Afraid Of Mirrors by Anonymous

Afraid Of Mirrors BY ANONYMOUS

While I have gotten over many of my insecurities, most often, I am not happy with what I see when I look at myself in the mirror. It weighs heavy on my mind, constantly. It makes me angry, continuously. I have accepted the person I am, and I have even learned to love myself in most ways – apart from this way. I have learned that there is no such thing as perfection; frankly, I do not like to use that word anymore. I accept that I am flawed, and I find inner peace in working every day towards being a better person. Despite all that, I still have not learned to be kinder to myself when it comes to the way my body looks. Most of the time, I only notice the flaws, the things I wish looked different, and better.

During my early formative years, my worth as a daughter, a sister, and a person, had nothing to do with the way I looked. My parents had me when I was nineteen and family time was spent doing youthful and energetic activities. Our weekends were filled with a myriad of things that were active and fun. My body was an instrument for adventure and for success; it allowed me to play, to learn, and to create. In addition to being young parents, mom and dad are both academics, doctors to be precise. They never placed much value in beauty. In my house, what mattered most was the amount of effort that was put towards accomplishing things. Hard work and discipline were highly regarded and demanded. Any praise that I received had to do with academic achievements, or with accomplishments in extra-curricular activities –such as sports and singing. The phrase “I cannot do this” was verboten in my house, having that kind of mentality was simply not allowed. The one or two times I said something like this to my father, he had such a strong reaction to it that I never dared saying it out loud a third time. Over time, I would not even think it to myself. Raised in this way, with these values, I wonder why I have obsessed over the way my body looks all these years.

When I was a young girl, my parents told me that I was talented and hard-working, but I do not remember them telling me that I was nice to look at. For a long time, I thought that I was ugly. I simply assumed that, were it not the case, my parents would have told me that I was good-looking. When I was about eight years old, I was playing during recess at school, when a boy told me that I was pretty. I cannot recall his exact words; what I do remember perfectly is the confusion caused by hearing them. I thought about it for the rest of the day, and it was the first thing I said to my mother when I got home. I began my story by saying “Mom, something very strange happened at school today…” When I told her what the boy had said to me, she asked why I talked about it as though it was a weird thing. I answered that it was strange to be told I was pretty because I was not. I can remember the look in her eyes at hearing this, she was shocked. She asked me why I thought I was not pretty, my answer was short and earnest, “Because neither you nor dad have ever told me that I am pretty.” She put a hand to her chest and took my hand with the other. She told me that I was beautiful, and she tried to make sure that I believed it. I wish I could have.

I have a younger brother; we are one year and eleven days apart in age. Except for a few years of chaotic teenage discord, during the years that we lived under the same roof, we got along very well. In the ways in which I was too much of a girl for our interests to align, and vice versa, I had my first cousin Dianita to fulfill my unmet needs in companionship and play. Dianita and I were born

three months apart, and our childhood homes were about four blocks away from each other. Growing up, we spent a lot of time together and, for many years now, we call each other sister. Whereas my mother was a hippie-academic, the jeans-t-shirt-and-converse-wearing type, my aunt – Dianita’s mother – looked like she was heading to a formal function whenever she left the house. My mother has never worn make-up and hardly ever jewelry; my aunt still fixes herself everyday as if to model for a fashion photoshoot. Not too surprisingly, while I attended singing, piano, and karate lessons after school and on the weekends, Dianita was busy with beauty pageants – which she sometimes won. Naturally, my aunt constantly talked about how pretty Dianita was. Over time, without even realizing it, I had categorized us both as Dianita The Pretty Cousinand me,The Artistic Cousin. I felt okay about it, it was simply the way things were.

My body took some time to develop into womanhood; conversely, Dianita stopped looking like a girl earlier than I did. She got her period at least one year before I did, and her breasts grew well before mine. She looked like a teenager while I still looked like a girl. I was never jealous of her, but I did want to look more like her – as soon as possible. It was not just her appearance I aspired to; it was also my mother’s. At the time, at around thirty-three, mom was strikingly beautiful: with lovely hair and skin, and the kind of athletic body that no one could call unattractive. She had a stunning hourglass figure with gorgeous, toned legs. I was flat-chested and had skinny legs that people made fun of. By the time I was fourteen, I was already dieting. In Colombian culture, a girl turning fifteen is a big deal. Traditionally, the parents of the girl throw a big party for her, to celebrate her entering womanhood. For my party –which had a Caribbean theme –I planned to wear a dress that exposed my belly. I got it into my head that I needed to have a defined abdomen to wear it. This decision led me to cut out carbohydrates from my diet and to exercise at the gym seven days per week. Fifteen years of dieting later, when I was twenty-nine, I noticed a dramatic change in my metabolism. I was exercising and eating just as always, but I was putting on weight. This was salt on an old, but still open wound. How could it be that I was denying myself the pleasure of eating, and still I could not be the kind of thin I wanted to be? I briefly contemplated restricting my diet even more, but the simple thought of living this way immediately exhausted me. Considering that I liked enough things about myself, things that had nothing to do with my appearance, I realized I did not want to starve myself any longer. Easier said than done, for eating more would undeniably mean going up a couple of dress sizes. I struggled with indecision for two years. Then, one day, I had had enough. For too long I had deprived myself of eating what I wanted, for too long I would not even allow myself to eat until I was full. After living in this constant state of hunger, I snapped and said to myself: Fuck it, enough is enough.

What has happened in the last two years, since I gave myself permission to eat more – and more of the things that I like – is that I still struggle with this decision. There is the occasional day of respite from the mental and emotional negotiation but, overall, this topic occupies my mind continually. This is exacerbated by the fact that as a professional dancer – full-time from years eighteen to thirty and now part time – I constantly stand in front of mirrors, and wrestle with the weight of it all. In theory, I understand that I do not need to be lean or beautiful –the way I wished I was –to do my craft well, or to achieve the other things I want in life. Still, seeing my reflection is something I need to prepare myself for. I must first breathe deeply and brace myself for what I will be confronted with.

Why? After so many years of the mental and emotional burden, why can I not see my body with more kindness? My body –my one and only body –is wonderful. It allows me to dance, to sing, to learn, to love, and to live fully. I know that. If only I could also see it.