I was 11 the first time I noticed that my body was different from other people's bodies. My cousin Amanda, who was 12 at the time,  came over and we were going to go swimming. We saw mom's scale in the bathroom and we took turns weighing ourselves on it. At the time, Amanda stood a couple of inches taller than me, long and lean. I was shorter, but not short, and bigger, but not fat. Not yet. So she stood on the scale, and then I did, and the number staring back at us was exactly the same. So we went on with our day, had fun at the pool, and she's probably never thought twice about that day, probably doesn't remember it now. But I looked at her in her cute bikini and I looked at myself in my one-piece from the plus size section of JCPenney kids and I felt angry. Not at her, or even at me. I was just, in a general sense, angry that we're close to the same age and we weigh the same and she got to be pretty while I had to be chunky.

11 years old. Where did I learn at 11 years old to hate my body that way? So that moment laid dormant in my mind for  a couple of years. Sometimes friends or family would make comments about what i was eating or whether i exercised or how i looked, and i just added those to this list in my mind of reasons that I don't measure up, but I didn't do anything with them until I got older.

Something that I think made a difference is that mom was proud of me when I lost weight. She was even proud of me when I was just trying to. And I'm not blaming her at all for this, because it's not her fault that I'd internalized all this s*** and it was never her intention to make me feel bad. She wanted me to be happy. And I wanted to, more than anything, be skinny. And I wanted, more than anything, for mom to be proud of me. But I also, more than anything, wanted to be 13 and do what my (skinny) friends did. So when I was at home, I tried my best. I ate the carrots that were put on my plate and I didn't ask for seconds even when I was hungry and I took walks around my neighborhood. But when I saw my friends and we went to the mall and everyone was getting fries, I wanted fries. So I'd buy them, but I'd tell my friends not to take any pictures while we were in the food court (it was 2009 and we were in 8th grade and we took pictures of everything) because I couldn't let there be any proof that I was eating a "bad food". And that was my life, divided into lists of "good" and "bad", "right" and "wrong". And soon the bad list got way longer than the good list.

Every time I'd eat something bad, I'd want to hide it. I'd want to pretend I didn't. And so I'd still eat it, and a lot of it, because when am I going to eat this again? I'm starting another diet tomorrow so today I have to eat all the french fries I can. I learned recently that this has a name, and it's called binge eating disorder. And this went on for 6 years. It got worse when I got stressed (which was often, as you know if you've read anything I've ever written.) The summer before senior year, I lost 17 lbs in as many days on a ridiculous starvation diet. Then I gained it back, plus 30 more, by graduation. And then I lost 22 lbs the summer before I left for college, and gained that back plus some. And then I gained more. And then I gained more. And it was all the same yo yo diet pattern.

But I got really tired of hating myself. And I got really tired of eating to make myself forget that I hated myself and then feeling guilty about it and hating myself again. And that part, that's not over yet. It's better, it's a lot better, but as with recovery from any illness, mental or physical, you work hard and still relapse. I've read that as you get further along, the relapses are fewer and farther between. I'm hopeful and looking forward to that.

But I did some things recently that changed my whole life. (And this book by Jes Baker inspired all of them.) I changed the way I think about bodies. I've stopped passing judgement on bodies that aren't my own, in the hopes that I'll stop passing judgement on mine. I've started seeking out blogs on tumblr run by girls who look like me and think like me, instead of a feed full of tiny models I'd been spending my life comparing myself to. And also, I bought this.

I am the proud owner of a fierce bikini. My body is big and fatty and foldy and covered in stretch marks and it weighs in at 200+ lbs and I put it in a bikini. And that's how you get a bikini body. You get over all the s*** that tells you you don't have one and you put the damn bikini on. And I, a woman who has been bigger than everyone else all my life, a woman who has never felt comfortable in a bathing suit in my life (and avoided pools for two years because of that), I feel gorgeous in it.

So my eating disorder isn't over yet, I guess. But hating my body? I'm so done with that.