Category: Overexposed: A Self-Love Project.

As the days come closer, I am anxious, stressed, and going through a whirlwind of emotions.

It is December 5th, 2020. I am sitting here, writing this post with the thought in mind that in a month, I will most likely have more information about my next chapter than I do now. I might be in a place where I’m already in the beginning of changing my life around, just weeks away from making possibly the biggest change in my life thus far. I will be entering my 27th year, thinking about the year ahead and how different that will look for me further along 2021.

Hi, my name is Liz, and I’m in the process of closing this chapter of my life.

Last November, I went to my primary care doctor and asked me something I was scared of asking for a really long time: “are you interested in weight-loss surgery?” I told her I was, and I started my journey of this weight-loss program in January. Before the pandemic, I would’ve been scheduled to have this surgery back in July/August. It baffles me that my life would’ve been so different if the pandemic wasn’t a thing. Would I have met the people that I know now? Would I had been in a mentally good place? Honestly, where would I’ve been?

Fast forward to the end of 2020 and I’m nervous more than ever about this process.

This month, I start the month-long pre-op diet; for the next month prior to surgery I have to follow a strict diet in order to prepare my body for the upcoming surgery. It’s been difficult for me to grasp this feeling that my body is going to change and that the way I eat and live my life will be different. It’s been hard for me to even get ready for this diet and it’s definitely been causing me an immense amount of stress and anxiety just… thinking about my reasoning and beliefs in doing something like this.

I’m afraid of my body changing so much, my social situations even change. I’m so worried that once I get this surgery and follow through with it and start to visually look different, I will gain attention from people. I will “look good” and I will “get compliments on how great I look” and I don’t know… that leaves an awful taste in my mouth.

Do people not think I “look good” now? In this body? Weight and everything? Fat?

It used to not bother me as much in the past, but I guess as the time gets closer and the responses I’ve been getting from people around me, it has me wondering just how much I was “in love” with my body. Last year, I started this series to talk about my journey of self-acceptance and loving myself in this body. I started the Overexposed series to remind myself that I should be okay in the body that I have and that if anything, I should love the skin that I’m in, despite how much of it is there. What changed?

I don’t know. Maybe it’s just the energies around me. Maybe it’s my new expectations for myself. Maybe it’s the fact that I told myself I was so happy with my body but mistaken it for settling for it instead of improving for my own self-esteem reasons and confidence. Maybe the fact that this surgery is just around the corner has got me really in my bag about this.

Maybe it’s the fact that it’s becoming more real as the days pass. I will be saying goodbye to this body in a couple of months, watching her change and look different than it ever has before. I mean, it’s technically still my body. It’s still my skin. Are we really saying goodbye to my body? Maybe just the way it is in its current state, but it’s still me. I still come with the way I am and the things that I like and don’t like and at the end of the day, nothing is changing besides the way my body is built.

But still, it feels like I am saying goodbye to the Liz in the photos that are on my social media platforms, my Polaroid pictures, and the pictures that live inside my camera roll on my phone.

So, I guess this is a goodbye then. Goodbye to the Liz that had to find her self-worth later in life due to society’s outlook on overweight, short girls. Goodbye to the Liz that at times holds a lot of self-image issues because of old photos of her youth. Goodbye to the Liz that I’ve known in this body for the last 26 years.

But man, hello to the Liz that I’m excited to become.

Perhaps I take things way too seriously.

Perhaps I read into things way too deeply and the thoughts linger longer than what a normal person would allow. Perhaps I take words and actions and movements to the heart when really their true intentions weren’t meant to be. Perhaps my anxiety makes things worse than what they truly are, but does that still invalidate my feelings?

Hi, my name is Liz, and I’m a hypersensitive person.

There as no surprise when I first told myself this information. As a matter of fact, I actually questioned just how long would it take for me to accept the fact that I am just a sensitive person. I’ve been this way for awhile; I easily can get hurt by the way people say things, I hold onto things way longer than I should, but I never seem to have people understand this side of me. There is a way I would love for you to talk to me, but even if you can’t, please be considerate and understand when your words or actions hurt.

