014. Love yourself.

I know I'm not overweight, I have an average built. I'm comfortable with it, but when you have friends/family members who are much smaller than you, you become the butt of all jokes (literally). I shrugged it off in the beginning, but sometimes, it gets to you and it hurts.

I had a teacher who would tell me that I was fat at every opportunity she got. She went one better by using my name in an English exam paper. We had to write the opposite word for the underlined word in a sentence...one of the sentences was

Rowena is a thin girl.

It doesn't take rocket science to tell you what she had implied. It didn't matter if I came in first in my class, it didn't matter if I had the highest score for Maths. None of that mattered because all I was to her was that I was fat.

I was 9.


I'm also one of those unfortunate people who gain weight from vacations. I gain at least five kilogrammes every time I come home from a trip. Losing the weight isn't that difficult for me because I tend to lose them all during the fasting month. But again, when you have skinny/smaller-sized friends, standing next to them makes you feel like you're a beached whale.

After my one-month trip to America when I was 16, I gained five kilogrammes and I couldn't fit into any of my clothes. Being at an age where other people's opinions were important, I knew I needed to lose weight. So, what did I do?

I used laxatives.
I fasted a lot.
I skipped meals.
I exercised excessively.

And then I masked it by eating normally. Then, when I felt 'flabby' and guilty, I'd do it all over again. It was a beautiful cycle: eat so much, feel guilt, do shit loads to lose the weight, rinse and repeat.

I kept doing it for eight years without people knowing. It was the only thing I knew I could control, because I couldn't control other parts of my life. One day in 2011, I looked in the mirror and I could see my ribs and said "this is bad". It was the first time that I admitted to myself that I was bulimic, and that I had a problem that needed fixing. I never publicly admitted it, but at least some of you knew about it from my other blog.

I took it one day at a time, because you just don't tell yourself "snap out of it, you're beautiful" and rainbows and fireworks would magically appear. Every day you look at the mirror and tell yourself that, the mirror would reply "hahahaha nope you're not". It's the hardest part to convince yourself all these things when you don't feel like it's the truth. It was a struggle in the beginning.

After a while, I felt better and learnt to accept and love myself for the way I am. Sure, there have been times I would have a relapse, but with supportive friends and a conscience, I would make sure that I don't go back to the old me.

It took me a few years to realise that being skinny wasn't going to make me happy. Being healthy and fit was the way to go. I decided to follow an exercise regime and change my diet, and I've seen the improvements. I'm much happier now.

All I want to say to you reading this is: love yourself. Don't let anyone define your worth, you don't need that toxicity in your life. I learnt my lesson the hard way, and I suffered. I hope you're a lot smarter and wiser than I was back then. You are NOT your weight.

I'll leave you with something Miranda Hart said:

Be kind to yourself.