Who’s that girl?

It is hilarious how art imitates life. We all start with a basic character. Who we are and where we came from dictate our starting point strengths and weaknesses. We then start to explore the open world, and we make decisions that dictate the character and the stats that we will have at the end of our game. We unlock achievements and miss opportunities, all hoping for the best.

There are simple things that influence us. Things like going to my dad and asking him if I am beautiful. He said no and started to laugh. Cue me crying in a therapy session over 25 years later that I never feel like the most beautiful woman in the room, that I never feel like the smartest person at the table. I recounted this story, and I could remember it so vividly even though I think I asked the question when I was 8 or 9. My therapist assured me that my father surely thought he was making a joke and if I were to bring it up, he would not remember that it happened. Would this have been the source of my low self-esteem for years? Potentially not, but it showed me that if you throw a rock in the pond, one does not know where the ripples will go.

You then add years of being told you are too skinny or that you still need to lose a few kilograms. I was laughed at for being too white, laughed at for being a late bloomer and not having big breasts, compared again and again and found wanting. I felt fat at 54 kilograms, I felt that I needed to lose some more weight and tone up and maybe then I would be enough. I am 1.70m, by the way. I was considered underweight medically, but the brain is a liar. My genes kept me skinny so, for the longest time, I could eat whatever I wanted and not gain weight, I never starved myself. I then got to the point where I started to comfort eat to the point where I went to 81.2kg. I know the exact weight because I had decided to weigh myself and start going to the gym as a New Year’s resolution. It wasn’t just the weight, I kept looking into the mirror and saw that the eyes were most definitely mine but nothing else seemed like me. It started slowly, just one kilogram here and there. Eating to hide from the anxiety, eating to feed depression. Losing bits of myself, one mouthful at a time for 7 years. Just buy bigger clothes and hide the fact that I am losing respect for myself. Binge eating is truly a trap.

Then my crisis came. Absolute panic stations. Depression, anxiety, boundless loneliness, insomnia, panic attacks. I would forget to eat, I would forget to drink water, I would forget I have a body until it hurt. I would undress, wash, and put my clothes on without really being aware of my physical being. I was just a walking tangled thought bubble. Surviving not really living. Then one day, I was just walking by the mirror, and I caught my eye. So much so that my eyes got fixed to the mirror and my body had to travel back into view. For the first time in a long time, I looked, and I saw that changes had started without me knowing. My body had changed, and I was starting to look like my old self. I was starting to shed the pounds as I was going through my thoughts, and I was shedding old beliefs. I was looking more like my old self and that made me feel good. I started a practice of looking at myself in the mirror to make sure that my mind keeps track and keeps in check with my physical body. Some things I liked right away, some things I had to accept that they are a work in progress, and I have accepted them as they are. I started to take pictures of myself. Partly because those were milestones and those were proud moments when I felt good, partly so I could monitor the progress. The funny thing is that whenever I look at them now, I never focus on the body, really. I focus on the eyes. The eyes always tell the story. They say how I was dead inside; they say how I came back to life and how I continue to become. The sparkle, the light, the inflexions. Windows to the soul and my soul had been in pain for so long and now it was reaching out for happiness.

When I first started the journey, I had seen The Call to Courage by Brene Brown and what I knew with certainty about myself was that I had always been vulnerable, I have always shown who I am. In truth, all I have ever wanted was for somebody to truly see me so, vulnerability had come so naturally. It is not an easy path, unfortunately. Because one is so vulnerable, it is so easy to get hurt when you don’t pick the people to be vulnerable with wisely. I had always been naïve about it and trusted people immediately. Judged them by my own measure. I was honest so; I assumed that everybody was honest. I tried not to hurt anybody, and I assumed that people had good intentions. I always try to see people as they can be in their best version of themselves. I treat them as if they can be that. Most people will be awfully quick to prove me wrong and that is disappointing since I ask for so little but, it is so wonderful when people do turn out to be great. For that little spark, all the rest of it is worth it.

With my new image being built and my ego still very fragile, I have started to look outwards. Observe the world and see that this template of what is loveable and what is not is skewed. There is no rhyme or reason, there is no right or wrong. There is no perfect recipe, and I can’t be fragmented constantly to please other people. I had been wrong before about so many other things and if I was wrong about them, what does that say about me? What I can remember from philosophy is that there are three people in every person, the one that you think you are, the one that other people think you are and the person you really are. Cue existential crisis.

Who am I? I knew how to be somebody’s partner but what am I by myself? What do I like? What do I want? If there is a purpose for all of this, what could it be? So, I have started to put together a spreadsheet. I am both analytical and goal-oriented so, there must be a method to the madness. One creates a spreadsheet and within catalogues assumptions, things I know I am things am not sure of and things on which I can improve. I have started looking at each one and I tried to be as honest as I can in each of them in the quest for myself.