Perhaps this hypersensitive side of me stems from my anxiety; maybe that’s why my anxiety exists in the first place.

My social anxiety stems from being and interacting in social events and situations. Typically, on good days, I am able to handle being in social situations and I’m able to be myself as much as possible. But, if I’m feeling a little off or if I’m in a situation where I’m exposed and left for judgment, I feel like I can instantly read someone’s comments and remarks wrongly, and hence me thinking about my life choices and shit for hours on end.

Sometimes I have to tell myself that things like that are not made out of malice or with the intention of hurting me, that it’s okay to take people’s thoughts and opinions with an open mind and remember that those are thoughts and opinions of other people, not myself. It’s not easy though. You want others to see that you’re good and that you’re better and that whatever you do or make decisions for are the right ones and the smart ones and when you don’t get that, you second-guess everything. You start wondering things about yourself that you didn’t think to be true prior to hearing them from other people.

I’ve realized that no matter how confident I get or how in tune I become with my mind and my body, I feel always feel this sense of relief when someone says or mentions something positive about an aspect of my life that I’m not normally confident or happy with. My hypersensitivity will always stem from a place of me wanting approval from those around me, and as much as I try changing that, it seems like I’m back to square one. It’s not that I’m being a defeatist, it’s just the fact that I have to accept that I’m just a sensitive person and when things are said of done that hurt me, I have to personally be gentle with myself and take care of my needs and before I can move forward.

Is it weird? Yeah. Does it make me dramatic and can come off as something really annoying? Absolutely. I’ve met people like me that I’ve felt that way towards because I didn’t understand how hypersensitivity works for them. I didn’t realize that these people struggle the same way I do with things that seem minor or just not relevant in everyday conversation.

For me, I think it was hard to see the difference between what were the things that honestly hurt my feelings and need to speak about them versus me being a little sensitive to feedback and opinions of others. I always would react negatively to both and allow those judgments and opinions of others influence my self-image and how I valued myself. At this point in my life, I can’t allow other people to persuade how I view myself and how i go about treating myself. If anything, just have to be aware enough to know the fact that people’s opinions are their opinions, and they don’t mean anything malice or judgmental about it. It’s just the way of life, y’know?

So here i am, claiming my hypersensitivity. Here I am, being aware that I may take things seriously. I don’t mean to, but I will, but I will realize when I do, and I will realize when I’m not. But for the most part, I will know the difference between the two.

“You don’t know what it means to have friends because you don’t know how to be a good one, Liz. It’s why all of them left your life.”

I grew up having a ton of friends. I don’t know how I was able to have these group of friends and be able to keep them for longer periods of time, but I did. Maybe because it was just a lot easier to communicate with people that didn’t have responsibilities at the moment. I don’t know how I literally lost everyone in my life; perhaps it was because I got lost in a boy for the last decade, maybe my social anxiety just got bad; maybe I just changed as I got older and well, adult friendships are just harder to keep.

As I got older and started to find myself and who I was, I started to build friendships with people. I was starting to figure out that I was able to make friends, but I always struggled keep friendships for longer period of time. I never understood why some of the closest people in my life would disappear with absolutely no rhyme or reason, I figured it was just my lack of ability to keep friendships due to my social anxiety, but I’ve come to realize that it may be something that I’m subconsciously doing that isn’t fair nor healthy to do.

Hi, my name is Liz, and I sometimes allow my tainted judgment of people ruin the friendships I make with them.

