that in high school we would of called "chubby", the worst thing a girl could be called, is now an Instagram influencer telling young women to wear crop tops and short shorts and to not be afraid that their thighs touch. What I would give for her confidence. Even an ounce of it. I just finished a book for my book club, called The Paris Wife, there is one quote that stuck with me while thinking of this topic.

“She was also incredibly confident, with a way of moving and talking that communicated that she didn't need anyone to tell her she was beautiful or worthwhile.” - Paula McClain, The Paris Wife 

The writer describes a new character as confident and not needing anyone to tell her she is beautiful or worthwhile, as if they are one in the same. But are they? If a woman is not considered beautiful, is she then not worthwhile? And if a woman is not thin, is she not beautiful? Logic, tells us no! Of course, not. There are plenty of women who are not thin, who are beautiful. However, what do we tell ourselves? When we delete the photos our friends or partners take of us where our double chins, make the ever so friendly appearance. Where we change out of the shorts that ride up when we walk because our thighs are rubbing them together. When you skip out on an activity because it means you'll be in front of a crowd and you don't feel comfortable being the center of attention. Why? Because you don't want others to look at you. How do we escape, this toxic cycle? People say confidence is not about what others think, it is what you think of yourself. But what if you are your own biggest critic. A ruthless, unkind, critic. I can't truly say.  All I can say is it's a work in progress. I think I'll struggle with this the rest of my life. What's different now, is I've identified it. I've recognized patterns and observed my effect on others. I've realized that I've attached my self worth with how I feel about my appearance. Here are compliments to myself that have nothing to do with my appearance,that no one can take away from me. 1.) I have a beautiful big heart. I know this, I would give anything and everything for those I love. 2.) I am bright, and intelligent. I think outside of the box. No matter how I age, or how my weight fluctuates or if my health deteriorates again tomorrow nothing will take these traits away from me. The damage I do to my own self esteem will not be destroyed by the lies I tell myself. Ladies, if you can gain anything from this, if you can relate just a little, tell yourself two compliments about yourself. ( It's just two, God forbid, we allow ourselves more and get judged for being full of ourselves -- that's another post for another time) Tell yourself these compliments today, tell yourself this when you look at yourself in the mirror finding another wrinkle. If we were not meant to age, God would not of invented time. If one day we could learn to love ourselves, no one can stop an empowered female. 

As always, Thank you for reading...

I Love Myself, or Will Keep Working Until I do...

Being a woman is a series of experiences that make up an identity you eventually make for yourself. Sometimes that identity can get lost, or misinterpreted by yourself and by others. From a young age, I remember feeling as if I was not beautiful. There were not representations in the media I consumed that showed girls who looked like me. I specifically remember having a yellow blanket, I would place on my head, as a child, and wore this as a blonde wig. I remember pretending to be someone else in order to believe I was beautiful. My skin was/is dark and this seemed to elicit a response from those around me. A response, that did not go unnoticed. Often people would say, " Oh, do you know so and so, you know he's like your color?" The look on their face is one hard to describe but something similar to disgust and discomfort. I remember not responding to that look on people's faces, but obviously it effected me as I see that face vividly in my memory. In Kindergarten I remember, learning about the civil rights movement and Martin Luther King Jr., I recall thinking that he was my hero, and honestly he still is. Anyway, I came home and told my father and he responded by saying "He should not be your hero, all he did was start trouble". I must of been 5 at the time, and I was so confused. How could fighting for the rights of all people be starting trouble? I truly did not understand. I felt from that young age that people treated me differently because of my skin, and I knew it was wrong. My father's words did not, and have not ever effected my own beliefs on anything, much less equality. On top of other people's view of my skin, I was not ever a skinny girl. Like Ever. I played with the boys, because I wasn't really interested in what the girls were doing and I was pretty much as big as them, at the time. I was teased, relentlessly. One kid started calling me Medusa. My hair was big and frizzy, and my mom insisted on brushing my naturally curly hair, which fellow curly headed girls know you just can't do. I wore my mother's hand-me downs because not much fit me, and we were very poor. To be honest, I didn't even know we wore poor. My mom did her best to provide for us, I truly never felt like I went without, I just thought I was wearing those clothes because they were all that fit. 

Little Brown Girl

Wearing Hand-Me Downs...

Eventually puberty hit, and new struggles with my body came to surface. I developed young, breasts, periods the whole thing. In fact, the first year I got my period I had it for an entire year. Needless to say, I was anemic and held shame and embarrassment from it. With development of a young girls body, comes a lot of unwarranted attention from men and women. I can still feel the uneasiness from   having a grown man ogle my body from as young as 9, then the shame I felt from women looking at me in judgement for wearing shorts that were maybe "too short" for their comfort, that must of forced their disgusting husbands to stare at a 9 year child. There's a lot that's fucked up with that scenario.  In middle school, I have this distinct memory of wearing a black v-neck shirt and bending down to put something away in my backpack, and the assistant principal ( female) happened to be in the classroom. She came up to me and said she should write me up, I looked at her terrified,because I had never been written up before, and asked her why? She responded by saying "You know why, you shouldn't be wearing things like that". I felt so shameful and wanted to run and hide. I don't think I ever wore that top again. She wanted me to feel ashamed for having breasts, how dare I wear something that could be distracting to someone. This was an experience I would continue to have into adulthood. People eventually make up their own conclusions about you based on having a curvy body. Somehow, this means that you're easy, slutty, or like attention. Eventually I made an effort to hide that. From adolescence, covering my body in torn jeans and band t-shirts, to now dressing conservatively, and thoughtfully polished. I never wanted someone to look at me and peg me for whatever version they had for me. 

My Grunge Phase 

There's one big thing I've left out as well, a big, painful experience that shaped a deep wound in my human story. As a child, I was molested. Molested for years by family member(s). A difficult secret I kept to myself for years. I buried those secrets in the caves of my memory. Until, I started to feel that others, specifically other children could be effected by keeping this secret, did I reveal what happened to me. I was 19 when it finally came to light. Again, a familiar feeling of shame for other's 'ownership' of my body. Then I became angry, I was angry at the people who did this to me but also at those who created their own opinions of what happened to me. Finally, angry at all of those other people who I gave the power to shape how I viewed my own beauty and body. Physically, emotionally and mentally. 

Cut to now, here I am again, not truly in control of an outside source inflicting pain on my body. Bartholin's Cysts. It's puzzling why I'm here now, but here I am. As I write this with a word catheter in, one I've had for 4 weeks now. Uncomfortable, but you now what, no longer really ashamed. If you're reading this and thinking negative thoughts of everything I just shared, I really don't care. Your opinion probably doesn't really matter all that much to me anyway. I've gotten to a space in my life where I've accepted I will never be a size two, I will never not be "curvy" and probably will still receive opinions from others about how I should look. And to them, I will just laugh, knowing I'm fighting bigger battles than what they think, and whatever problem they have from looking at me. My skin is brown, my breasts are voluptuous and I am going through physical pain, that I can't really put into words. There it is, all on the table. Most days, I feel beautiful, especially when I take care of me. I feel beautiful when my niece runs to me and hugs onto me like she never wants to let go. I feel beautiful when I do selfless acts of kindness for others. Those are the things important to me at this point in my life. I want my niece to grow up, never having to feel shameful for looking her natural self. I can only wish that one day, we can speak of my painful experiences and how I did not let them define me. They are simply words in my story, but not the summary and definitely not the end. I am bigger than those who try to bring me down. All I wish to be, is a role model for my niece and nephew, and anyone who ever felt un-beautiful. You are, you truly are. 

Thanks for reading...