Kalissa Ortiz
BDD
Body Dysmorphia: a disorder that causes a person to have a distorted image of their appearance.
Ever since I was in Fourth grade I started focusing on things I’ve never focused on before. Being a fourth grader someone would think that I would not have anything to worry about, that my focus should just be on being a kid. But I was never that kid, I remember standing in front of the mirror bare and naked looking at my body. I used to call myself fat and wondered how can boys even have the slightest liking towards me. In fourth grade I weighed a whopping 70 Lbs, one might think that any child at the age of 9 should not even remotely think about their weight especially at 70 Lbs. I look at pictures now and alway wondered why I had that mindset at such a young age. But that’s how it all started. Along to four years after, I still seemed to run into the same problems. I was growing into myself, I had a lot more junk to deal with, but because of this my issues didn’t seem to subside. I weighed about 115 Lbs at the age of 13 and looking back i can imagine my old self almost bawling at how much I weighed. I’ve never developed any eating disorder but now no matter how skinny or fatter I got, my body image never changed. And again cut to four years today when I’m writing this, I came to terms that this disorder was something that I obtained for years and never knew I had it. Many people will say that I’m just another girl with a self body image issue like every other millennial, well they wouldn’t be wrong. After my constant back and forth with inflicting self hatred on to myself I found myself in a position where no matter how much layers of clothing to put on (my fat suit) to help cover up everything I hated about my body wasn’t doing me any good. Also I found myself having trials where I would not care about how I looked and just wore whatever the hell I wanted. Than the next all of sudden a bomb hit me and I was back to covering up every inch I despised about my body. But slowly after years of my silent suffering I finally had a moment where I realized that if I can’t accept who I am than I have to change it, or if I don’t do anything to change myself and change my body than well I have to accept it. And of course I choose the second because I like to eat, but even though the second choice still makes me suffer from time to time I know that I still need to work on my self image. And I know essays like these are suppose to talk about what we’ve suffered and how we’ve overcome them, but I can’t seem to write a lie that I’ve overcome my struggles of Body Dysmorphia because everyday it’s a new struggle that I have to deal with that I’m slowly trying to solve. My Body Dysmorphia represents me and the community around me who also suffer from this too. I always felt so alone for a very long time, i thought i was the only one who suffering. Until i got older and found out what it was it made sense and made me realize that i wasn’t alone. All my life i have struggled with this and for a very long time i found myself just wanting to escape from my own self. This disorder has kept me from going to school sometimes because of the psychological effects it had on me. And then when finding a community that knew how i felt i didn’t hate myself as much. Occasionally it comes back with vengeance but it doesn’t seem to scare me as much.
