Body image. Lately I feel like that's all I think about.
Growing up I was always one of the tallest kids in class. Even now I stand 5'8" while most of my friends are petite and tower between 4'10" and 5'3". A few months ago I dropped about 20 pounds due to financial hardship, but I was totally excited about my smaller frame. Then as I left my financial hardship behind, I slowly started gaining back most of the weight and was totally disappointed I couldn't remain that size. All of a sudden I was overthinking about everything I ate. Should I eat this? Should I eat less of this? Should I avoid this all-together? I was becoming that girl and driving myself nuts. Then I just stopped thinking about food and ate whatever the hell I wanted. I'm much happier now that I've regained my lost curves.
Over the weekend I was calculating my BMI for some unknown reason. When I had lost weight I was around 120 pounds. Turns out that's actually under weight for my 5'8" frame while my current 145 lb. figure is in the normal range. So now I'm happy once again with my body, but I'm nervous that those models who are taller than me and in the 120 range aren't just "naturally thin". Fashion spreads just got a lot less fun for me to look at.
Appearance-wise, caring about what I looked like was never really a big thing for me. I'm a proud carrier of curves, and I don't try and hide them. Makeup-wise I'm more of a Plain Jane, though I never leave home without lipstick like my mama.
This leads me to my next point. I've been dealing with trichotillomania for half my life. For those of you who have no idea what that is, basically it's a hair-pulling disorder. Since I was 12 I've found that I pull out my eyelashes and eyebrows till there's nothing left. Other people who have trich may pull out the hair on their head too. I'm not entirely sure why I started pulling, but I think it was just an odd coping mechanism I developed like how some bite their nails (sidebar: I did used to bite my nails up until a few years ago as well).
Walking around without eyebrows and eyelashes for the past dozen years has been a bit unnerving and makes me very self-conscious at times. It's not a common thing, and most people who have it often feel alone. If you go on Tumblr right now and search for "trichotillomania" you'll find a bunch of girls who feel helpless and annoyed that they can't make themselves just stop. I've tried to stop a lot of times ... 12 years ago, 11 years ago, 10 years ago, 9 months ago, 8 weeks ago, 7 days ago, 6 hours ago, 5 minutes ago ... but it's an ongoing battle that's difficult to combat.
What I've come to realize about my own battle with trich is stress has been a major trigger for me. Since my preteen years I've gone through a lot of stress with various family situations that have arisen and lasted all the way through my college undergrad years and even my first few post-grad years. Now that things finally seem to be working out for me, in the back of my mind I feel like something's bound to go wrong since something always has. It's like I can't accept I'm okay now so I'm feeling on edge and can only calm myself down by pulling, only that only makes me more stressed because everything's supposed to be okay and I'm still pulling. Instead of freaking myself out over what may or may not happen, I need to just live my life and find other ways to deal with my stress ... like writing!
I've never told anyone about my trich issues before mainly because I think they wouldn't understand, but the first step to recovery is admission so here I am baring my soul once again in a blog post for all the world to see. I'm 24 years old, 5'8", 145 lbs. I've had trichotillomania since I was 12, but I'm working on it one day at a time.
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