LUDICROUS | ✎

chapter | 50

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L U D I C R O U S
[ chapter 50 ⦁ a royalty fucked up society ]
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{tw: mentions of ed}

AN EPISODE OF Teen Wolf, which I had seen way too many times, was playing on my TV as background noise to my own draining razor blade thoughts. Overthinking wasn't new to me. It's been my 'partner in crime' for as long as I can remember.

Twirling my Apple Pencil between my fingers, my eyes were set on the dimly lit screen, trying to focus solely on the task at hand; finishing up homework.

"I would be the perfect model, y'know." Sighs Mirela, flipping through the magazine. "But society standards are just so unattainable. You have to be built a certain way and if not, then you're ugly. My twelve-year-old cousin cried to me on the phone because the boys expected her to have a big butt because she's half-black, like what kind of society do we live in?"

From my place on the floor, I lean my head against the edge of the bed. "A royalty fucked up one. Social media creates these unattainable allusions of how a women's body should look. They create false images for young people to idealize. I for one think stretch marks are fucking beautiful, bodies of all shapes and sizes are beautiful. Every woman on this planet is beautiful and it's truly sad we are taught through social norms that it's not okay to have a little fat on your stomach, like dip-shits it's a damn uterus. It's not okay to have a different body type. It's horrible and sickening. The same goes for men because they too experience these fucked up things."

Mirela hums in agreement. "Couldn't have said it better myself. Y'know I sat on the phone with her for a full two hours and we just pointed out things that we loved about our bodies and why we loved them."

I hold the Apple Pencil in the air. "I remember that method. I still do it," I mutter softly, smiling lowly at the vivid memory when my mother would sit in the bathroom with me, looking in the mirror and listing things that I liked about my body. It was one of those things, after repeating it for so long, the things that I liked about my body became solidified in my mind and I grew to love my body for how it was.

I was around 13 when I started to workout a lot — I would wake up at every morning at 5am and I would work out for 35 minutes (sometimes more). I did super rigorous cardio every day and I could never reach this certain body type that I wanted. I then started to cut my calories and it would be the kind of thing where I would eat 5 almonds for breakfast because I didn't want to counteract the cardio that I had just did and then it lead to me not feeding myself protein. I just couldn't understand how I couldn't have this perfect body like the women on the internet — I was comparing myself to everyone. I became angry with myself and particularly my body. I was harming myself, in the process of starving myself to reach this body goal and it lead me to be in the most awful, and darkest places to be at while being at the peak of 13.