I was going to write a blog post titled “I am not going to be that girl.” Meaning, I looked at an old picture of myself in full disgust of what I used to weigh, what I looked like, and what I exuberated into the world. I looked gross, greasy, falling out of my clothes, and sick. I wanted to write about how I saw a picture of myself from a time when I was sitting on the couch staring at my computer, being lazy. I looked at the picture and started walking around and jogging in place to up my Fitbit steps. I did it because I didn’t want to continue being fat anymore.

Now, I’ve already written about how critical my personal inner monologue can be, so you are probably catching on to what happened there. It wasn’t until days later, probably a week after I wrote that statement, that I realized what I had done to myself. That is still me I’m talking about, right? So why wouldn’t I treat myself better?

That girl in the photo I was looking at, yes, she was heavy and she may have looked hot and uncomfortable from it being summer. Her fingers felt like sausages, and her body often felt like a beach whale in bed. When people see me, they see the fat girl, I know this. It’s fairly obvious from my experience. In the long run, though, she is still me. She is so much more than just fat: She loves people, loves animals, helping, painting, music, nature, hiking, camping, her friends, flowers, cooking, shopping, and so much more. Why punish myself with harsh words? It only reinforces that I should stay there.

I know that I am really hard on myself. I have always known this. The self-hatred runs deep in my veins, so deep that I used to hit myself with books in high school. Once, in middle school, I was running late for school. I missed the bus, and I held a butter knife to my wrist in hopes it would do something. (I couldn’t ever really get up the courage to actually cut myself—I mean, I used a butter knife.) It was the only moment in life when I actually thought dying would be better at that moment than calling my mom, who worked so far away from home, to tell her that I missed the bus to school. Maybe I missed it intentionally. I hated school. I got made fun of, a lot, only reinforcing that I, myself, am gross, fat, and ugly.

My drug of choice, and self-harm of choice, was using food. And, well, I haven’t really told a lot of people this, but picking. Picking is not something I’m ready to talk about yet, though.

Mom, if this is the first time you are reading or learning about my self-hatred at such a young age, I am sorry you have to have found out this way. You didn’t fail as a parent; I didn’t fail as a child. I just didn’t tell you. I didn’t want you to know. I didn’t want you to have to carry another burden.

Living in this kind of fear is a learned behavior. It’s learning from a young age that I am not worthy of loving myself, learning that I am fat and ugly. So, in my battle of weight loss over the years, every time I got to a point where I’ve “lost enough weight” that people would notice, I would reinforce those old and new voices that people implanted in my brain. That’s all you are ever going to be, girl, so accept it. Those inner voices again, sneaking in, seem to be a pattern. Awesome.

So it’s not that I’m not going to be that girl again… I want to learn to celebrate her and the progress she has made in and out on her journey. Learning how is one thing; doing it day after day is another. There is more to say, though at this time I am unsure how, and what the lessons are. What I do know is that my eating and food are completely separate from what is actually happening. This is the first time I’ve looked at it from this angle. This is progress; it is a good thing. It still sucks, and what is to come won’t be easy, but it will come in time. I do know, though, that I am going to be okay.