Forget About the Photos
Article by Anna Heimel, art by Fer Juarez Duran
I am terrified of looking at pictures of myself. I don’t know when it started but I know it was long after my mom took me to an endocrine doctor at seven years old to lose twenty pounds because I was overweight. I wasn’t aware of how I looked in pictures then. I remember becoming agitated as my mom or grandma took 100 photos of me because they needed the perfect one. I didn’t want to pose. Photos were an interruption to my time swimming at the pool or playing at the park. Anyway, I did lose the twenty pounds and by eight years old I was happy because I guess I looked normal for my age again. Aside from the weight loss, I actually enjoyed the daily 30-minute treadmill walks I was told to do and would watch TV or listen to music while having some time to myself.
I don’t think I was scared of pictures until around seventh grade. I remember wearing one of my mom’s old dresses to a school event. It was soft and comfortable when I put it on, and I liked its green and yellow earth tones. Later that day, I happened to glance at a picture of myself on my mom’s phone and was horrified. I remember thinking I looked fat and ugly. My face looked swollen, arms awkward, and my legs were so fucking big. From that day on, I avoided looking at photos of myself like the plague. I don’t remember any other photos from that year. Eighth grade was my last year at the school I had attended for eight years, and I remember having a strong urge to start running. I wanted to change my body. I wanted to look more like Emma and Sarah and all the other skinny girls that received attention for their looks. I had developed friendships with a few guys, and they thought I was funny, but it wasn’t enough. I wanted them to see me as attractive too. I took that thirty-minute treadmill workout from when I was seven and intensified it. I would split the time between walking and running and was surprised when I felt a mental fog lift away that had been present for as long as I remembered. As I continued to complete that workout each day, I finished my homework faster, became more engaged in conversations with my friends, and my anxious thoughts weren’t quite as loud. I lost twenty pounds quickly and my mom began to compliment my body. I felt happier than I had in years. I quickly associated my lack of depression with a lack of extra weight on my bones.
I remained thin throughout eighth and ninth grade and collected a few pictures of myself that I didn’t hate. I posted them on Instagram and was surprised when my friends complimented my looks. I would stare at their comments and feel warm and excited.
In tenth grade, I started drinking, which made me feel even warmer than the compliments, and put twenty back on. I met Esa, who I had gone to school with my whole life but didn’t talk to until high school. In middle school she was small and won beauty pageants, but when we met again in tenth grade, we had both put on a few. We drank together and she introduced me to edibles, and once in a while we opted for oxys and mindless TV. We put on weight together and we felt close. We went to Emma’s parties and met guys from her school and made out with them in front of everyone. We weren’t the skinny girls, but we felt attractive. Esa ended up kissing the guy I had my first kiss with, and we slowly grew apart. I cut her off the summer before college. I brought Emma on a trip with my family and not Esa. We went from talking all-day-every-day to never again. Emma was thin and never drank too much and I wanted to be like her.
I quit drinking October of my freshman year and got back into exercise. I started dropping weight again but this time I was more depressed than I had ever been. I went back home when Covid happened. I felt deeply and incessantly tired but made an effort to become closer with my younger sister.
I hopped on my family’s spin bike and rode. One day I kept going past an hour, past an hour and a half, finishing after an hour and forty minutes. I got off and every part of me felt calm. The world felt a little softer and my anxiety was pushed away. The next day I ran for an hour and a half on the treadmill. My knees hurt, but the longer I went, the stiller my mind felt. I started alternating running and biking every day and felt invincible. I was burning more and more calories, achieving bigger outputs, watching the bones in my arms become more visible. I didn’t know they could look like that. Sometimes I would glance at them in the mirror and see child’s arms. My mom would express her shock about how much I had shrunk.
I woke up every day with migraines and sore legs and swollen feet, but I feared that if I took a day off, I would spiral and start breathing fast and my thoughts would get louder again. I would run on days where I was almost limping from soreness. I would push my body through pain that I convinced myself wasn’t there, preserving the sanity I thought I’d achieved.
I became addicted to exercise. I had to burn 1100 calories every day. I didn’t want my body to change at all from day to day or month to month. I looked at it obsessively in my full-length mirror drilled into my wooden bedroom door. I watched it shrink. I didn’t recognize it and I liked that. I took some pictures with Emma when we were bored one day and loved how small I looked in them. I didn’t hate how I looked for one of the first times in my life. I would stare at these photos and obsess over them. I felt that if I kept my body like that and looked good in pictures, I would be happy and forget about all the ones that disgusted me.
I started antidepressants in October of my sophomore year. My depression became too much to cope with in the cold silence of my childhood room. The Lexapro took the edge off and I found I didn’t need to exercise every day to function normally. My headaches slowly went away, and I adopted a more flexible approach. I still enjoyed long cardio workouts, but I let my body heal a couple days a week. I lived in an apartment with some friends starting in January and became close with my current boyfriend. I ate Ben & Jerry’s ice cream every night and didn’t care to notice the effects it was having on my body. I didn’t have a full-length mirror. I wasn’t obsessed with exercise for the first time in two years. I was happy and didn’t think about my weight or the lack of visibility of my arm bones through my skin. When I returned home for the summer, I became aware that I had gained twenty pounds. I started the keto diet and lost a few, but the weight was hard to shed on the Lexapro. I was eating nothing and losing no weight and I couldn’t recognize my body in the long mirror on the warm-wood door.
In March of Junior year, I decided to stop taking Lexapro. I said it was because I felt good enough to go off it, but I really wanted to lose the weight I had put on and recognize my body again. In the first few months without it, my full spectrum and intensity of emotions returned, and it was a lot to handle, but I felt more myself. I started dropping some of the weight, but not as much as I had hoped or expected. I didn’t let myself become obsessed with exercise like I had before, but still wanted to regain the body I had during those months at home. I reminded myself that having that body came with migraines and knee pain and difficulty waking up in the morning. I asked myself if it was worth all of that and some days I still have to convince myself that it’s not.
This year, I am trying to find balance. I am exercising around five days a week, eating more of the foods I like, and trying to understand moderation. I have been diagnosed with ADD and have started taking Adderall, which helps me focus on doing the things I love like writing, reading, and keeping up with friends. When I told my mom I was taking it, she said that Emma’s sister lost a lot of weight while on it and I’m trying not to focus on that. I have dropped a few pounds, but not as many as I would have hoped. I still feel depressed some days and lay on the couch in my apartment, blankly staring at the white-square-doctor’s-office-ceiling as hours pass by. I have pushed through my hardest months, October and November, without taking antidepressants, which I am happy about. I ask myself why I want to stay off them and to be honest, it is mostly because of their effects on my weight. I wish that wasn’t my main motivation but it’s okay that it is. I feel like one of the best versions of myself since I have been on ADHD medication. I wonder why no one saw that I needed it earlier and it was probably because I always did well in school. My family seemed to be more focused on my weight and appearance than my awkward jittery behavior while reading or watching TV. I don’t blame anyone for not noticing. We were all doing the best we could and I’m glad I was able to recognize what I needed at twenty.
I like how my body looks right now, but I’m trying not to get attached. I still don’t recognize myself in a lot of pictures and I’m trying not to feel so attached to those either. It’s hard not to see myself as a thousand different people. My boyfriend tells me that they are all me, captured in a thousand different moments. He tells me that pictures are just snippets of time. I try to take comfort in that and no longer want to allow pictures to impact my happiness and confidence. I am trying to accept myself more and judge myself less. I am grateful to my body for all it does (yes, it is a corny mantra and a good one). I am learning to approach it with more gentleness and less fear.