Self-love in a time of sickness
As a teen I worried about my dimpled thighs, but then I had to deal with mental and physical illness
There are so many stumbling blocks to self-love and as I’ve grown older they’ve become more complex. When I hit my teens, my body looked nothing like those in magazines and on TV. My hips, it seemed to my panicking adolescent self, were mutinous, aided by a bosom that didn’t respect my goal of never being larger than a C-cup.
I would later learn that those images represented a tiny sliver of a world full of all kinds of wonderful and differently abled bodies.
Right up to my mid-20s I agonised about what I would change about my body if I had half a chance. For a teen and a young adult, it seemed easy enough. My body could run, it could skip, it could play three kinds of sport and it could walk to and from school. My stomach remained flat.
I set random conditions for my body: “I could love you if …” It was the kind of bargaining that society teaches us from when we are very young and is usually under the banner of gratitude. In retrospect, I wish I had worn skirts even shorter than the ones I did wear (I had a fantastic collection of minis), as well as more low-cut and backless tops, and spent less time agonising about cellulite and the size of my thighs.
As I worried about tiny imperfections, a real change began. My body became sick and my mind tired. It made no sense until, much later, I was diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, depression and anxiety.
As debilitating as my mental illness was, I felt I could take it on. On many days getting out of bed was a supreme effort. While my mind fought the battle of serotonin and oxytocin, my body had new problems. Endometriosis made menstruation a monthly nightmare and introduced a different pain. My back, which used to be able to carry everything even though I