I don’t know how of why I allow myself to think this way, but I started to realize that I was allowing my feelings and my emotions take the best of me in situations, which then lead me to feel like my friendships with people were now tainted. For example: I am learning through my best friend that even though we may disagree on how we handle things and we will argue about our thoughts and opinions in those confrontations, I shouldn’t allow the things that they can’t control to hinder how I see them or taint the friendship overall. I love my best friend, and there are amazing things about them that I never had in a best friends before, and I think because of that, it allowed me to see that perhaps I was being shitty in some of my past friendships with people and allowed my hurt, unsaid feelings to completely take over the friendship, which lead to resentment, which lead to me disappearing.

I’m tired of disappearing.

I’m tired of not speaking up when I feel like I’m hurt in a situation or like I feel like I’m not being heard, but I’m also tired of allowing every little thing get to me and taking things personally. I know that people say things out of frustration and out of anger, and I know that sometimes the way I may say things or the things that I say may come off as hurtful or defensive. We are all human, and we are all going to react the way we react. It doesn’t mean that when the confrontation is over, we don’t come back, talk things out, and carry on with the friendship. We are adults, and if the friendship is as valuable as we say it is, we will talk things out and see the positive things in said friendship.

I am learning that there are going to be things about me that my friends don’t like, but they won’t see me any differently or treat me or the friendship any differently, so why should I do that to them? It’s not fair, and it’s extremely biased to take those things about my friends and allow them to be deal-breakers when really it’s just a misunderstanding.

At the end of the day, friendships are a two-way street; you treat your friends the way they treat you. If they treat you with respect and they genuinely want the best for you and care about you, then you do the same. If they treat you like shit, you treat them like shit. IT’s simple as that. But! Don’t allow your sensitivity and clashing of personalities influence the overall goodness of a friendship. Sometimes you need that different perspective to see situations in a different light. Sometimes, you need a personality in your life so different than yours to spice things up while learning and doing things that you haven’t done before! It’s so important to have these friendships in life because they bring something exciting to the table, but also you learn how to interact and handle different people within your lifetime.

Don’t throw away your friendships when you feel attacked. Talk about it, understand it, and deal with the uncomfortable nature of these situations for the sake of the friendships.

“I’ve fallen in love with you as a human, and I’m so happy in this friendship. So please, don’t be afraid to show affection to me the way you want to.“

I grew up thinking that if I loved my friends on the same level as those who I crushed on or who I was with romantically, it wasn’t a friendship anymore. It was you, crushing on your friend, feelings attached, and can never go back to having that same “friendship innocence” that it was in the beginning. My last best friend was my first love. I fell in love with my best friend and because of mutual feelings, we could never go back to being just that. We are always now bound to being exes of a relationship; our lives as best friends didn’t exist anymore.

Hi, my name is Liz; I fall in love with my best friends & tend to fuck shit up because of it.

The more I think about my past life and the friendships I kept so close to me, I fell in love with them in ways normal friends don’t do. I love everything about them, and I try my best to nurture and comfort and be a supportive figure in their lives because I have such a deep care for them and want the absolute best for them. I’m not saying I don’t tend to my friends in the same way, but I seem to just be a little more… motherly to those who I love.

I realized just how motherly I was when my ex used to tease me for treating him like a child. Sure, he didn’t mean any harm in it in the beginning until time went on and our arguments had told me otherwise. Nowadays, I tend to hide that quality because I don’t want to come off as annoying to people.

Although I’ve been on my own and discovering my identity for the last year, I’ve realized that this quality that I’ve been shunning away is a quality that will never leave me; I will always nurture and overly care for the friendships I hold dearest and closest to my heart. I realized this when I started to make friends on my own in the duration of the past year; whether it was at work with my co-workers, friends I made in my spare time, or when I decided to become a part of the Kpop community back in June of this year.

The fact of the matter is that once I gain that connection with someone, I automatically get really protective over them and begin to worry about them in ways that may seem a little bit suffocating. I know sometimes my anxiety can be overwhelming for most, but my worry for those I love and my extreme range of emotion I have for them is just how I know to show my own love to others. Some may not agree with it and may think it’s me crossing boundaries, but I’m honestly not the only one that values platonic love ion their friendships.

