We are born into a society that compels us to compare ourselves to others. It begins medically – referring to a child’s height and weight in comparison to other children, assigning them a percentile. At a young age, this posed an enormous struggle for me. I was naturally small, almost jarringly small, with bones that protruded in places that were normally hidden by a soft layer of baby fat. To make matters worse, I never stopped moving. Not because I was obsessed with burning off calories, but because I loved to run and play soccer and dance. I hated to be still, and I loved when I was busy. This, combined with a naturally petite frame, was a particularly dangerous mixture.

I vividly remember the cramped, canary-colored walls of the doctor’s office inching toward me as my doctor told me I was in the eighth percentile for weight. This moment commenced the worst adventure of my life.

For the next few months, I could not eat. Not because of how I looked in comparison to other girls – in my mind, my appearance and my diet were two mutually exclusive, completely different
entities. It was because I felt bombarded by pressure from everyone in my life to be something I naturally was not. Logically, I understood I needed to eat in order to solve the problem. But every time I even glanced at food my stomach churned, and many times, I vomited. It felt like I lost the ability to swallow.

I remember the terrible, wretched sound of my father drinking a milkshake through a straw on our way home from soccer practice and the time my mother forced me out of the house, telling me I was not allowed under her roof unless I ate. I wanted to eat. I swear I wanted to eat. I wanted to be in the 90th percentile, I wanted to be the same as everyone else, I wanted to be healthy, I didn’t want to force feed myself protein drinks any more. I didn’t want to see my ribs when I stepped out of the shower. And yet, I was paralyzed. My body wanted to eat, so much so that I began to confuse hunger with nausea, but my brain fell to the crippling pressure to succeed in the same way as everyone else. Perhaps if I hadn’t become so infatuated with that combination of digits my doctor had used to describe me, I would not have had the mental block I experienced. If my mother had simply encouraged me to eat, if no one had invaded my thoughts with comparisons to other people, I would have been able to swallow.

Why do we evaluate ourselves by comparison? It seems as though it is not a choice, but an instinct or an impulse, necessary in a society with such a competitive nature. Even if you wish to judge yourself solely on your own merit, there are countless sources in our lives constantly comparing us to other people. Since the pressure to compare is somewhat unavoidable, I have found it lies within the person to construct a mental blockade to protect oneself from these toxic thoughts. Self-image should never be a reflection of others, but rather a reflection of the progress and growth within oneself.