Mirror, Mirror on the wall… whose the fairest of them all?

This is going to be a hard one. First of all, I know that I have sincerely been lacking in consistency. I’m well aware and I have little to no excuse to justify it. So it’s acknowledged but no it will not be addressed. Second of all, like the very first statement implied, this is going to be a hard topic to write about. Full disclosure before the content will escalate is that this is not done on the premises of drawing attention. Rather this is done in hopes that others who have felt this sort of mental captivity will be made aware continuously, that they are far from alone. And if that can help, even just a tiny fraction, then I feel there is no harm with this type of content being put out for the vast majority (assuming that people actually read this lol).

With that rather long introduction aside, let’s begin, shall we? A little context, I have always been athletically built. I have had long legs, no I am NOT tall but in terms of proportion of legs to the torso, I have long legs. Additionally, I had broader shoulders than the average Asian female and a wider waistline. Genetically, I have other genes aside from just Asian genes, so biologically it was a given that the likelihood that I would reflect the smaller genetic makeup that most Thai girls would have was extremely low. Now, most of my life I came to terms with that, I accepted it and I never let it bother me that I was bigger and heavier and so on. However, that was before I cared.

One day I decided not fitting into clothes here was no longer a process I wanted to go through with. So diet and exercising rigorously became a new chapter in my life. For the beginning part, I was doing great. I saw actual changes in my strength, in my stamina, in my sleep, and obviously in my weight. I began losing the weight off in a mannerly fashion. But that’s when the compliments began rolling in, the weight loss was dramatically obvious and the people around me noticed it and let me know how well I’ve done and how attractive I have become. This was the actual game changer. Originally, the weight loss journey was done solely so that I could feel better about myself. But that shifted drastically when I started to receive such a positive level of external validation. This was because: one I’ve never perceived myself as attractive or solely attractive and two I felt a level of acceptance that I never had before. What this did was mental, I immediately equated being thin to be pretty. And that was the biggest mistake I ever made.

I weighed 53 KGs at this point and I’m 5'3 so nothing really too crazy. Yet, when I looked at myself in the mirror, what I saw was a girl who wasn’t small enough just yet and by default not attractive enough either. This is such a controversial topic, because those who know me, know I advocate for me being representative of the mind and not physical attraction. Yet this bothered me, that I was unable to view myself as attractive because I had redefined attraction as something that was out of my reach. I didn’t understand why my waist wasn’t the same as the girls who, with little effort, had such small and beautiful bodies. I didn’t understand why my legs were bulkier, why my shoulders were wider. Not only did I not comprehend why I couldn’t look like them, but I also hated that I was unable to with all my recent efforts. So I digressed from the right way to go about the whole weight loss. I refused to eat. I’d skip meals intentionally and if I did eat, I’d run it off or force myself to throw it all up. This routine continued for around 3 months-ish…and at this point, I weighed a little less than 43 KGs. But the funniest thing was I looked absolutely horrible. My bones were sticking out in all the wrong places, I had severe internal bruising because my bones were rubbing against my skin, my knees were completely overworked, my hair started falling a lot, my face was completely sunken. These were just the physical consequences. The mental consequences were beyond the normal level of health. I was always irritable and I snapped at people consistently. I developed severe insomnia and this led to extreme levels of fatigue, dizziness, and a poor immune system. Not to mention, I lost the key characteristic that makes me the very person I am, I lost my optimism.

At first, I wasn’t going to do anything to change it because I didn’t see that there was a problem in the first place. But then, long story short, my dear friends and family put two and two together and figured out what I was doing and helped me get through it. And now, I’m here. I’ve developed a healthier relationship with food, I’m not as light as before at 54 KGs but I fit into my clothes better than ever and I’ve realized a couple of things along the way. I will never look like them. I will never be as skinny or as small. And that’s OKAY. Now, this doesn’t make me any less attractive than a person whose smaller than me. Because you’re NOT SUPPOSED to look like everyone else, you’re just supposed to look like you. Attraction isn’t as simple as just accommodating the masses. It’s so easy to fall into the scheme of comparing yourself with the majority without factoring in the underlying differences that might halt the ability to actually look like the general majority. Even then, it IS NOT a big deal to look different here and there because the right people and the right support system will not shun you for being different in any way.

The gist of this overly opinionated piece is that we’re built differently. Sometimes it will probably take us our entire lives or a large portion of it coming to terms with the fact that we’re built differently. But acceptance comes entirely from you first. You’ve got to accept that differences are a part of life and that’s never going to change and we need to drill that into our head. The way I see it is we own up to it. We own up to our fundamental differences and we find the people who accept and love us for it while not forgetting to take time and effort to care for and love ourselves too.

So take a deep breath, reflect and we’ll get through all our struggles, one day at a time.