My current best friend, Ro, is a person that I met through the Kpop community. We instantly connected through our love for Victon, but also just getting to know each other and we came to realize that we have insanely a lot in common. After establishing a really close friendship, I realized that Ro was the type of person that valued their friendships to the same degree I did. We knew what our boundaries were regarding our friendships; we saw our friendships having the same value as most romantic relationships, and possibly because of that, we both tend to not have that many friends that understood it. It was extremely easy to get to know Ro and express the love I have for them because they understood the level of platonic intimacy within friendships. We are able to show affection to each other without it getting too weird; we know our boundaries and we both know it’s all out of platonic love.

In other words, we tell each other “I love you” every single day. We get cute and mushy and personal with one another, and no matter what happens, we always tend to be there for each other on levels most friends I had in the past never been on. The other week, I was in a really bad depressive episode and I was on the phone with Ro. Trying to explain to them what was going on and how I was feeling, a week later they sent me a notebook and a couple of pages of self-care tips as a way to remind me that I am loved and that they are there for me. Vice versa; they went through a couple of bad times within the past couple of weeks and despite our distance, I make sure that matter where I am, I make that time to be there for their roughest days.

Being Ro’s best friend has taught me that it’s okay to have this value in friendships because they are the most important relationships we want in our lives. For me, being in a romantic relationship for the last decade has made me not want to focus this next chapter of my life on romantic relationships. I don’t want to spend my energy on just one person; I want to be able to connect with a bunch of new people and build meaningful relationships within them. I just want to be able to make friends after not being able to have and keep them for the last decade, but I do want to experience a new type of love: a platonic one. Being best friends with Ro allows me to experience what it means to have a platonic love with someone, and it’s made my friendships with them a hell of a lot stronger.

I’m happy that I was able to build a friendship with someone that values the friendship to the same level as I do. To have a friend that understands friendships in the way that you do makes this a lot more easier; it pretty much makes the boundaries for you and allows you to be your complete self around them! It’s made me realize that these friendships have so much more value to me than romantic relationships these days, and they make me the happiest I’ve been in a really long time because of it.

Here’s to platonic intimacy and telling your firneds that you lvoe them to the moon and back.

Chapter one,

I am in love with you. So fucking in love with you, that it keeps me up at night because it’s eating me up inside. I’m happy whenever I’m with you, your smile makes me feel like I’m a teenager again, your positive energy is contagious, and the way you try you say my name makes me melt to this day. I love putting my hands through your hair, skin on mine, whispers in my ear, hands on my warm body, caressing every part of it without making me feel insecure about my weight. We never are the same people in our little world. Every time I wake up next to you, sun peeking in through the wall-sized window and the cars driving throughout the busy city, I see my future with you. I see myself getting ready for work with you on mornings, I see myself making you coffee, helping you agree on your outfit for the day, getting your bag ready with your things, kissing you goodbye until we see each other later tonight. I see you continuing giving me my firsts in life; I see us traveling to California for a vacation under the palm trees, I see myself attending my closest friends’ weddings with you, slow dancing with you in hopes I will one day wear a white dress for you. I am so crazy fucking in love with you, that I know I can’t see the bad things you also make me feel. You make me feel inadequate. You make me feel like my anxiety and depression are meaningless. You make me feel like I don’t deserve anyone else– anything else– in the world but you. You make me feel anxious, scared to be myself, scared to be something you will not be in love with anymore. I am utterly in love with you, but I don’t know how to love myself, and I constantly feel like you want me to love you before I love myself. Because of that, I feel like I’m slipping, like something is coming to an end, like I can’t save this from being the most heartbreaking thing to happen to me. I am in love with you. So fucking in love with you, but I need to love myself before I kill myself.

