The first time I remember feeling confused by my own body I was young. I must have been 11 or 12 years old because I remember it was a Tigger hoodie I chose to cover myself up while playing in the garden with my brother and those boys who lived over the road.
Earlier that week, my ballet teacher had commented on the expansion of my thighs. And my Mum had told me off for growing out (sideways) of another pair of trousers. Looking back, my confusion seems valid. It’s not like I had any control over my mealtimes or snacks. But from then it began. There was a battle, no, a war, against my body’s desire to take up space.
That must have been around 2005. Which means I’ve now spent 20 years fighting on the same battlefield. Which I realise is an attention-seeking metaphor but sometimes, it does feel like a battle, or a sickness, that has wormed its way into my head, taking up precious time and resources.
In secondary school, I remember sitting on a high stool in science, noticing the way my legs fanned out on the chair compared to the other girls in my class. What was probably the result of puberty, genetics, or both turned into an obsession. I would dread sitting down next to smaller classmates, or worse, a boy who might look and notice, too.
I took to wearing 2 pairs of opaque black tights year-round. Held up by a pair of knickers. Four layers covering my body and holding me in lest anyone find out the truth! The horrible truth! That my human body was covered in human flesh. Not that it helped anyway – I knew and everyone knew that I was not a small person. And this simple matter of size, during the mid-00s – the years of low-rise jeans, Paris and Nicole, Special K and What Not To Wear – was the difference between being accepted or left behind.
Add to this three years spent at the UK's top sporting university (don’t ask me how I ended up there) and it would be fair to say that my body, and its insistence on taking up SPACE, has done a real number on my self-esteem.
I occasionally mourn for the person I could have been. I’m 31 now, too old to be a ‘hot young thing’ that can make heads turn every time they walk into a room. Too old, probably, to ever wear a skirt shorter than a midi, or dance freely, or walk around without tugging on my own t-shirt. I sometimes panic that I will never know what it’s like to occupy a smaller space. To buy whatever clothes I like. To eat fast food in public without feeling judgemental eyes.
The other day my boyfriend asked me where he could find the calories on a food packet. Imagine. A 31-year-old human not knowing where to access this information. I recently had to explain to my friend while travelling that I couldn’t just tuck my legs up underneath myself to sleep. It doesn’t work like that for me. There’s simply no room.
While I no longer do side-by-side comparisons of myself vs. my friends, or worse myself vs. my enemies, one of my favourite hobbies is to compare myself vs. myself; 2 years ago; 4 years ago; 10 years ago. The results are never comforting. Either I’m pleased that I look ‘better’, sad that I look ‘worse’, or a strange mixture of both, knowing that whatever side the coin lands on this time, I’ll be waiting to flip it again in a few months time.