FACING THE DARKNESS

When things go wrong in someone’s life, people often say, look to the light. Focus on the positive. Redirect your energy. Meditate, workout, pray, adopt a new project- basically do anything to avoid feeling and experiencing whatever dark feelings and thoughts you may be having or have had, and move on. 

The concept of embracing positivity over negativity is taking social media by storm as well. Motivational quotes flood our newsfeeds on the daily. I am not discounting the value of positivity, but after years of trying to embrace this one-sided mantra, I realized something was not right.  

The year leading up to my 30^thbirthday, I knew I wanted to make some life changes. To the outside world, I was putting on a pretty good show. I was, for the most part, a well-adjusted, happy, successful, and CONFIDENT woman. On the inside, I was happy and successful… but very far from confident. I was insecure. Exceptionally insecure. And sometimes, especially with those close to me, I wasn’t even putting on a good act. In particular, my sister and my friends sensed and know my struggle with body image, self-confidence, and self-worth. They always tried to guide me through it, or rather, love me through it. But unfortunately, it was to no avail. And so, I thought I would try and embrace the positivity bandwagon with all my heart. I tried to start a blog on healthy eating, working out, etc. I tried to read positive things. I tried to refocus my energies into productive things. I tried, and I tried. And ultimately, I failed. 

At my very core, I continued to carry with me a feeling of unsettledness and insecurity, that I just couldn’t seem to shake. 

It wasn’t until recently, with the eve of my 31^stbirthday approaching, and having gone though a year of tremendous change, that I decided to try at it again. I knew the emotional Band-Aid of positivity wasn’t enough, and that was when I realized- the walk of truth cannot be done only in the light. Just as we learn more from failure than success, the journey to being our best self, starts with understanding who we are- most notably, in the darkness. 

I stopped being the prison guard to my own fear, and instead started opening chapters of my life that I didn’t think I could or that I should. I started, naturally, at the beginning. 

Me as a young kiddo (pre-school years)

AT THE START

People always say that they would love to go back to their childhood. I have never had a desire to return to my childhood. Never. If anything, I have blocked almost all of my school-related memories from my growing years. I have done such a good job of erasing my memories that if I didn’t have the few memories I do from elementary school, it honestly would feel like I never went to one. 

Let me take you back to my first vivid memory from my school. 

It was second grade recess and I was alone on the playground. This wasn’t abnormal, I was always alone at school. I didn’t have a single friend in school for all of elementary school… not a single one. To give you a little visual: I was overweight, I had a thick mane with a blunt haircut (very Dora-esqe), and I constantly wore bulky, square-ish clothing. I was quiet, and if I had to say so myself, pretty unremarkable. 

DORA

And so here I was one day, minding my own business on the playground and trying to find ways to entertain myself. Everyone else was off playing together. I had decided to venture over to the monkey bars to go hang around (pun intended), and there happened to be three girls from class chatting nearby. As I got closer, I overheard their conversation. Turns out, I was the main topic. I heard them calling me “ugly” and “fat” while I stood and listened in shock. That was the first time I had ever heard those words used about me. Prior to that moment, I had felt many things when it came to school. I felt alone. I felt strange and out of place. I even felt unwanted by my peers. Yet up until that point, I associated all those feelings with something that must’ve been internally wrong with me. I thought I was just weird or different. I never felt aware of how I looked or thought that I might be ugly. It was an awful self-realization for a seven-year-old to make. I cried myself to sleep so much that night. In fact, I cried myself to sleep so many nights in elementary school. So, so many nights. I am even crying while writing this. It was one of the loneliest, isolating, and honestly unhappy times of my life. 

Elementary school was the worst.

In middle school, I was somehow befriended by a girl who didn’t even speak English. To this day, I don’t remember how we communicated initially or what drew us together, but I am so incredibly thankfully for meeting Alex, because I earned a true friend for the rest of my life. That friendship finally took school from a place of utter misery to a tolerable place. I actually had someone to sit with at lunch! If I was lucky enough to share a class with her, I had someone to do homework with or pair up with during gym. The both of us even adopted a couple of other friends along the way and by the end of middle school, we even had our own little group. It was the first time, I was ever part of a group, and it felt wonderful. 

As grateful as I was for my new friendships, I still felt utterly out of place for most of my middle school life. To make matters worse, as far as I could tell…I had no amazing talent, I was not beautiful and skinny like the rest of the girls, and I wasn’t super smart (in my adult life, I realize it’s really hard to excel at school when you feel so worthless all the time). Outside of my small circle of friends, I felt truly invisible. Invisible and worthless.