Chapter two,

“Welcome to the CSI Bookstore; my name is Liz, how can I help you today?” is the best way I could say I’m fine without getting too deep into things. “Hi, welcome to my shitty life, can you see my liquid eyeliner trying to conceal my puffy eyes? There is also mascara to prevent me from crying but hey, when did that ever stop me?” Behind the register, wanting someone– anyone– to see me, ask me at the counter if I’m okay, to tell me everything was going to be okay. I look up to see my co-workers and I instantly smile; laughing and joking around without a care in the world and they see me. One of them is a freelance fashion stylist. One of them is a huge oldies music lover. One of them knows all the latest trends and lingo. One of them is an international student from Honduras. One of them has piercings and tattoos that tell a story. On days that are dead, we get to know each other through stories. I’m able to tell my story; a story that is still continuing but slowly, with time, coming to an end. I’m sharing this story to a bunch a strangers that only knew me for a couple of months; yet, they feel natural. They feel right. They feel like they belong here. “Hi, welcome! I’m Liz, is there anything I can help you with?” is now my default but this time, a smile, a “omg, I love your bookbag, where did you get it from?” or a “omg, you should totally go to my tattoo guy, he’s amazing” and even a “honestly, professors are just doing too much, even when I was a student here” follows along. I laugh from a coworker puts the biggest smile on my face, a joke from another makes me laugh the heartiest laugh I could possibly do. Even a boy that comes into the bookstore has caught my eye, the first one in 10 years. I feel seen. I feel wanted. I feel loved. I feel like I belong. When I leave the bookstore that Saturday afternoon to get ready for a vacation in the sunshine state in March, I wave goodbye to my coworkers, hoping the next week for them is a good one, that I will be back with Florida stories and possibly a Florida tan talking about my experience being on an airplane for the first time. I left the double doors, leaving my presence there, not knowing that I’m also leaving a chapter there; that I’m not coming back as the person I let there as.

Chapter three,

I cannot stop laughing. My laughter is echoing through my small, NYC apartment. I can’t help myself. I type in the group chat a really clever joke about a member of Victon, but someone beats me to it. Twins. I don’t remember my stomach ever feeling this hurt from laughing so much. The chat dies down and I’m able to catch my breath and reflect on how these last couple of months have been some of the best this year. “These people get me, I feel like I belong.” My phone screen lights up with a notification; “saranghae_ro: what are you doing rn? Watch party tonight?” It’s never a dull day without these people. For people I never met in person, I feel the most love for; people who understand a side of me that I hid for 2 years; 2 chapters in my life. In 2 months, I was more myself than I have been in my life. I was allowed to gush over a Kpop idol that I secretly loved for months, a group that saved my life during my grieving process, music that I am able to openly talk about with people who do the same thing. Although being in this new world brings back insecurities and worries that I accept will always follow me into new environments, I am reassured that who I am, in this moment, is perfectly fine. And because of that, I remind them how much I love them. I tell him how grateful to have them in my life. I am thankful for their presence, I am appreciative of their kind gestures, and they are just a part of my overall happiness. I even have a best friend, my first one in 10 years. They are the closest thing to a friend I had in the last two years, the last two chapters. They freakishly share similarities with me, which makes the dynamic even that more interesting. I’m not one to believe in coincidences, but my best friend was meant to cross paths with me, they were meant to be in this chapter to allow me to see that I can be someone’s closest friend, that I was worthy enough to be a friend, to someone, who saw the same value in me as I do them.

But I fear this chapter the most. As easy it was for me to get here, to feel like I belonged, and for once I am afraid that it will slip through my fingers like the memories and the people in my other chapters; the ones before these and the ones that came before. I am tired of my chapters. I am tired of never getting some sort of closure to one chapter; they are always lingering; those chapters are still being told in this one. I am scared this will be another chapter I will lose, that I will mourn, that I will talk about in my future chapters.

That I am nothing but chapters.

My progress means the world to me.

I was once in a place were every time I made progress to getting better, I fell backwards and hit the ground harder than I did before. My highs were definitely some of the greatest moments and memories of my life, but my lows were even more dangerous and vicious, and whenever I was at rock bottom, I found myself not being able to get out of them for long periods of time.

Hi, my name is Liz and this past year I’ve made tremendous progress in my mental health and self-discovery, and I will not let anyone mess it up.

The other day, I nearly had an anxiety attack because a part of my past resurfaced into my present and it nearly scared me. It wasn’t anything serious or anything alarming, but it mentally took me back to the place I once was; the very sad, confused and depressed person that nearly wanted to hurt yourself just so that someone would understand the mental health issues I was dealing with. I was in this weird space that I was trying to take care of everything and everyone else before I took care of myself, yet I was self-aware of the destructive behavior I was tolerating from both myself and those around me and my soul simply was growing tired of how I kept treating myself.

At the end of the day, I needed to learn how to be alone, learn who I was after being tied to someone else for a decade, and discover the things that bring me unconditional happiness.

When I discovered those things like having coworkers who were now my friends or communicating with new people I found interesting, I realized just how lonely I was before this chapter of my life and how much of my happiness strives from being social. I was able to build friendships that allowed me to be completely myself; I was able to share my demiromanticism with my coworkers and moots, I was able to show parts of my humor to them without feeling judged; too long didn’t read, I just felt like people are actually liking me for me, even when my anxiety sometimes tells me they don’t.

So as I was battling the past resurfacing into my present, I instantly started to cry because it was overwhelming. I was angry, I was upset, I was heartbroken, but I also felt so proud of my progress. Talking to my sibling and mother about my progress during this time, all I kept on blurring out in tears was “I am so much more happy now like I have friends now and I have people I can turn to for support like I’m doing so much better.”

And I think anyone who’s still in my life and that was around for the past version of myself can say they see the progress I’ve made.

I have three different Instagram accounts for the various sides of my creativity; I have my personal, my collection account where I make fancy edits of my collection, and a trading account where I sell and trade Kpop photocards in hopes I am able to finish my collection. In this community that I’ve been a part of for a little over a month, I’ve never felt more accepted and felt like I fit into a community as much as I do there. At first, I was anxious of allowing myself to communicate with these people just because I felt like no one would get me or understand me or whatever, but now the moots I have in that community are some of the sweetest and most endearing people I’ve ever got the pleasure in meeting online.

On the day I had this major anxiety attack, my moots in the trading community kept reaching out to me for support with their endearing words, and tons of Seungsik photos to cheer me up. After even talking to one of them about what was happening, they said that in the couple of times we’ve spoken, they learned how much of an angel I was and how I was the nicest person and that I deserved to be happy. I cried my eyes out because of the overwhelming love this community has brought me, and like even me being able to run to my friend, Anthony, and just vent everything out and just to have him listen without judgement was just incredibly refreshing.

This is the progress I don’t want to jeopardize. This is the version of myself I dreamed of being when I was younger. This is the version of me that I always wanted to perfect, even if this version of me is far from being perfect. This is the progress towards my depression and SAD that I hoped for when I started to seek therapy back in May 2018. This is the journey I’ve wanted to be on, but was too afraid to ever go on. This is my progress, and I am doing what’s right for me in this moment and in this moment it’s for me focusing on my present and my future.

Of course, I’ll always have set backs and become nostalgic and sadness will get to me. I will have moments when I’ll still cry and get overwhelmed and parts of my past will resurfaced. It’s happening as we speak since the summer has always been the roughest time for me and it has been for the last three summers. I still get very triggered like it was just yesterday, but that’s just a part of the healing process; that’s just part of the trauma I internalized for decades of my life.

But even then, I will not allow my progress to not be progress anymore. I refuse to make major setbacks to the point where my progress is overshadowed by chaos. I will not allow anything, anyone, or any part of my past, present, and potentially future fuck up the progress I am making at this exact moment. I don’t tell myself often how proud I am for just being able to do what I’m doing, but I guess I do when I admire the progress as much I as do.

I am a prime example of the saying “things do get better.”

