Self worth and body image

*So I have debated back and forth whether to write this post or not so here it goes :)

"You are somebody special and if someone doesn't like you....TOUGH! Because you are cool enough, smooth enough, and dog' on it you are HOT enough to be who you want to be!

You are a daughter of God!

Read this to yourself until you truly belief it!"

"Are you Anorexic?"

I can't remember the first time somebody asked me this question, but I do know I have been asked it countless times. I do remember when I first began to learn what the word meant though. I overheard my older sisters having a discussion one day it went somthing like this.

"I hate when people ask me if I am anorexic!" my older sister said 

"Ugh me too! I mean I eat! It's so annoying"  my other sister replied 

My young little self didn't quite understand what they were talking about. I didn't even know what anorexia was. All I knew was that my older sisters found it annoying or that people asking them if they were anorexic was annoying.

"Are you Anorexic?"

Flash forward to middle school. By this time I had learned all about eating disorders and what they meant. I had also learned to hate being asked if I was anorexic. You see my family gene pool tends to spit out people who are naturally thin, twigs, bean poles, sticks, however you want to say it, we tend to be on the skinny side of life.

As I sat there in front of my lunch tray a boy sat down next to me and asked " Hey are you anorexic?"

For that split second I snapped. I was so tired of having to tell people that I was not anorexic.At the time I thought it was ridiculous. I mean I was sitting at a lunch table with my tray full of food about to take a bite. Instead of angrily saying no like I usually did I punched the poor kid in the arm, and harder then I meant too. Not one of my most shining moments in life.

"Are you Anorexic?"

By high school I thought I might die if I had someone ask me that question one more time. It had also began to hurt a lot. Did I really look anorexic. Was I that skinny that I looked sickly?

"No, I'm bulimic."  I replied trying to joke off the sting of the question. 

Joking the question off didn't help. It actually made me feel sick inside. A person shouldn't joke about any kind of eating disorder. So that response quickly faded into dust after I had used it a couple of times.

Then came the question " Why do you go to the bathroom everyday after you eat lunch? Do you go and puke up what you just ate?"

Honestly the first time someone asked me this I was stunned. I was able to form some kind of reply like "No I have to actually use the bathroom." 

But the question stung.

The people asking the questions usually didn't do it nicely. To me they didn't seem like they were truly concerned about me. The way they asked questions about my weight was not in a kind gentle manner you would expect if you were truly trying to find out if someone suffered from an eating disorder.

When I was about sixteen someone posted a comment on a picture of me on Facebook. It said something like this.

"You need to start eating."

I remember looking at the computer screen and being so angry, upset, and hurt. I had thought I looked adorable in the picture but when I looked at it after I read the comment I hated it! And worse yet was that no one stood up for me in the comment section. At that time I was positive that if someone had commented on another persons photo and said something like...

"You need to stop eating!"

The comment section would have been in an uproar with people screaming out "Cyber bully" and "That's a horrible thing to say".

But my comment section was eerily quiet. I thought What if they are right? What if I am sickly skinny? Maybe I do need to eat more? And then the scariest thought of them all popped in my mind If everyone says I have an eating disorder then I probably do.

Now what people say or don't say on Facebook shouldn't be a big deal to anyone, but for me as a sixteen year old girl, it was a huge deal. When no one stood up for me, I started to wonder

I was really freaked out. I had heard so many people call me anorexic and bulimic that I started to believe they were right. How could so many people possibly be wrong? Was it possible that I was hiding a secret eating disorder even from my own self.

I had this scary thought rolling around in my head for months. No I didn't stop eating or start throwing up my food. But I was scared that somehow I was to blame for the way I looked. That I was unconsciously harming my body somehow.

Finally I spilled the beans of this very scary thought to one of my cousins, who had also always been tiny her entire life. I will never forget how relieved I was when she told me that she had felt the exact same way once upon a time in her life. But no matter how many people said she had an eating disorder it didn't make it true. 

I was utterly relieved! It seems silly to me now looking back at that time in my life Because honestly I knew deep down that I truly did not have an eating disorder no matter how many people said I did. The way I am is how God made me and it is ok to be skinny.

I still I had to deal with feeling like I was sickly skinny. And people asking me if I was anorexic. And people commenting not very nicely about my weight. I even have some of my favorite comments

"Wow it's a good thing you weren't born in the middle ages or you would be dead because of how skinny you are and you probably wouldn't have gotten married because men didn't want a wife that was stick thin" 

I had to try not to laugh when someone told me this. I am actually very glad I was not born in the middle ages but not because I think I would have died because of how skinny I am, nope I am glad because we have contacts and glasses! I would have been as blind as a bat without them :)

 Another time I was at a dance and someone said "Hey Ashley look there is the one girl in the world who is skinnier then you."

I looked over at the pretty dark haired girl. She was in fact skinnier then me and taller, but what did that matter? I had to wonder if she had dealt with the same questions I had dealt with all my life. And I wondered how she had handled them. I hope she handled them better then me.

When I was about seventeen I didn't like the way I looked. I didn't want to be so skinny. But I also didn't want to gorge myself with food to gain more weight. I knew that was not a healthy solution, but I still wanted to change. Then my sister told her children something.

"God created people in different shapes and sizes but he loves us all the same."

God had created me just the way I was and he loved me not matter what I weighed. Suddenly it didn't matter what anybody said about the way I looked because I knew God loved me for who I was and not for what I thought I should look like. I used to look at myself in the mirror and say "Ashley you are beautiful! Got it!"  Most every time when I did this I would always giggle at myself because I felt so silly.

Around that same time I was given the quote at the top of this blog post. I taped it to my mirror so I would remember that I was "HOT" enough to be who I wanted to be and the only person I wanted to be was me! I didn't want to have to change to conform with what was deemed the best by others, I just wanted to be me.

I wanted to run and dance and sometimes act a little crazy because that is what made me, me! And I loved that. Of course I sometimes still struggle with the comments that others make about my weight but I can't control what they say. But I can control what I do with what they say. 

I guess what I want people to know that read this is that no matter what you are struggling with, the way you view yourself, school, work, friends,  you've got this, because "dog on it you are cool enough, tough enough, and hot enough, to be who you want to be" and do what you want to do. So go take on the world because you are amazing!