By Andromeda | September 25,2023

With someone as young as I am, who has just reached the ripe age of a quarter of a century, plus-sized, and never used to displaying too much skin, one would assume that I had become used to all of the incessant, criticizing sounds that I have been hearing since I was a child. Living in a Filipino-Chinese environment felt like living under a microscope— and it still is. Always twice as much stress, twice as much despair, and Hell, it was probably why I also doubled in size as I got older as a result. Eating food in front of people used to feel like a sin and I was waiting to be condemned for it. When being chubby was only cute until I was in sixth grade, that’s when people started to be concerned about my size. I couldn’t remember when I started getting used to the nightmare of my every day.

When I was younger, I had no one but popular strangers online to look up to for even an ounce of body-positive messages. The people around me, bless their hearts, were always adamant to prove that they were only looking out for me when they picked on my size, laughed whenever they see the fat kid during P.E., or gave me backhanded compliments about how “confident” I seemed to pursue singing and dancing when they were actually just trying to make me feel bad about myself for being something they themselves could never be. This stretched onto older relatives and family friends who still— to this day— equate being beautiful to being skinny— not healthy, just skinny. Because being skinny gives you privileges, they say; while I know that wasn’t the case for everyone. Being in college was an eye-opener for me, especially being a student from DLS-CSB, wherein we pride ourselves for being inclusive. I was finally able to feel a good amount of confidence in a place full of extraordinary and creative people, despite going home to a nest filled with overdue trauma and a periodic sense of melancholy etched in the walls of my room.

Unfortunately, my health started deteriorating slowly, but not in a way you think would go first. It started with my mental health, and I proceeded to fight one of the longest battles I have ever gotten to face. Near-death experiences that may or may not have been self-force; voices in my head that unceasingly pursued to shatter me into pieces; having to stop my schooling for a while just to recover from the intense relapses. I was too focused on my mental health that I didn’t even know I was physically-deteriorating as well. I started to hate my body and, from time to time, I thought starving myself would have been a better option. I thought that was the only way to get everyone to believe in me or my capabilities. I thought that was the only way to see me for who I truly was and what I had to offer. I thought that was the only way for people to love me for me.

I hid away all of my desires to dress up nicely, do certain interests I’ve always wanted to do, eat what I wanted to eat, all the while feeling that I don’t deserve to do any of those things at all.

Late 2019, I was diagnosed with PCOS. It took me a while to conquer my fear of finding out what was happening to my body; and it was only then everything started to make sense to me. I wasn’t even thinking of the possibilities of not getting pregnant in the future, yet I was relieved for the most part. I was relieved because I finally heard the words I was so desperate to hear for the longest time: