They Told Me So

I wrote this post last night but didn't publish it because I didn't realise this was how I felt until I wrote it. It's not necessarily how I'm feeling right now but I want to put it up regardless.  

I've been feeling really ugly this week. It's the only way to describe it. I stood in front of my bathroom mirror one morning and told myself I looked fat and orange.

Fat and Orange. 

I sure do know how to boost my own confidence. 

Today I realised it's because I feel society is now telling me I'm old, that at 25 I'm not young anymore and too old for certain things. This particularly hit me when I was in Urk over New Year, when a group of strangers told me I was too old to go into a pub. Complete bollocks of course, but it still stung. 

Am I supposed to now accept the fact that I can't feel beautiful because I'm on another side of 24? Am I supposed to accept that my body is about to fall to pieces? The thought of this hurts so much, if this is it, will my body ever look the way I've been fighting for it to look? Will I ever get to the non-existent goal I've been focusing on since I was 11? 

I secretly feel as if I have been cheated out of feeling beautiful. My eating disorder stole my teenage years from me, I remember standing in front of my mirror screaming asking myself why I was so ugly. I've always felt fat and my teenage skin has never left me. Although I've never felt "beautiful" in a conventional sense, it's been a long time since I've felt ugly. 

There are a lot of different thoughts woven into this. Sitting on the edge of a relapse after weighing myself last week, diving balls into giving up drinking and realising that I have to actually deal with my emotions instead of hiding under a blanket of dangerous and disfiguring coping mechanisms, and the all-consuming anger inside me that I can't find a reason for.  I know that my goal weight doesn't exist, I don't know what looking beautiful would be like to me, and I hated high school so wanting to relive the ages of 11 to 16 is not the top of my to-do list. I just want to finally feel thin and beautiful. 

xXx