And it all came crashing down...

I thought I should do a more serious post right now, since that's how I'm feeling - though I do have a 'What I Bought' post coming up shortly. It might be an over share, but it's nothing that anyone should ever feel like they should hide or be ashamed of.

From an early age, my mid-teens was probably when it really worsened, I've always had nothing but contempt for my body. I could see faults with it no one else could, me being as stubborn as I am always brushed this off as someone just trying to be nice by saying it was my imagination. But I, at 16 clearly knew better. Or so I thought. I'm not sure how or even when it went from a deep self-loathing to making myself sick after meals, living off a couple of sticks of gum and whatever my parents made me eat for dinner but it was something I couldn't shake. It went from being something I did to ease my body woes to something that would just make me feel better. If I was sad, I'd make myself sick. If I was stressed or anxious, I'd make myself sick.

In the past year, I've improved remarkably, with only the support of my boyfriend but he lived two hours away so at 1am, with major research papers for university looming being completly overwhelmed and at my wits end I was alone. I had no one and I had to rely on myself. I think it was moments like that, when I felt like I had so much working against me and the temptation was almost irresistible and yet managed to talk myself out of it, that really let me know that I had, to some degree, overcame it.

It's something you never truly get over though. My sister (25) is obsessed with her weight. When I talk to her all she talks about is the weight she has lost, how attractive she is because she's thin - it seems the only way a person can have any worth in this world is to be thin, to her. I go into an immediate downward spiral whenever I talk to her. I feel different in my own skin, it's like I've gained 10kgs and everything's saggy, misshapen and wrong.

Mirrors are almost as bad. I still cry when I look into one sometimes, I can't believe that I could be THAT bad. My nose seems too wide for such small eyes. Nothing seems proportional. It's all wrong.

What prompted me to write this blog today was that for the past week I had been doing so much better than I was even before when I was doing well. I even looked in a mirror and thought 'Sure, my legs may seem a little large but I work out a lot. They're shaped and not 'fat' but healthy. I'm alright' but I hit a roadblock, and I know it's going to sound completely ridiculous. I recently bought a small sized skirt from a shop we have here in Australia called SES. The quality is poor but it's cheap enough that it doesn't phase you. Anyway, so I loved this skirt - wearing it a total of 3 times in a couple weeks. Today, however, I noticed that it was damaged. The seam that runs along the back of it was stretching and pulling - my mind rather than acknowledging most merchandise there is poorly made and shrugging it off jumped to the conclusion that if I didn't have such a fat arse this never would have happened.

Part of why I created this blog was to help me get more confidence and lose some of these insecurities so I can keep getting better - that's why this post was so important to me. It's something that's such a huge part of my life that it'd feel like I was hiding it if I didn't talk about it. I'm not ashamed, it's shown me how strong I can be and it's something I'll never apologize for. I don't know what made me like this in the first place, in a way I think I'm better off not knowing but in the long run I feel like the strength and determination it takes to work past this everyday will make me a better person, if it hasn't already. I don't know who I'd be without it, but in a way I think I prefer this version of me, even with all this and everything it made me go through.