But I'm here now and I'm struggling again.
Not necessarily with eating, but with body image and ED's hurtful words playing over and over in my brain.
At work I was feeling really confident about myself and my body (especially when my coworkers think I'm super strong!), but recently there have been some hurdles and it seems like they are coming up for a reason...to teach me to love my body as it is and to accept it without judgement.
A lesson which is hard as hell to learn.
I thought I had learned it, grasped it, and gotten used to facing it, but I guess it's an ongoing battle. Isn't everything though.
The hurdle? Other girls.
Other girls who are skinnier, fitter, nicer-looking than I am. There was one girl who started work for a couple months who was an athlete and seemed to be smaller, stronger, and in better shape than myself, so naturally ED started beating me up about it. Telling me I wasn't good enough, that I was fat and ugly. This girl was better than me.
So in order to counteract HIS nastiness, I had to come up with things I was better at than her, I worked faster and more efficiently than her, I took instruction well, I wasn't annoying, people liked me, and finally I WAS stronger (I think) than her and leaner. My legs just were thicker because I could lift more weight!
This made me feel better for the moment, but then I just felt bad because I was beating her down in order to build myself up. And that's the definition of a bully right? Even if I never said anything to her, I was bullying her on the inside.
After she left (to go be an athlete) I thought I was home free and didn't have to worry about comparing myself anymore. Well, I was wrong. Literally the next day a new girl was hired who was even worse.
She was by far smaller than I was and it made me feel fat. I hated it. I proceeded to pick her body apart just like the other girl, "okay, she has a little cellulite in certain lights" and "skinnier isn't always better, she probably can't do much because she doesn't have enough energy" and so on. I made myself feel better at the expense of finding faults in this poor girl. Again though, I never said anything out load, all of this was just running through my mind.
But still.
How can we feel good about ourselves without putting down others? Is it possible? Am I the only one doing this constantly? If I am around girls who are bigger than me in any way, I'm perfectly fine and love my body, but if there is someone who is in better shape or is skinnier, it all gets thrown out the window. I no longer am satisfied with how I look.
And so all this prompts me to wonder back to ED (just what he wants!) hoping he can help me, even though I know he can't. Getting skinnier won't allow me to feel good about anything. I've been there and been miserable. It's not worth going back to. But what do I do?
I want to be strong. Heck, I am strong. All I've ever wanted was to be strong and have "shape", but I'll never be satisfied. I pick myself apart too much. I stand in front of my mirror and search for things that are wrong. I go to the gym and take photos of myself just to examine them and end up deleting them all because they're all ugly!
What gives?
I just want to be okay with how I look. I want to be confident with myself. But I think I care more about what other people think about me and my body, and I don't like it. I want to be happy with my body for myself, not for others. And some days this is true, I can look in the mirror and like what I see, but other days, all I see is what I could be, what I'm not...