dumplingca
07-25-2004, 05:10 PM
Nobody ever told me that life could feel this miserable. With my body crawled up, hands pressed into my stomach, crying because I felt truly hopeless, I realized that this life...is not the life I want to live.
On the surface, I am healthy. I am of normal weight, have a beauitful family, go to a great university with a great GPA, and have supportive friends. I laugh often, and come off as confident.
But I know deep inside, all of my accomplishments are a mask to cover up how much of a failiure I think I am. Always striving to be better, I truly believe that if I don't, people wouldn't accept me, wouldn't love me, and I would be left all alone. Since my body is the most immediate and easy target for my low self-esteem, I don't live one day of my life without hating it, judging it, disrespecting it, and abusing it.
I convince myself that if I had the perfect body, my life would too become perfect. My mother who passed away when I was eight would return to me. My father who always said I was too fat and nobody would ever want me would finally approve me. Society would accept me as I become thinner and men would find me physically attractive enough that they don't find my internal ugliness.
I learned at the tender age of eight, the year my father put me on my first diet, that my body cannot be trusted. I was to live my whole live eating with boudaries, rules, regulations that reinforce my own belief - I wasn't good enough and I need to be controlled. Life was never going to be the same. Life would become an endless chase for that perfect body, for that safe assumption that I could become happy when I am skinny.
Now I realized that I am living my life according to someone else's rules. I will never become happy according to a number on the scale. Life is not going to become any sweeter just because I am lighter.
On the surface, I am healthy. I am of normal weight, have a beauitful family, go to a great university with a great GPA, and have supportive friends. I laugh often, and come off as confident.
But I know deep inside, all of my accomplishments are a mask to cover up how much of a failiure I think I am. Always striving to be better, I truly believe that if I don't, people wouldn't accept me, wouldn't love me, and I would be left all alone. Since my body is the most immediate and easy target for my low self-esteem, I don't live one day of my life without hating it, judging it, disrespecting it, and abusing it.
I convince myself that if I had the perfect body, my life would too become perfect. My mother who passed away when I was eight would return to me. My father who always said I was too fat and nobody would ever want me would finally approve me. Society would accept me as I become thinner and men would find me physically attractive enough that they don't find my internal ugliness.
I learned at the tender age of eight, the year my father put me on my first diet, that my body cannot be trusted. I was to live my whole live eating with boudaries, rules, regulations that reinforce my own belief - I wasn't good enough and I need to be controlled. Life was never going to be the same. Life would become an endless chase for that perfect body, for that safe assumption that I could become happy when I am skinny.
Now I realized that I am living my life according to someone else's rules. I will never become happy according to a number on the scale. Life is not going to become any sweeter just because I am lighter.