A Post About Things I Don't Want To Share

As I sit down to write this, I know I am writing it out of necessity. I would rather be doing one hundred other things than writing this blog post. I'm not putting it off because I'm being lazy. I'm not putting it off because I'm busy. I just don't want to deal with it.

I'll start off by saying, I'm not a sunshine and butterflies person. If you think I am, then you don't know me very well. Not to say that I'm not a happy person, but I am a bit of a private person. There's a lot I don't tell people about. I don't want them to know.

I've been thinking a lot about body image lately. When I say I've been thinking, what I really mean is that I've been staring at a mirror and obsessing over what I consider flaws. I stare at my body and wonder why I don't look like a girl from the cover of a magazine. I do twenty-five leg lifts and think that afterwards I will consider myself beautiful.

I think about all of the people around me and how much skinnier, prettier, and smarter they are than I consider myself. I think of all the things I cannot be and try to figure out a way to work them into myself. I think, if only I were thinner, if only I read more, if only I worked harder, if only I didn't whine so much.

I want to be supernatural. And when I say that, I mean more than natural. I want to be one-hundred things at once.

I want to be as thin as a super model, as chic as a Parisian, as well read as a 70 year old poetry teacher who has traveled the world, as composed as an open heart surgeon. I think I've barely left room for me to be myself.

I let myself forget meals. I let myself forget hungry. I push myself to go without. I push myself to ignore my body's protest because in my mind, I'm just being a whiny little bitch.

I wish my complexion was even.

I wish I wasn't so hard on myself. I know there are things I love about me. Like my eyes. The first thing I ever loved about myself is how light blue they are. I love how pale I am, and I will defend my creamy skin until death. I love how edgy I look with my near china red lipstick, dark black hair, pale skin, blue eyes. I look like a doll or rather I have the color palette of one.

I know there are things I love about myself. It's just so hard to remember them when I stand in front of the mirror and see the things I consider flaws.

But then, I'll always see these things. I used to be a size two, I was working on a size zero, and I still saw that same spot on my stomach. I still saw myself as fat.

A year ago, I was a size 2. I was so proud of that number. Yet, I still felt compelled to push myself. I look back now and know that I wouldn't ever be thin enough to make myself happy. It's not about the numbers. It's not about how I look in a pair of skinny jeans. It's about loving me. It's about appreciating that I am not and will not ever be insect thin. No matter how hard I push myself, losing weight won't make me happy. I have to choose to be happy with myself. And that's the hardest thing of all.

I don't want to accept that I am only human. To me that is giving up. I have to be better than that and better than everything. Stronger, faster, and flawless.

But I don't. I just have to be Amanda. I just have to live and love myself.