By the time I reached high school, I no longer felt invisible. The combination of the onset of acne, my weight, and general accumulated social awkwardness over the years actually had me feeling quite the opposite of invisible. I felt garishly obvious like an ugly ornament on a beautiful Christmas tree. But despite feeling so unwantedly visible, I had also reached an age where I could no longer really hide who I was to the outside world. At my core, I was and am not an innately shy or quiet person. I was always outspoken with my close friends (the few I had) and my family, but now I was starting to speak up in class and in social circles I was foreign to. I would do it, mostly because I just don’t think I could control it. I wanted to discuss world history in Social Studies or share my thoughts on the reading list in English. But even when I would do it, I would never feel comfortable in my own skin and I always felt like I was on display in a cartoonish way.

This was the Spark notes version of my school experience. There were a handful of fun moments, mostly with my small group of girlfriends. But other than that, it was mostly a lonely, emotionally taxing, and I would really say, miserable experience I have been more than happy to shun from my memories.

But this is not the whole story of my childhood. I was not a miserable or unhappy kid. I would actually say, I was far from it. And that is because, after school, I would go home. 

HOME

And home was wonderful. Home was where I felt the most unconditional, beautiful love. Even if my parents worked long hours or didn’t have the most money, I never felt a lack of love. They filled my days with frequent trips to the library, home cooked meals together, teaching me things like swimming and riding a bike. They were and are wonderful parents. Given all that, I find it strange that I never shared with my parents what I was experiencing at school. To be honest, I really don’t know why. I never showed my hurt and pain in any overt ways. I guess, even from a young age, I was always trying to pretend. 

Home was also where my sister was. My best friend. My biggest light during that time. She was my confidant, playmate, and in many ways, a large part of my happiness. She was also an intuitive little girl. She is four years younger, but somehow, she had picked up on the fact that things weren’t completely right. I think she was too young to meaningfully address it, but I know I found comfort in feeling understood. I count my blessings all the time for having her in my life

Apart from my immediate family, home also had a few neighbor family friends. Friends that I could go to the park with, ride bikes, celebrate birthdays, and dance Macarena for hours at a time with during the summer. My weekends were spent with my large, extended family with dozens of aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandma’s. I was doted on by them. I was encouraged to sing, dance, speak, and just be myself. I thrived under the love I felt from all family, and looking back, and I cannot even imagine how I would have turned out without them. 

For most people, home is a very special place. But I think to me, it was extra special. Home and family were always more than just a place where the people I love, lived. Home was my safe haven. If was where I knew I could retreat to if anything was going wrong in my life. It was and is a place where I feel unjudged, and a place where I am loved and appreciated for who I am. It is where I felt most like myself, and the most whole. 

Part of my growth as an adult was learning to venture out of this safety net. I was never able to live away from home in college for more than a year. I literally failed medical school largely because I was so terribly homesick by the end of it. The first time I moved out to California, I loved it, but it also was not easy for me to be far from my family. Honestly, it probably isn’t until the past two years, that I was able to cultivate enough self-love, that I don’t need to be physically near my family to feel secure. Home will always be home, but it feels amazing to know, I can find a safe haven within myself. I am no longer reliant on my family’s love and support for my own self-worth. 

COLLEGE

It has been a long journey to get to this point, one that I think started in college. I was super excited for college. It was going to be my clean slate. And in many ways, it was. I made a fabulous set of friends through the dance group I was part of. I was making friends in my classes, walking around campus, through the honors college, and it seemed, just about everywhere. It was amazing!! I was hanging out with all different people, from all different of walks of life and backgrounds. We were laughing, joking, and bonding over so many different things. With my dance group, we had hours and hour of practice, and we had all formed a little dance family. We ate meals together, went clubbing together, performed together, and hell half the time, just chilled together. This was the first time, I think I truly started to realize that maybe I wasn’t such a weirdo. Maybe I was relatively normal, and better than normal, maybe I was likeable. I never resolved or worked on my body image issues in those years, but I was developing my personality and coming out of my shell. By the end of college, I no longer felt like an outsider among my peers, I felt like I belonged. 

Post College was also an exciting time! I thought I wanted to be a doctor. I was going to pack my bags, my new-found confidence in making friends, and whatever little I had learned in college and ship my butt to Miami for medical school. Miami was quite the experience. I made some amazing friends and had some amazing times, but also quickly realized, what a homebody I was. Medical school was tough and stressful, and I missed my place of security, home. Long days of studying coupled with being far from home also led me to severely emotionally eat. By the end of the semester, I was the heaviest I had ever been in my life.  I ultimately failed the semester by a couple of points. I returned home defeated, and in a very unhealthy place both physically and emotionally. 

