If you’d asked me at 18, I’d have said I was at that awkward stage between girlhood and womanhood. Floundering in the middle, in limbo, unsure of where I belong and awaiting the day that I’ll just know. If you’d asked the elders of my family instead, they’d have told you that I’m already alllll woman. That I’d really matured and flourished and filled the mold of a proper young woman well. Personally, I’m of the belief they just want to marry me off quick before I turn old and decrepit at 25. Forget girlhood and womanhood; it’s spinsterhood chasing after me in the 21st Century.

Try as I might, it’s hard to reconcile this image they have of me with what I myself see in the mirror.  

Even in my earliest recollections, I was uncomfortable in my own skin. Putting all my eggs into one basket — hoping that with age would come a practiced ease to the movement of my body — an appreciation for all the troughs and crests, all the curves and sharp edges that shape me. Older now, I find myself yearning for the me of back then, who was infinitely more self-assured and comfortable. And I gape in disbelief that some see this next decade as my prime when it feels like I’m lightyears away from such a state, just now learning how to treasure and care for my own body first. 

It’s still often that I make examinations in front of my bathroom mirror, like a contortionist before an audience. I’ll jut my hip out, suck my tummy in, curve my spine — but I’m puzzled at what I see. Lost between being myself happily and (unsuccessfully, bitterly) imitating the endless stream of flawlessness and airbrushed perfection common to my Instagram feed. 

It got worse before it got better, I think, these past few months. 

With early quarantine keeping me shuttered at home, inactive, anxious, it was harder to escape some of the more persistent criticisms: I shouldn’t be eating so much. Why do my thighs spill over like liquid whenever I so much as sit? Why’s my chest not as perky as it should be? My eye hyper-focused on even the smallest of my worries - blowing them outoutout of proportion until they seemed mountains more than molehills. Until my body looked like a Dali painting, more experimental and surreal than natural.   

So naturally, I tried to drown it all out into white noise with mindless entertainment, jumping from one internet community to another and hoping that I wouldn’t exhaust all avenues. But the more time I spent suspended in webspace, the more I came across things that hit close to home — think pieces on the impossible proportions that ‘one-size-fits-all’ pieces demand, a viral post comparing ‘shopped photos to their untouched counterparts. On all sides, like an avalanche, more and more people who looked and felt like me seemed keener to speak up, to take up their rightful space in media with every photo posted.

I contextualized it wrongly at first, resisted acknowledging the take-away message that was there all along. Tried to make the excuse that we were on two different wavelengths, that it was fine for women to celebrate their more endowed figures. And it was easy to create that gaping chasm between my 18 and their 29, and split us decidedly into girlhood and womanhood. 

It got harder to justify when I came across posts made by those closer to my age, and near-impossible with posts by people younger than me. So all of a sudden, it felt like I’d done not only myself but so many others a massive disservice. 

By treating myself like a separate case, a freak-entity, I was doing the complete opposite of what I secretly wished had been done so long ago. I was invalidating the efforts braver individuals were making to normalize and popularize conversations about unconditional body-positivity. Maybe I wasn’t doing so on a grand scale, as I split my time between wishing I could cut excess skin off my thighs with some scissors and praising people who looked like me on the internet for their candor. But I was definitely going about life backwards, disallowing myself the opportunity to put matter over mind for once. The opportunity to spark an insurrection of my physicality over mentality. The ultimate opportunity to banish my ugly thoughts and start anew.

And so it’s at 18 and a half, that the insecurities don’t cut nearly as deep when they follow me late into the night. That I’ve learned to shoulder less burdens. That I’ve come to celebrate the jiggle of my arms and the zebra-print to my stretchmarks. That I’ve recognized that I don’t need a vague identifier to love my body comfortably.