I can’t remember the last time I truly felt comfortable in my body. I’ve always had a lot of issues with how I looked and how my body was. I was very skinny in my early years in elementary school where I did Tae Kwon do which had a lot of conditioning and exercise that kept me “in shape”. After that, middle school and quarantine were spent sitting in a chair for what felt like days on end just eating and eating. I never even realized it until someone mentioned it offhandedly and I looked down and didn’t like what I saw. One of the quotes that really stood out to me from Roxane Gay’s “My Body is A Cage of my Own Making” is when they say “Feeling comfortable in my body isn’t entirely about beauty standards. It’s about how I feel in my skin and bones”. After gaining a lot of weight into high school, my body ached. Everything was slower, I felt like my feet were so heavy and every step I took hit the floor harder than I wanted it to. With activities, I started to feel better about myself and my body, losing the weight that I had put on before but injuries riddled my life until I was practically forced to quit. See, I’m hyper flexible but what they don’t tell you about hyper flexibility is that it just means you can be comfortable in a position that puts your body at risk of injuring itself. At every moment, I was either not happy with how my skin folded over itself and how I looked in the mirror or not happy that I couldn’t do any more because of my injuries. At one of the meets, I was slammed so hard on the ground that my lower back muscles spasmed and I was couch ridden for two days. It was getting harder and harder to become comfortable in my own skin. I never even realized that at the end of the day, as hard as I worked and worked and overworked my body into the ground, I was never going to be happy.
I trapped myself in this cycle of hating my body so I try and work until I’m finally happy until my body gave up on me and then I hated it again. I like to think that I’ve finally learned how to accept and love my body but to be honest, It’s still a process for me. I still wake up and look in the mirror to see my progress and I still always skip breakfast, even if it’s bad for me. Until I finally free myself and love my body the way that it is, I will always look in that mirror hoping for this perfect body that I don’t even know if I can attain. Day by day, I will work towards loving myself and my body but until then, breakfast is overrated and it being the most important meal of the day is a lie.
Unruly Bodies 
No I completely understand this! In the middle of quarantine I also found myself in a body that felt completely foreign to me. My family kept commenting on it and eventually I found myself in a very strict fasting diet while still in the middle of the pandemic. I was miserable and still laying around all day feeling sorry for myself. I eventually gave it up and I’m still trying to get over the negative self image of myself I gained during quarantine.
But it was rough. We were left alone with nothing but our thoughts for a year and a half. That changed us I feel.
I relate to this post so much. It was also quarantine for Me where I got my largest size I’ve ever been and I didn’t even notice at the time until like you said the people around me, started pointing it out and they made me feel uncomfortable and ashamed that I had gained all this week so I sort of just cut everybody off around me and just decided to stick to myself and this was the time where I was just sad and lonely, and even then I didn’t really do anything about my weight. I kind of just continue to eat. It wasn’t until my senior year of high school that I decided I was through with being like this that I needed to change so I started working out. I started changing what I would eat and I was barely eating. But then again nobody really knew what I was struggling with internally so I had to deal with everything on my own and it’s just like that itself was a struggle. But now I’ve gotten to the point where I just don’t care anymore I like the way my body looks, and I’m not gonna let other peoples opinion on how I look affect me anymore because it put me in a dark place in the past that I don’t plan on going back to.
I love the way you end this off becuz FACTS! I hate that people have so much more to say about your body than you do. But also I hate when i agree with them. I felt this more than I thought I would especially the part about being trapped in a cycle that seems like a never ending loop.
I relate to this a lot. In high school and most of my early education, I was very skinny and frail and didn’t have much muscle on my body. In high school I made the conscious effort to try and get into shape and get stronger. I started that in sophomore year but fell in and out of motivation to actually do it, but I wanted to but couldn’t find it within myself to actually do it. It wasn’t until college that I actually wanted to change the person I was into someone who I’d be proud of, and even though it hasn’t been easy, I’ve been consistent in the gym, which has been building my confidence within myself. But I feel that this desire might turn ugly if I solely base my confidence on how I look, its a start but no where I want to end off.
I completely relate to your quarantine experience. A lot of the time it seemed like all we could do was sit at home and eat. I also didn’t really notice how my body had changed until after I was able to start going out in public again.
For me, it’s been since about sixth grade that I haven’t felt comfortable in my body and tried to hide it as best as I could. That being said, I’ve recently been putting a lot of effort into trying to build my body into something that I do feel comfortable in (mostly in a gender-affirming way but also in a more general sense) and I understand that, even if I do hit my goals, that won’t necessarily mean that I’ll instantly become comfortable in my own skin. I hope to one day achieve both.
I find it funny how people who are considered skinny want to gain weight and people who are considered plus size want to lose weight, but in the end most people are trying to achieve the same figure. I too struggle with how my body looks because of being considered too skinny most of my life and now all of a sudden people (men) prefer skinny girls when the beauty standard was just thick girls or girls with no waist and a big butt. During COVID I lost weight due to my birth control and not eating as much. I just recently got back to my pre-COVID weight and I am ecstatic (but why when my body doesn’t look that much different). Currently working on not caring what society says is the best figure and focusing on what I want for myself. I am no longer trying to gain weight but working on my figure I suppose. I am bothered by the fact that I have no hips (runs in my family) and started going to the gym (not as consistent anymore because of a shitty schedule). But I hope that everyone starts to realize that beauty standards are soooo unrealistic and change constantly. One minute you’re the standard and the next you aren’t. So, do whatever you want for yourself.