Anonymous

I was looking at old pictures of myself on my phone. And it kills me, how much I hated myself during my teens. She was the cutest thing ever and deserved to love herself.

I found this one from sophomore year homecoming. I remember that night so clearly. I almost didn’t go because I thought my arms looked fat in the dress. My mom had bought me the dress and I could tell she was proud of it so I wore it anyway. I spent the whole night with my jacket on. In October. In a gym with no AC. Someone asked me why I was wearing a jacket and I said I was cold and they looked at me like I was crazy.

I look at that photo now and I just see a kid. A really normal looking kid in a nice dress that her mom picked out. There is nothing wrong with her. I want to reach through the phone and shake her and say you are going to waste so many good days worrying about this.

The thing that gets me is I know exactly where it came from. I had this friend group and we were all just tearing ourselves apart constantly. Not each other, ourselves. It was like a competition to see who hated their body the most. If someone said they looked good we’d all look at them like they were being arrogant. Confidence wasn’t allowed. You had to earn your place by being the most miserable about yourself. I was really good at that game.

I’m not saying I’m fully past it. I still have days. I had one last week actually. I tried on a dress for my cousin’s wedding and I stood in the fitting room and for a second I was fifteen again. That same voice. But now it goes away faster. It used to stay for weeks.

I think about my little cousin sometimes. She’s 13 and she’s already doing the thing. Already apologizing for how she looks. Already saying she can’t eat this or that. I want to help but I also know that if someone had told me at 13 that I was fine I wouldn’t have believed them. You can’t skip it apparently. You just have to go through it and come out the other side and hope you get there before you lose too many good days.

I scrolled past a photo of me at the beach from last summer. I look happy in it. I don’t remember if I felt happy that day or if I was just performing it. I hope I was happy. I think I was.

I’m going to set that homecoming photo as my lock screen for a while. Not for any deep reason. I just think she deserves to be looked at by someone who isn’t mean to her.