When Hate Turns Into Love

article by Guest Writer- Sarah Tonin

The article shares author’s struggle with body image issues, mental health issues and how standards of beauty harms people at large.

TRIGGER WARNING: fatphobia, body shaming, mentions of suicide, self-hatred, mentions of eating habits and food. 

I have been asked several times throughout my life to lose weight because then I’ll look prettier. I grew up hating my body, not appreciating it, not accepting it and being extremely conscious of it. My ass was too big for the boys and my boobs were too little that the girls made fun of me. I was called a cow, an elephant as a 12-year-old, by not 12-year-olds, by people who were 5-6 years older than me. I was met with “oh my god, you’re taking up so much space!” anytime I sat beside them. Hence, my thoughts of killing myself so that people have more space in the world may not surprise you. 

I was 16. It was the starting of 10th grade. I promised myself to “get in shape” for graduation and started working out. I was put in a gym group with aunties who were in their 40s. They all said how proud they were of me for coming out and taking care of my body. Apart from the gym group, I would go running every day in the mornings on the treadmill and the creepy uncles of the apartment would comment on how fit I was getting and that they were “very impressed beta”. But none of that helped. Instead, I would beat the shit out of myself every day. I would force myself to workout even when my body said no. I would mentally force myself to not eat even when my body craved for it. I. went. insane. Absolutely crazy over my body. I was obsessing over every little thing I ate and I stopped enjoying life.

I overworked my body and mind to filth. I still wasn’t losing any weight. 11th grade rolled in I was still the same. Nothing changed physically, but mentally I was beating and cursing myself for not looking like the girls on Instagram. For working so hard and not getting any results. I wanted people to be attracted to me. I wanted and sought validation from outside. I wanted a girl to tell me that I was beautiful so that I could motivate myself to exercise more. 

It was not until I met this guy. He said he found me attractive but still commented on my body and compared me to the other girls in the class. I made it a goal to hyper-fixate on the comments he made on my body and forced myself to work out for him. I tried changing myself to fit the idea of his ideal girl. Long story short, his actions led me to a darker place in life. I didn’t think it was possible, but here we are. The way he treated me, constantly commenting on my weight, comparing other girls’ bodies while I was with him, and in a way fetishizing fat womxn, was not it. The way I treated myself, creating this narrative in my head that I had to look like the girl he liked because then he’ll never like me, was not it. I started making changes. I stopped eating junk foods. Gave up on chocolates. I gave up dark chocolates. The love of my life. Anyway, I digress. I started eating less. I started to write my thoughts down. Obsessing and guilt-tripping myself over everything I ate. It wasn’t helpful that I surrounded myself with small petite girls that people fawned over and went after. I would look at them and just pray and wish I had their body. I wished I was smaller and thinner. I wished for bigger boobs, a cinched waist, and a smaller, perkier butt. 

In 12th grade, I started going to the gym in periods. I would go for a month and then not go the next month. Several things were happening at the same time. I was growing out of this toxic mental headspace. I was slowly realizing that patriarchy had built this falsity of a perfect body in my head. I started journaling. This time it was with positive affirmations, small goals towards hating myself, self-love, and care. I was giving myself room to breathe and make mistakes. We are human at the end of the day, right? This helped me immensely. It was something that kept me going. To see the book fill up with my lists, with doodles, with ideas, with stories, my feelings. It made me happy. My parents are still always on about how I should be losing weight. 

“Oh how pretty you’ll look, if you lose weight”. “Who will marry you? All men only want skinny girls.” (me, a proud pansexual. “Uhm chile. Anyway so…”) “You can model with your height if you lose weight.” 

Well, 2020 came. I was determined to make this year my weightloss year. In a way, I did. After a fight with my parents, I said to myself “enough is enough”. I took whatever I did to my body from when I was a wee little child and threw it out of my window. It went “bye-bye”. I started doing Zumba with my mother, went on the Chloe Ting challenge, did some pilates with Blogilates, followed regimes. I started eating intuitively. I was actively LISTENING to my body. I ate what I wanted, whenever I wanted. I worked out whenever I wanted because I felt like it. I was working out because it made me happy, it made me feel stronger. If the apocalypse were to ever happen, I wanted to be ready to take down a few zombies. I started doing what I wanted to do. Live on my terms. So, I gave up. I gave up trying to fit in with society’s standards. Through these beautiful ladies, I learned that there was never a ‘perfect’ body and there never will be one. So yes I gave up dieting. I gave up hating on myself. I started loving myself. 

I reached my boiling point. I was done with being sad all the time about my body. Tired of crying at 2 in the morning over my fat rolls. I was just done with the constant shit from my parents concerning my weight. I was just done. I know it’s easier said than done. I am a good example of that. The number of times I “made up my mind about loving myself” and failing at it. I was forcing love. Love shouldn’t be forced. It comes naturally. It started coming naturally to me in small little pockets. It will come in the shape of self-acceptance and cooking for me. If you are struggling with this, love will find its way to you. You have to give yourself the time, the space to heal and understand everything. It took me years. I am still learning. I still have my days. But those days were never days before, they were weeks and months on end.

My thighs, my stretch marks, my tiny breasts, my hip dips, my cellulite, NOTHING on my body is an imperfection. It never was and will never be an imperfection. Cause the truth is, I am gay, hot as fuck, fat, bad b*tch. I am beautiful. And that’s, on period.  

Looking back on what I wrote in 11th grade, I realized that most of what I wrote was just me feeling guilty about eating. I am glad that I continued eating. I’m glad I didn’t give into my guilt. I wouldn’t be where I am right now if I did.