From Love To Hate And Back: My Journey With My Body

First: a determined cancer patient. Then: a survivor but still just a teenager, thrust back into a harsh world that demanded perfection.

It was easy to justify losing all my hair - from a hospital bed. The wigs were kind of…fun. I had always wanted to shave my head anyway. It was almost freeing; I embraced it.

The 40-50 pounds I put on wasn’t that bad either - at the time. It was easy to excuse, I had no reason to aspire for thinness. It was just the steroids in the chemo, they told me. The pounds will fall right off after treatment, they promised. It was better to be bigger and healthy than frail and sick for treatment.

Until I got home.

Back beside my peers.

Girls with long, flowing hair and thin, tan bodies. I looked sick next to them. (The horrible irony being: I wasn’t sick anymore.)

A girl from school called me “SHREK!” in public. In front of everyone we knew, in fact. It still baffles me to think I once called her a friend.

All my treatment pride and justification went out the window. Sure, my body had performed a miracle, but that was old news. This is today. I need to be thin with long hair now.

I wanted to be wanted. I desired being desirable. Of course.

But more than that: I wanted to be safe.

I wanted people to stop looking at me like I was ‘the sick girl’, like I was dangerous somehow. Like I was an alien or a freak. I wanted to avoid any reason for anyone to yell names at me. I wanted people to stop calling me ‘beautiful’ out of pity.

My feelings toward my body turned into fear. She was the reason I could potentially get hurt and humiliated. She was the reason I was now unlovable. I didn’t trust her anymore.

That fear turned into anger. I hated her. As a matter of fact, I started to think, this is all her fault. She turned on me. She got cancer. I did my best to make that a happy experience, enlightening even. But the fact is: she tried to kill me.

Then the anger turned into disgust. I’d stand in front of my bathroom mirror looking at all the new, extra fat. My sparse, thin hair growing back in a sort of dingy grey. I cursed her, poked her, bullied her.

So I began starving her. Punishing her at the gym. If I lost my willpower and ate something forbidden, I’d shove my finger down my throat to get rid of it as quickly as possible. I needed the pounds gone. Dying of starvation felt less risky than dying of humiliation and loneliness, let alone cancer.

My goal was: to be as small as possible.

Not just to fit in, but because I wasn’t sure if I should have been allowed to survive cancer. I was no longer convinced I deserved to take up any space on this earth.

Had I not been meant to survive? Was I not supposed to be here? Just incase, the safest move would be to become so small, no one would notice me enough to call it out.

This story will finish with a Part II. Yes, I know it feels uncomfortable to sit even for a day or two with only this - that is the space I lived for years. And I’ll bet there are unhealthy habits or beliefs you’ve sat with for far too long, too.

Today’s journal prompts will be an invitation to examine the tender wounds you might hold in your own body, for your body, too.