Accepting the fact that I had lost confidence in myself was hard. After regaining it, I felt like a new person. Every day, I would look in the mirror and tell myself that I needed to change because I was not pretty enough for society. The hardest part about it was keeping it all to myself and not telling anyone for months. Having to fake a smile and pretend I was happy all the time was difficult. Not having family or friends to reassure me made it even harder to become confident in myself again.
Because I was locked in the house for months, I tried to change how I looked and how I acted. Trying to change the way my body looked and the clothes I wore led to more problems. I would shop at different stores and try to dress differently. I wanted to look like the models on the runway, but I knew that was not going to happen. Knowing that I would not look like runway models made me feel worse about myself. I knew the only way I would look like them as if I lost weight.
My weight loss started to plateau, and this ended up making my confidence drop to a very low point. I began to hurt my body by not giving it enough food and drinking an absurd amount of water. I knew deep down that trying things that were not healthy for me could cause serious health issues. Luckily, I realized that I was hurting my body and stopped before anything negative that could result from these destructive habits.
Working out helped me gain some of my confidence because I started to see changes after doing it for a while. The changes were minor, but as I continued to work out, I started to see positive progress. I began to workout every day for a long period of time. Since I was working out too much and not eating enough, I stopped seeing changes. After I saw that nothing was happening anymore, I lost the confidence that I had regained.
As time went on, I figured out how to maintain a healthy workout schedule. I am eating enough and still working out a lot. Even though I workout a lot, I try not to overdo it. I am now eating a healthy amount of food for my body. I now know how important it is to fuel my body with good food and still be able to workout.
I had to act like I was happy and everything was perfect even though it was not. As a child, I was never good at sharing my feelings and opening up to people. To this day, I still do not open up to my friends and family about how I am feeling. I thought keeping everything to myself would make things easier, but it did the opposite. Not telling people made it even harder for me to regain my confidence because I had no reassurance. I was too afraid to open up to people and tell them what was going on. I was scared to tell people because I did not think anyone would listen and understand what I was going through.
I was never myself around people because I thought they would judge me for me being me. I always thought people would stop being friends with me or that they would not talk to me because I was myself. The scariest part about all of this was acting like everything was fine, even though it was not. I pretended like I was confident and happy with myself when I was really putting on a mask to hide that I was hurting and did not love myself. The worst part is that no one noticed that I was pretending; no one noticed that I was hurting. Not having anyone to open up to made gaining my confidence back harder.
Seeing my friends who were confident in themselves was difficult because I wanted to be just like them. I wanted to have the confidence they had, but I did not, and I could not push myself to gain it. I wished that I could be as confident in my body as they were in theirs. It took time to be confident in my body, but I finally started to like how I looked. Now that I am more confident in my body, I can stop worrying about what people think of me.
As much as I wanted to love myself again, I could not; deep down, I knew I was not good enough to. I wasn’t good enough to think I was perfect or I was pretty. I had to accept the fact that I could never love myself again. It was a struggle because I thought I could only love myself if I was pretty enough. Since the beauty standards are high, I knew I could never be as pretty as other girls. Trying to love myself again was a challenge because I did not have enough self-confidence.