I remember reading a book for hours on end in the sixth grade at home when I first started mindlessly plucking my eyebrows. I was only 12-years-old.

I grew up with pretty much a unibrow. I was always teased for it, and without even knowing I guess I just started plucking it with my fingernails whenever I needed to keep my hands busy. The more I plucked, the more bald patches i had with my eyebrows and the thinner they became. I even remember one of my good friends in middle school looking at me and saying “you shouldn’t pluck your eyebrows, Liz, you need to pluck the hairs that makes that unibrow.” At first, I guess that stemmed from a place of feeling like over-tweezing your eyebrows was what pretty girls did. But as I got older and thicker eyebrows were now the trend, I still found it hard to stop plucking my eyebrows. At 26, it’s at it’s worst.

Hi, my name is Liz & because of my need to control everything in my life, I pluck my hair as a defensive mechanism for my anxiety. It’s called Trichotillomania.

Trichotillomania is what people call the “hair-pulling disorder”, it’s when people pull hair off of their bodies with creates bald patches on the places where there should be hair. This hair-pulling can happen on places like your scalp, eyebrows, private area, and even your eyelashes. While there’s no concrete tracing to mental illness, Trichotillomania can coexist with many anxiety disorders.

This was something I was very ashamed of talking about when I realized it’s become more than just a problem of “over-plucking my eyebrows”. It then transferred to plucking more than my eyebrows; it was now my hair from my scalp, body hair, even eyelashes.

After speaking to my therapist about it for the first time in late 2018, I realized that it was stemming from a place of anxiety and the lack of control I had over the situations going on around that time. I tried a stress ball for some time, anything to keep my hands busy and away from my face when my anxiety was at its peak. Unfortunately, it’s a habit that never really died out, and it has its moments when it’s not that bad and when it’s at its worst.

Last month it was at its worst.

I hate having to constantly cover up the bald patches with some type of makeup powder because it’s a reminder that I have this issue. I know that this issue only resurfaces whenever I feel like I don’t have control over my life or when I’m extremely worried about something that I’m shameful for doing or not doing. Last month it was at it’s worst because leading up to my first in-person visit with my bariatrics doctor since the pandemic happened, I was incredibly disappointed that I wasn’t able to stick to the whole “diet” during the time I was at home. In hindsight, I was extremely worried that I gained a lot more weight, and I was afraid to get my first weight-in after the pandemic and to see the number raise higher than I expected it to.

So, I take it out on myself, like it’s my judgement’s twisted way of saying “you deserve to feel like this.” Hence, I practically rip hair off my body.

I’ve dealt with this internal battle for 14 years now, and it’s tiring. It’s tiring having to feel like I’m only pretty when I cover up those things. It’s tiring to not be able to go a day without applying anything over the spots and just go out the way I’d like to go out. It’s tiring that people classify me as “one of those girls” (a guy has called me that before), the ones where you can’t take to the beach or a swimming pool because you don’t know what she looks like underneath the drawn on eyebrows and eye makeup. I don’t do it because I want to, I literally have to or else my issue becomes a topic of the day.

Also, I’m aware that this hair-pulling disorder is just another way of self-harming yourself that many people don’t talk about because you’re not leaving scars on your body and you’re not trying to kill yourself. No, but you’re punishing yourself for the things that you don’t have complete control over, and isn’t that one of motives of self-harm?

I’ve alluded to this for years now on the blog, and the reason I wanted to speak about it on the blog was because I’m tired of the energy it has on me. I’m tired of silently fighting something that will always have some sort of hold on me for as long as I live, or at least as long as I allow my body to feel like I need to have control in every aspect of my life. Maybe it’ll get better as time goes, but I also know that it probably won’t, but as long as I acknowledge it and know why it happens, I could at least try to focus my hands on doing something else.

This is me diffusing the energy behind something I’ve been fighting with since forever. It’s about time we finally spoke about it publicly and speak out its existence to the world.