Growing up, I quickly became aware of how I looked and how I was perceived by others. My deepest wish was to be liked. I would put on different masks along the years, from the dumb blonde to the class clown, in order to be included. But it never worked. I came out as gay at the age of 13, and all of my childhood suddenly made sense. Everyone knew me for being the gay kid, but no one knew me for who I was. I was heavily bullied, both at school and on social media, for being different. I started to feel detached from reality and secured myself in a bubble. To the outside world, I looked confident and arrogant, but I was deeply insecure and depressed. I would pray and force myself to be straight, to be “normal”, to come off as if nothing could hurt me. The only thing that kept me alive throughout those years was the thought of this loneliness going away once I would leave school. There was nothing I could control, nothing I could look up to.
The only thing I could control was my weight. At 15, I started to fixate on what I believed were the unattractive areas of my body. My weight evaporated as the days went by. I was then diagnosed with depression, body dysmorphia disorder, suicidal ideation, and mental anorexia. I became so disgusted with the idea of eating that stopping felt like child’s play. I was aware that if I continued down that road, I would essentially die. It was my lucky escape. All I had to do was let myself rot in this abyss, let the darkness embrace my fragile body, and let go. I lost all sense of empathy, love, compassion, and other emotions and feelings that made me who I was. For the first time, I saw my mother cry, and I didn’t feel a thing. I had to cut myself continuously to feel something. I am still not quite sure whether this was a cry for help or a way to punish myself, or both. I still carry those wounds today. My mother had planned a trip for the two of us to Sri Lanka to celebrate my seventeenth birthday. Tests needed to be run to make sure my body could handle a flight, “what if you have a heart attack?” said my psychiatrist. For some reason, the thought of not being able to go on a plane was the wake-up call I needed. Being worlds away from my everyday life allowed me to gather myself and let go of so much pain. My weight loss stopped, but my battle against my eating disorder did not.
At 19, midway through my second university year, I attempted to put a dot at the end of my sentence. These overbearing voices in my head put so much weight on my shoulders, dragging me to the floor, that I was unable to breathe nor think. The only way out was to stop it, all together. For some reason, I woke up the next day, as if nothing had happened. I just got ready and went to school. I think about this night every December, as a sort of reminder. I am happy that my attempt failed. It made me realize that I owe it to myself to live, that I owe it to my inner child begging for a brighter future. I want to live, for him.
Still at 24, I struggle with anxiety, the after-effects of anorexia, and body dysmorphia. This disorder does not have a known cure; thus, I have to take it one day at a time. I easily get overwhelmed by how my body has been drawn along the years. Everyday feels like I am wearing a different set of lenses: some blur my vision, while some distort it. I wish to be seen as so much more than just an appearance, yet I find myself draining my energy over the way I look. I hate how hard it is to just exist, to work so hard just to feel okay, to be dependent on medication just to function. My mental illness almost killed me, but for some reason, I am still here. I don’t want to be the gatekeeper of my dreams anymore. I want to accept that I do deserve to be loved, and that I have my place in this world. One day at a time.
