elephant's graveyard: an ode to the mirror

original image from Pinterest

⊹ ˚₊ ♪ ˚₊‧꧁ 𓆩༺ 𝄞 ༻𓆪 ꧂‧₊˚♪ ₊˚⊹

   Welcome

Like most people, I think there is a time when we reflect on our growth as human beings, as well as our personhood. It takes a long time to craft the person you want to be, and I feel as if the more time I've spent outside of the environment I grew up in, the more clarity I have about who I used to be, and the kind of person I've become today. I'd like to preface that if you are someone who is sensitive to the topic of eating disorders and body-related issues, this is not the blog for you.

One of the things that took me a long time to truly understand was the simple yet profound phrase, "You cannot control others, you can only control yourself." This, paired with radical acceptance-esque therapy, has helped me cope with the hardships I've faced. It was something I had been told all the time during my upbringing, and I feel like it hadn't solidified for me until after I moved out. At most family gatherings, I would be told I look exactly like her when I was younger, and with age, I see myself growing into her features every day. I had a tumultuous relationship with my mom; she kick-started the majority of the problems that I had in life, and if it was not directly caused by her, it all tended to at the very least trace back to her. It's difficult when you grow up without a healthy maternal figure. She lost custody of me at fifteen years old, and I blamed myself for a very long time over what happened, despite being a victim of abuse. Her loss of custody was only a result of her own actions; she has covert narcissistic tendencies and a very unstable personality, and during my teenage years, I was, and still am, horrified of becoming anything like her.

I struggled with my body image for a very long time, and she instilled an eating disorder by dieting me and making vulgar comments about my appearance since I was about six years old. I was by no means a skinny kid, but I wasn't fat or unhealthy, and that's around where my problems with my body began. One of the first times I realized other girls my age didn't have a similar experience was when seven or eight years old, sitting at lunch, and I was telling my friend that I had to suck my stomach in because I was "fat." She didn't quite understand what I was saying, and told me it made no sense and was stupid, and then carried on. I remember feeling weird for the rest of the day because I didn't know why she didn't engage with the conversation I was having, which was regular to me in my conversational spheres.

Later on in middle school and early high school, my weight skyrocketed due to a mix of medications I was on, the quarantine, and a lack of activity. At this point, my mom had moved out, and I stopped living with her. I began to feel relatively content with it and tried not to think about it too much. But whenever I was around my thinner friends who would comment on how fat they thought they looked, I couldn't help but think, "god, if they think THEY'RE fat, what's wrong with me?" Their continuous comments began to reignite the disordered eating patterns I experienced, stronger than ever.

During my freshman year, disordered eating got brought up, and I remember mentioning struggling as a way to call out for help, and after class, this guy I was friends with said, "Oh my god, I would have never known you're anorexic, you're not skinny at all." Eventually, near the tail-end of high school, I was the smallest I've ever been in my life, and the sickest. I was engaging in toxic online platforms that encouraged my disorder, and my mom and grandmother were cheering me on when I had my weekly 2-hour visitations. It reached a point where it was so competitive that they suggested having weekly weigh-ins, where we would share how much we had lost.

I then entered a relationship where I was emotionally and mentally abused for about half a year, but during that time, I was isolated, and the comments on my body were non-stop. He'd call me fat and make jokes at my expense. I think when it really clicked that I wanted to end the relationship, and my relationship with my eating disorder was when we were hanging out with his friends, and he made the off-hand comment when we passed by rice cakes in the store, suggesting I should get them, and said, "anybody who looks at you can tell you're anorexic." I began my first day of recovery the day I dumped him, and as of August, I've been recovered for over two years.

The thing with eating disorders is that the voice doesn't go away after full recovery, and life events can easily trigger relapses. With the resurgence of the heroin-chic, 2000s skinny, and fatphobic lingo, it's incredibly hard to maintain recovery. When the mainstream media is bringing back the trend of being underweight, and people continue to spread the narrative that they themselves are ugly for being a certain weight, or other people are ugly for being a certain weight, this is just continuing the ripple effect. Future generations can see the way we talk about ourselves and others, just as we perceived the generations before us.

People who engage in these toxic social behaviours are not happy with themselves, and they're trying to control others because they don't know how to control how they feel about themselves. My mom was a result of an environment that failed her, and she is a self-loathing, lonely person who pushed and reinforced her issues with herself onto me. During Christmas, I came across a VHS tape of my mom at around eight years old. She always used to say she was an ugly girl, but when I was watching, it felt like I was looking directly back at myself. I cried so hard knowing that at that age, she was once small, she was once innocent, and to see how her environment warped her personhood made me feel so sick. To see that she could see herself in me constantly made so much sense.

 It took a very long time to recover, and I would not change it for the world. My body is permanently messed up, and I can only do so much to make up for the damage I've done. I wish I could've gone back in time to undo everything I did, and it makes me sad that I was told so many hurtful things and encouraged to engage in this self-harming behavior. I think about what I looked like when it all started, and I can't imagine wanting to say anything close to what my mom had said. I can't stand to think of saying anything I said to myself.

The most important thing I've needed to learn is that my body is the least interesting thing about me, and anybody who is good for me will feel the same way. The people who center their lives around thinness and maintaining unrealistic standards miss out on the beautiful moments, they miss out on enjoying meals with loved ones, they miss out on the beautiful feeling of not caring about what they look like when they're out having fun, they miss out on energy that could've been spent productively towards writing, creating, reading, loving. They miss out on curating who they want to be as PEOPLE and human beings, they miss out on meeting amazing individuals who do not care to talk about body image over and over again. You're able to think, move, play, and love life ten times harder than you could ever imagine.

This year, I finally decided to go no-contact with my mom. I could not have reached where I am without the work I put in myself, but especially my loved ones, who supported me through recovery and taught me that I'm worth so much more. I can only hope to raise a little girl someday and treat her with the adoration, love, and kindness we all deserve. Thank you :)