As a chubby little 8-year-old girl, all I would do was look up to what the media portrayed as “perfect.”

People with ideal hourglass figures who managed to be thin. A natural, defined jawline and cheekbones. The most beautiful eyelashes and tan golden skin, a small nose and a smile of an angel.

Growing up watching Nuestra Belleza Latina and telenovelas where all the girls looked stunning didn’t help what I was going through. Especially with my parents wanting me to lose weight as I was getting too “fat.”

What was I supposed to do? I was only 8, I didn’t care whether I looked skinny or not. I just wanted to have fun.

But the fun stopped when standards of beauty began to plague my life.

When I was 11, my doctor sent me to a nutritionist. I was scared. I thought I had done the wrong thing, especially when I saw my mother’s look of disappointment when she looked at me. I spent an hour every Saturday for at least a month going to the nutritionist and checking if I lost weight. On my last appointment, the nutritionist explained how I needed to take care of myself and my weight; I needed to be active.

Instead, I kept zoning out. All I could think about was what I could do to not experience that again.

That’s when my brain clicked.

By the time I was 15, I became obsessed with all the imperfections and flaws, whether they were big or small. Soon after, I made it a quest to fix myself.

“Oh, why are my thighs so big?” “I don’t even have a waist.” “I’m so disgusting.” “What is wrong with me?” “Why is my face so full?” “Why can’t I be perfect like the models on TV?”

One day as I was having a breakdown, I stumbled upon the Instagram page of model Alexis Ren, the actual definition of ‘perfect with the smallest waist’ stereotype. As I scrolled down, I fell deeper into a rabbit hole. She became an inspiration that fueled my obsession with reaching perfection and beauty. 

So I started my so-called new healthy lifestyle, which required me to workout twice a day, go on walks, skip multiple meals and drink lots of water. Influenced by watching videos on YouTube of these “perfect” girls talking about how and why they lost weight, it kept bringing me further down the dark hole that made it harder to escape. 

It was difficult to maintain this “healthy lifestyle” due to school, but if I missed a day I would be disappointed in myself for blowing all the intense work I did the past week.

So I would double the workouts the next day.

As time moved on, I started lacking energy. I would wake up, do my workouts and go outside, but by the time it was noon all I wanted to do was sleep. On weekdays it was a pain. I struggled to focus in class and suffered from huge migraines throughout the day. Weekends were equally as horrible because nothing stopped me from sleeping them away, instead of doing school work or chores.

My obsession with the influencers increased by the minute. I would shame myself for not pushing myself harder in workouts to be as thin as them. I was never the type to ever care about how I looked or my figure, but as soon as I started comparing myself to these models, it went downhill.

What do people think of me? They probably think I’m so disgusting or I’m embarrassing myself with how I dress or how my face looks. Maybe my face is too round, my eyebrows are too bushy, my acne is getting worse.

My mind started going crazy but I didn’t care about it, all I cared about was the way people saw me.

Starting sophomore year, everything went back to the way it was. I gave myself a break from watching the influencers I wanted to look like, which set me back completely. I stopped the “healthy lifestyle” as a whole and while I hated myself for it, it also didn’t help my mental health.

Little by little I started obtaining old habits and I gained the weight back.

It hurt me that I couldn’t keep up with the workouts for a long period of time like the people I was obsessed with. The longer I watched them get more fit and healthy, the less I cared about myself.

I started to not care about myself because I knew I was never going to reach the standards I set for myself.

Even though I’m small, I still feel the need to be smaller, just so I can finally be happy with myself.