It took me a month or two to get back on my game, but I came around, especially with the guidance of my parents. I ended up taking a job as a therapist until I figured out what I wanted to do, and I ended up really enjoying it. I found great joy in being able to help someone else, and I was really good at it. My patients loved me. They came to all my sessions, they actively participated, they smiled, and I smiled. This really lifted my spirits, and I decided to pursue a career in nursing. 

It was around this time in life, something else happened as well. I naturally, and without significant reason, lost quite a bit of weight. 

LOVE

All my life, I have been hyper aware of my weight and body. In fact, growing up I had tried multiple diets but always failed or bounced back. To make matters worse, my family, as lovely as they are, for the longest time had very unhealthy eating patterns that did not help. It was a no Bueno situation for as long as I can remember. And so, of course, it astonished me when all of sudden, I was losing weight without really even trying. It felt like overnight, I went from an ugly duckling to a decently good looking human being. And I wasn’t the only one to notice. 

Before the age of 22, I was never asked on a date or to a dance, I was never in a relationship, and as far as I know, I really don’t think anyone had a crush on me or liked me. But that all changed at 22. All of sudden, men were noticing me. I was being asked out all the time. I literally had no idea what to do. I had NEVER gotten any male attention. EVER. I was so taken aback, confused, ecstatic, but ultimately, in a state of disbelief. I soaked in all the attention I could get from everywhere and anywhere. It didn’t matter if the guy was not a nice guy, or someone I wasn’t particularly attracted to, or someone too young/old for me… I let them try and court me just because they wanted to. It was crazy to me that these men thought I was attractive. I didn’t believe it. I really, really didn’t believe it. This continued for a while. I would date men just because I could. Thankfully, my emotions never manifested in any type of physical way, but I did go on a lot of dinners for the hell of it. Eventually, I finally got it. That okay, maybe the outside world sees something I am not always seeing. And so, I started to date with a little more intent. 

I started to date for love (something I really honestly thought I would never have). For years, I dated. And I dated some more. I was acting on the outside, what I was feeling on the inside. I was giving all the wrong men chances. I was accepting immature behavior because I just didn’t think I deserved any better. I was having all these crazy thoughts in my head all the time: did he think my body was ugly? Would he see a picture of us together and cringe? Would he trade me in for a skinnier girl? Would he love more if I was thinner? Crazy, crazy thoughts. And as if that wasn’t crazy enough, I developed this deep shame over my past. I started thinking that if they ever saw me at my heaviest, they would think I was “gross”. Or judge me for being so glutinous, or god knows what else. I hid all my old photos of me when I was heavy on social media. I never shared them openly with anyone who didn’t already know me from that time. The irony of it all was that I was looking probably the best I had ever looked, and yet, my body image was probably the worst it had ever been. 

The truth is, you can’t seek, receive or give love when you are not whole from within. I was hoping and wishing to find this wonderful man that would make me feel beautiful. Someone that would validate that which I couldn’t see within myself. I was so misguided. That wasn’t something I needed from a man, I needed it from myself. I didn’t need a man to accept my body, I needed to accept my body. I needed to look in the mirror and see myself for me. Not a face, or a body part, but ME. 

THIS IS ME

This is me. I am not beautiful or worthy because of ANYTHING physical about me. I am beautiful and worthy because of the 1000 amazing attributes and qualities I possess internally. As for my external self, I will always aim to take care of it the best I can, and the older I get, the more I naturally want to embrace a healthier lifestyle. But I will no longer be so demeaning to my current self or my past self. For the first time in years, I am postings photos of me at my heaviest. I am letting the shame of my past leave, and freedom take its place.

Jane Fonda said life has three acts. This is the story of my first act. It is not a sad story. It is a story of vulnerability, and ultimately, power. Power over your own inner demons, and your past. 

 I faced my darkness, and I am stronger for it. I know demons can come and go, they can taunt you as they see fit, but I will not forget this walk. My light will always shine bright, and I am ready for a kick butt act two J

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

A quick shout out to the multitude of people in my life who have always SEEN me for me and loved me for me. I am so incredibly thankful and grateful for your presence in my life, and I cannot even imagine what my life would have been and how I would have turned out without your love, guidance, and support. Love each and every one of you <3 o:p="">