Without Restraint and Without Shame
I looked at my reflection in the mirror but I didn’t turn away after a few seconds like I would’ve done a while back. I looked at my body and I saw the beauty of it. I almost wept for joy. I never thought this day would come.
I remember when I would look at Mariam and wish I had a body as curvaceous as hers; when Peace would see me twirling in front of the mirror and say, laughing, “what are you looking at? You are just flat.”
Puberty started for me the same age as everyone else; maybe even earlier because I saw my first period when I was eleven years old. My secondary sexual characteristics started developing the same time as most of my classmates back then but when I clocked fifteen, and I saw that I did not have the “perfect” shape yet unlike other girls around me, I panicked. I began to think I had a defect even though I knew that not all girls were bound to have the same body shape.
The negative comments I got from people around me didn't help one bit. Due to this, I started searching online for things I could do or foods I could eat to boost my oestrogen level because I thought it was very low. I ate and did most of these things but nothing changed. The seed of hate for my body had been sown already when I let people’s negative comments about my body get to me. That seed started germinating eventually and as a result, I began to be repulsed by my own body.
I made sure to never look at myself in a mirror if my clothes weren’t on; I also avoided fitted clothes a lot because wearing them made me feel ugly. Depression set in because of that. I wished I could detach myself from my body every time. I hated my body so much.
I thought about cosmetic surgery and taking steroids even though I knew they were out of my reach as I was born in a middle class home. I also knew they had side-effects but I just wanted to feel confident in my body. I badly wanted that.
I began to seek validation from people too, mostly from the opposite sex and it aggravated my depression. I couldn’t tell myself I was beautiful and believe it. I only believed it when someone else told me. I knew it was unhealthy, depending on people for my self-esteem, but that was the only way I could be convinced. I also tried to get my hands on foods that were high in cholesterol as much as possible so I would add weight; so people would stop mentioning how skinny I was.
The depression spread like an infection. My emotions were a rollercoaster. I scrolled and scrolled through social media looking for answers, feeding on the jealousy I felt when I saw females with the generally accepted body shape, obsessively looking for females with my body type so I would not feel alone… It kept destroying me until I realised something after a series of events on social media: my body is mine and if I don’t love it without restraint and without shame, no one will.
I came to this realisation after a celebrity on Instagram had a breakdown because she kept getting trolled by people for having a different body size. She had posted a lot of nude and seminude pictures of herself, trying to prove to everyone that she loved her body despite what they said but from the comments on her posts, people didn’t care if she loved her body or not. They just wanted to criticise. I felt very sorry for her because I saw the insecurity in her “body positivity”. That was when I made the decision to love my body for me and no one else. I decided not to wait for validations or acceptance before I loved my body. I decided to love my body for me.
It has been a long journey, one with ups and downs; but everyday I look at myself and see how beautiful I am, the joy I feel fills me with hope. And that’s all that matters; everything else is noise.
Jacintha Nosazeogie is a 200 level Physiotherapy student at the University of Ibadan. She loves to write about real world issues. From time to time, she escapes from reality by reading books or watching movies.
