Summer feels endless in your youth, an infinite quality that you seem to lose as you get older. I read somewhere that this is because it is long in comparison to the time you’ve been alive, whereas the older you get, the shorter it measures in comparison to your many, many years. Okay, I watched a TikTok about it, but it might still be true.

As that endless summer would draw to a close, I’d desperately hope that I would have lost weight over that period. I’d dream of returning to school and having everyone notice me, complimenting my slimmer figure, and suddenly liking me. Even then, as a young adolescent, I was convinced that being thin would fix all of my problems.

Thin became my only goal

It was during one of those summers that I had my first taste of food restriction. I was travelling back after weeks spent in our home country, and my father asked if I wanted anything to eat or drink at the airport. I got some low-fat drink from Starbucks and claimed I didn’t want any food. I didn’t eat on the flight, when we got home, or even until the next day, relying solely on that one drink to sustain me. It was a euphoric feeling, a power I seemed to have unlocked, one that vanished when I gave in to food again.

That might be the moment my eating disorder started. You could also argue it was there in all the moments I had detested the way I looked, the time spent staring unhappily at my reflection, the envy I felt as I gazed at smaller girls around me. You could argue that it was only once I began restricting myself at every meal, desperate to stay under a certain number of calories — a number I now reach by noon. You could say the real sign was when I turned to purging, when I started waking up at 5 am to exercise before school as well as after, when I began planning my entire life around this one goal of thinness.

You could say a lot of things about my eating disorder. But whenever it started, it never seemed to end, not really. I spent years on that treadmill, desperately chasing a carrot I’d never allow myself to eat.

I was convinced that my life would be so much better once I was thin. That thinness was the reason I wasn’t the most popular girl in school. That thinness was why I was single. Thinness would make everyone like me. Thinness would make me like myself.

Thin didn’t fix anything

So I became thin without even really realising it. When I looked in the mirror, my eyes focused on everything I believed to be wrong with me. I find it impossible to describe body dysmorphia to people, but the closest I manage is those mirrors at a funhouse. You know those creepy places in carnivals where everything is moving? You look at a mirror, but what you see isn’t real. Everything is so distorted and twisted. Yet the reflection seems so real that you reach for your body just to check. Every mirror was a funhouse mirror during those years.

I look at photos now, and I can’t believe how unwell I looked. I struggle to understand how no one saw that something was wrong with me, how I didn’t see. The lights have come on in the funhouse, only no one’s laughing; we’re all just scared.

I was thin, undeniably thin, the kind of thin I had desired more than anything else. I was also miserable. Being that thin was exhausting. It was hard to go through an entire day with so little food to fuel me. It was hard to balance schoolwork with exercising for at least two hours a day. It was lonely to base plans around avoiding food and keeping up my exercise. Parties weren’t fun as I knew the calorie count in a beer and went for plain vodka, which, mixed with the lack of food intake, led to disastrous results. Life wasn’t fun, it was tiring, isolating and narrow minded. I don’t have a lot of memories from that time; I think my brain didn’t have the energy it needed to store memories.

Was I the most popular girl? No, I still had friends who stuck by me throughout it all, but less than when it all began. I had become so dull, obsessed only with food and exercise. I was half-present, floating around, lacking the thoughts even to crack a joke. I wasn’t there for people because I was struggling so much myself. I was uncomfortable in my own skin, and people could tell. I didn’t like myself, so it didn’t really encourage other people to like me.

Thin can’t be my goal anymore

Sometimes, I still slip into that old habit. That voice in my head tells me that all I need is to lose weight. That if I’m thin, everything will be easier. I won’t need a daily dose of Lexapro to feel good – the same Lexapro that makes thinness unachievable— it’ll come from me. I guess in some ways, fitting society’s beauty ideals would be easier. I’d stop feeling like I’m catfishing people on dating apps. I’d always find clothes in my size and know how they’d look from the advertisements or mannequins. I wouldn’t need shorts under my skirt to avoid the deadly chub rub.

But I still wouldn’t be happy, and I still wouldn’t like my body. Because body acceptance isn’t attached to any size, it comes from you knowing your worth at every size. I’d wear smaller jeans and feel as uncomfortable in my skin. All of the most important things about me wouldn’t change, like my humour, my passion, my hobbies, and my great recipe for pesto. I’m here to fix my problems, along with a helping hand from therapy and Lexapro. Thinness isn’t a cure-all, a prescription to write for people; it’s an unrealistic ideal at the whim of genetics. Happiness happens at any size, because it was never about your size in the first place.