Starting with Just One Thing
As a young kid I developed a pretty poisonous self-image and when I reached those tumultuous teen years, everything spiralled out of control. A mild dislike for my body evolved into a burning hatred for every single part of it.
The problem was only exacerbated by the arrival of my autoimmune condition, which began tearing a scarred path up my torso and left me with more reasons to criticise myself. At first the impact was gradual, I stopped leaving the house without make up on, then I threw away all my jeans because I hated my bottom half and I lived in hair extensions. Eventually, I just started avoiding the mirror wherever possible.
I would slap my make up on as quickly as possible and get out of there before I could get sucked into critiquing every inch of myself. At other times I’d do the opposite, I could spend hours just staring at my body, pulling and stretching it to create the “perfect shape”. I’d tear down every single scrap until there wasn’t anything left to
like.
Finally, in my last year of high school even going to the hairdressers became almost unbearable, thanks to the solid thirty minutes spent forcibly looking at my own reflection. I realised that for my own sanity I had at least one thing I liked about myself. The self-loathing was eating away at me and I knew I’d never break the habit if I didn’t start soon.
So I sat myself in front of a full-length mirror and looked. I told myself that if I could pick just one thing then that was good enough. After struggling to look anywhere but my face, I settled on my eyes.
I stared at them for a long time until I found myself describing them out loud. At first I grappled with speaking about myself positively but in the end I was able to get creative and even complimentary.
My eyes are a perfect clash of my parent’s eye colour. My dad’s are ice blue and my mum has dark brown eyes. I ended up with green, but if you look closely you can see my mum’s hazel inserts around my pupils and the murky blue of my dad’s lurking around the edges.
I used every ounce of my language skills to describe everything I could possibly like about my eyes. I felt ridiculous but it did give me a foundation to build on. Every time I started down that dark path of self-hatred, I plopped myself in front of a mirror and looked at my eyes. Even if it was just for a few seconds, it helped calm my thoughts and drain away the dark ones.
Focusing on the infinitesimal details
of my eyes allowed me to see myself objectively and not from the viewpoint of my fragile self-esteem. By beginning with just one thing I was able to start tearing up the deep roots my self-loathing had dug into my brain.
I’m still not a perfectly confident human being, I have hang-ups and bad days but I’m trying to focus on choosing just one thing at a time to readdress. After my eyes, I chose my hair, then it was getting my butt back in some jeans, then it was wearing tighter clothing and after that it was embracing the crop top.
Every single thing has helped me to grow and slowly let go of the hang-ups I’ve been collecting since I was a teenager. Over the Summer I stopped wearing tights in the boiling heat for the first time since I was a preteen and I pretty much gave up on wearing make up, but I have a few more I’d still like to do away with.
The habits we cement as young adults can stay with us for life but it only takes choosing one thing to love to start breaking down those old patterns. I for one am challenging on hang up a time whenever old habits start to creep in.
What could your just one thing be?