As is true for most people, my childhood is a significant building block of the person I am today. I have so many good memories from my childhood. But others created a monster.
Growing up in a religious Russian community — where being seen as “a good girl” is very important — was not easy. As a child, I felt a lot of pressure to be the best Christian girl among the rest. I grew up feeling like a bug under a microscope. I was picked apart for everything and always compared to girls around me.
I began to compare myself to others as well. And no one was harsher on me than me.
Throughout my adolescence, I became a toxic perfectionist. My obsession with looking perfect and being skinny developed into body dysmorphia. Nothing about myself made me happy. The primary thing I could not stand was my weight.
Being skinny became the priority in my life and I forgot what was really important, which is my health. I began to lose weight in unhealthy ways.
Pandemic lockdowns were in effect when I entered my first year of college, and everyone was sitting at home, including me. During that time, I began using social media a lot more. Posting on social media made me feel better about myself because I would receive validation from other people.
I had a delusion that validation was a ticket out of my misery. But I was completely missing the mark. I was doing the same thing I did as a little girl. I was feeding off the praise of others, dependent on their approval because I believed their opinion mattered more than my own.
I soon concluded this was not how I wanted to live my life anymore. Slowly, I realized this dynamic was the source of almost all the issues I faced. I was so focused on trying to make people like me that I completely forgot that the only person I should worry about liking me, was me.
Once I acknowledged this reality, I knew I needed to put a stop to this unhealthy way of living. This past summer, I committed to change. I took my focus off my appearance and onto my friends and relationships. I found healthy hobbies that I still turn to for stress relief. I began to move away from obsessively judging myself.
The biggest step I took was telling my best friend about my problem. When I opened up to her, she gave me the biggest gift. The knowledge that I was not alone.
I learned others had undergone similar experiences and knew what I was going through. I learned some of these feelings are normal, that it’s okay not to be perfect.
At any particular time, according to the EatWell Health Centre, between 600,000 and 990,000 Canadians fit diagnostic criteria for eating disorders. About 80 per cent of them are women. Adolescents and young adults are at the highest risk for developing eating disorders such as bulimia or anorexia.
As I learned more, I discovered that even people who seem to have it all can have problems like my own.
Model Alexis Ren shared her experience with eating disorders in a 2017 Cosmopolitan article. She said there was a dark backstory to some of her modelling photos. She was in a “toxic state of mind,” and suffered from food guilt. She exercised compulsively to punish herself if she thought she ate too much that day.
Such stories helped to liberate me from the trap of perfectionism.
I try now to focus on the things that really matter. Of course I still have moments when I’m unhappy with my appearance. I still have times when I think I could change some things.
The difference now is, when I do, I only do it for myself.