Starting to see myself, starting to appreciate myself, starting to set small goals for myself and achieving them made me feel stronger, made me feel like I could do this like I can be all that I want to be. Boundaries had to come next. I can do anything, but I must do it in my own timeline. So, I had to start telling people what my terms and conditions were for engagement and stick by them. The first painful lesson was that some people just want to use you, and they will do anything that they can to keep you in place. I thought that I was being supported and understood by this person and then I found that I am only liked if I don’t say No. That there is no care, there is no understanding, there is only lip service to keep me saying yes. So, I had to get rid of the shame and the guilt around No being a full sentence. “I don’t want to” is a perfectly good explanation. It is all right for people to leave my life if they think that my boundaries are a problem.

The next one was harder still. Realising that people don’t think of you as much as you think they do. Not even people that say they love you and when they hurt you and you confront them, they say they hadn’t stopped to consider your feelings. I understood from it that people will do what serves them and while I thought that their concern is also about my happiness, the same way I consider how I affect others and constantly try to figure out if I am being fair, that it is not the way that everybody does it. And with that fact, I understood that the only person I owe happiness to is myself. That I am the only one that suffers the consequences of my choices so, why would I live my life to please other people if it is not the life, I envisioned for myself? I have the power to make myself happy or unhappy if I accept less than I deserve. Still work in progress on that one but I am getting better.

Next, I looked inward again and again and started questioning why I was not good enough. Why do I not feel better no matter what I do? I started to pay more attention to the things that I tell myself when I am at my lowest. You watch the ghost that keeps on yelling and the more you look at it, the more familiar it sounds. The brain tries to keep hold of it, but it is somewhat in the corner of your mind’s eye. And then one day it clicks. It is the voice of your dad. All the things that were said when he was angry, and they have all been taken over and now they are the things I say to myself to put myself down. But, still, not enough, that wouldn’t explain everything, and one keeps on searching and one keeps on drilling and thinking on it until, one day while washing my hair, the thought just surfaced: “You are never enough because you were never enough for mom” First, it comes as a surprise. What a strange idea. Where did it come from? And I repeat it in my head a few times and every single time, it rings more and more true. And then I just start to cry because it is the answer to something I have been trying to riddle for ages. It has been forever present in the back of my mind but, it has been pushed to the back again and again because it is so painful. It has guided and shaped me and now that I say it, I can be free of it. I try to think of a moment when I was told “I love you” and no matter how much I try, I can’t find any in my memory. I pay attention when I talk about my achievements, and I talk about the things that make me happy, I get nothing. Maybe an “oh, that’s good.” Or a “good for you.” It cuts deep but then after a lot of crying and depression, one accepts it. I accept that I do not need her approval to be happy. Just because she cannot participate in my joy, it does not mean there is none to be had, or there is nothing to be celebrated.

And then life brings you a Ted Talk called “The Art of Being Yourself” by Caroline McHugh and everything just starts making sense. She said that we have one true note to sing in this world and our life goal is to find that one thing that we were meant to do. You have something that nobody else has and one should not compare to others because they have things that we don’t have and that is all right. People will like you for who you are. The right people will always show up for you. The right people, the ones that count will always cheer for you. They will be part of your sorrow, and they will be part of your joy. Above all else, you are your true ride-or-die. You must be kind to yourself. Accept yourself. Forgive yourself. Love yourself from the bottom of your heart. Be honest with yourself. We are born alone, and we die alone. We only have ourselves for the entire life and we are the worst with ourselves. Knowing all this the competition is no longer on the outside. You no longer compare to others, but you compare to how you were yesterday.

I still struggle to see what I have achieved. When you are caught up in things, you can’t tell how far you’ve come, you can’t really see all the changes that have been made as they are happening. And then the universe just sends you another crisis and, in that crisis, you struggle, and you stumble and fall, and you feel distraught but, when you stop and look at things you realise that you have handled it a lot better than you would have before, that you showed up for yourself so much more than you would have ever done. And at the end of it, after not having slept for an entire night, after I had been so anxious that I felt nauseous and I had trembled for hours after I told myself that I was hopeless and things were just not getting better no matter how much I try, I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror and I thought: “Look at you! Sure, your life is an absolute dumpster fire now but, you are gorgeous! That body. That face. Tragedy becomes you. Time for a nap and then back to sorting this disaster” And that is how I know that I am strong within myself. It is not always a beeline and sometimes I will struggle but one thing is for certain: “I AM ENOUGH!.”