@missy asked us this week to write about our favorite body part! Although I've been thinking about this subject for a few days, I've struggled to come up with one isolated part that I like best about myself. When I first realized this, I felt kind of bad, like "I'm confident, why don't I have a favorite body part?". Well, after some contemplation, I've come to realize why and why it's actually a good thing!
When I was younger, I suffered with various forms of eating disorders and at times they were pretty severe. I won't get into the gory details, but my life was shrouded in addiction to my disorder, I wouldn't attend social gatherings for fear of food being there, I was impossible to be around, and, in retrospect, I believe I suffered some heart complications from binging and purging.
Fast forward to 2008, just before I turned 19. I was in hair school, preparing to move to Austin, Texas with a childhood friend and what felt like the love of my life. Everything revolved around food and I had been in the throws of my addiction for long enough that I stopped hiding it. My friends had abandoned me, and I leaned heavily on my long distance boyfriend for support. That's when I got a phone call from him.
*ring ring*
Hello?
I can't do this anymore.
What?
You're too much. I just can't do this anymore. It's over.
*click*
Although I have never heard from him again, that day changed my life forever. I vowed the next time I fell in love, I wouldn't lose it because of an eating disorder. I would go into recovery. I would change. I'd be damned if I let another good person walk out of my life to preserve my chosen method of slowing killing myself. It was bullshit and I'd had enough.
I forced myself to eat regular meals, I stopped reading magazines and watching TV. I couldn't consume our culture of celebrity and photoshop and be okay with my changing body. That's when I got an email from @sunshine. At the time she was @alissa 's assistant and was responding to an email I had sent her weeks earlier about setting up a shoot for SG. I never responded back.
I knew I wasn't in a place to be modeling, putting myself out there like that. I watched a dream that I'd had since I was 15 slip through my fingers because of my eating disorder. I couldn't go back to the life I had, it wasn't any way to live. Getting and staying healthy was most important, but the swift kicks in the ass life gives you, holding your dream just within reach at a time you know you can't grab it, that was just too much. But I was serious about getting healthy, and although it took years, I definitely accomplished that.
So how did I ultimately end up on SG? And why don't I have a favorite body part?
Well, after hair school I moved to Chicago for a year then back to Columbus in 2009. I ended up working at a salon with @radeo and @havana and by 2011 I felt like I was in a good place mentally, and I was finally ready to shoot. I got the second chance at SG that I never thought I would. We shot my first set Chapel in the summer of 2011, as it was becoming clear my husband and I weren't working out (there's another great story) and were talking about separating. Despite everything going on in my life, I knew I was ready. I knew I loved my body, I could handle not becoming an sg, and I could handle the criticism. Although I've never personally thanked them (I'm shy when it comes to emotional things) I hope that @alissa @sunshine and @radeo read this. Thank you guys so much for the part you played in helping me accomplish my dream, for the act that made me realize I had come full circle from where I was in 2008. For showing me all my hard work paid off and for making me feel beautiful.
Still wondering why, after all I've been through, I don't have a favorite body part?
Well, when you have an eating disordered brain, you look in the mirror and see parts of yourself as separate. You see your big thighs, which look great when you see the curvaceous booty they support, but you can't see that. You see yourself like doll parts, all wrong, all separate, none of them seem to fit. Part of my recovery was realizing I'm a whole person. That my body makes sense together. That if you dissect anyone, you'll find things that are imperfect, but holistically, we all make sense, we're all beautiful. So ultimately, I guess you'd say I'm my favorite body part. I just don't think there's any better way to look at a person.
