Orlando to London: Finding Love Through Body Positivity on Instagram
2:26 PM
At the time I'm writing this, there's just over 72 hours standing between me and a cramped economy class seat on a plane headed to London. I've conquered the flight twice before, however, this time I don't know how long it will be before I return. It's quite likely it will be years before I step foot in the Sunshine State again; the place I adopted as my home almost 16 years ago. And while it will be hard to leave it behind, I do so because of the best possible reason:
I'm getting married to the love of my life.
Yes, in a month and a half's time I will be someone's wife. Those are words I genuinely never thought I'd utter. You see, I was never the dating type. When high school rolled around and everyone was getting significant others and losing their virginity, I...well, I wasn't. As an insecure fat girl I didn't exactly exude flirtatious and alluring vibes; so I went all four years of high school completely solo.
Needless to say, I was relieved when my teenage years came to a close. But as my twenties rolled into view and I'd yet to do so much as go on a date yet, I started to panic that something might be wrong with me. In retrospect, the only thing that was indeed wrong with me was my complete lack of confidence. At the time, though, I thought it was entirely my appearance. If I tried harder to be beautiful then someone would surely want me. And to a certain extent this did work. It wasn't long after pictures of my extreme style makeover hit Facebook that messages from guys who never gave me the time of day in school started popping up.
"Hey, how you been?"
"Long time no talk!"
"We should hang out some time."
It was moderately flattering, but also incredibly infuriating. I was the same exact person then that I was currently. A bit of hair straightening and powder on my face didn't change who I was inside...unfortunately. Maybe if it had I would have saved myself a lot of heartache and an irreversibly bad decision in the not so distant future. But alas, 21 was creeping around the corner for me and I'd had enough of being a lonely virgin. I wasn't going to give the high school guys who had come out of the woodwork the satisfaction of agreeing to a date though. No, I decided I'd find love with a completely new person. The only trouble was I lacked social and flirting skills and didn't know how to meet new people. So, I did what everyone else seemed to be doing...
I tried online dating.
It wasn't long before I got a message from a guy named Brian. He was 6'5 with a husky build and drove a Mustang. That coupled with the fact that I was so excited someone was reciprocating a mutual interest in me for once proved to be a deadly mixture for my sense of rationality. For eight months I excused being repeatedly stood up, never taken out, and rude comments about my appearance. I ignored every single sign that screamed Brian was a fuckboy and defended him when my friends tried to talk sense into me. I lived for those half hearted gestures of good night texts every now and then and comments that I was "very close" to him calling me his girlfriend. And after 21 years of waiting for the "right person", and eight months of having a "situation" with Brian, I thought it would be a brilliant idea to lose my virginity to him.
And I did.
And then he broke things off with me the following day in a text, which contained a line forever burned into my mind:
"It's like, I like you but I don't love you."
I never saw or heard from him again.
As you can probably imagine, that screwed me up quite a bit. I couldn't rationalize in my head how someone could be so callous every step of the way, and leave me high and dry without any shred of closure. Among a laundry list of other things that were falling apart at the time, this pushed me into an inexplicable state of depression. I was desperate for any kind of lifeline that would make me feel whole again. Just two months later, thanks to a comment from a complete stranger, I felt that I had found that lifeline in the form of the body positive community on Instagram.
I diligently followed these completely awe inspiring, rebellious women figuratively giving the finger to a lifetime of feeling unattractive in their skin. They cursed out those pesky thoughts of self doubt and effortlessly shrugged off rude comments from others. I craved to achieve that level of inner peace more than anything. I was so tired of avoiding the sight of my own reflection in the mirror and requiring others' validation to feel a twinge of confidence. As the months passed and I absorbed every ounce of body positivity I came across on Instagram, I started taking baby steps towards becoming kinder to the person I saw in the mirror. Back rolls, cellulite, belly fat, arm jiggle. All of it started to feel less and less important the more I realized I had been conditioned to hate these parts of me because of bad parenting, societal pressures, and insensitive comments.
More than that though, these badass feminist forces of nature helped me to see that I had been taken advantage of throughout my life because I allowed it. At any point, I could have stood up to Brian and the countless other toxic figures that have appeared throughout my life. I could have said, "I deserve better than this," and put an end to things. I didn't though. My self confidence wasn't just low in terms of how I felt about my physical appearance, it was low in terms of how I viewed my own worth. I didn't think highly of myself, therefore I allowed people to treat me without respect because subliminally that's all I felt I deserved.
Feeling a sense of belonging and safety, I also started documenting my journey to self love. Support began to pour in from others all over the world. People who lived in England, South Africa, France, Australia and beyond had become my biggest cheerleaders every time I posted about overcoming a long held insecurity. I began feeling invincible and let hate comments ricochet off me like my confidence was made entirely of Kevlar. These words were just that...words, and they could only offend me if I gave them the power to. The days of granting people the power of disrespecting me were over as far as I was concerned.
I was so fed up with people who felt entitled to say or do any inappropriate thing without consequence, that one night I publicly shamed someone who slid into my DMs with sexually explicit messages. I wrote a scathing rant wondering where men get the confidence to say such disgusting things to a complete stranger.
"I'm thoroughly convinced at this point that all men are pigs."
People soon started leaving comments, some agreeing and some trying to convince me that nice guys weren't mythical beasts. If I looked hard enough eventually I would find one. And oddly enough it was in that exact comment section that I did. A bopo friend I had made named Jess left a comment listing the usernames of two guys she talked with in a completely platonic manner regularly.
"They're genuinely lovely conversation and good guys," she wrote.
I briefly looked at their accounts and passingly replied back to Jess saying, "I've never seen them before, but they're cute."
A few hours later, I got a Kik message from one of those guys. Little did I know at the time I was texting with my future husband.
Talking to Jack was like talking to an old friend. Everything was just easy and natural. We talked every possible waking moment we could, much to the chagrin of both of our bosses. I found myself sharing my deepest secrets and insecurities with a total stranger because of some strange instantaneous level of trust that sparked inside me. I think I knew I loved him within months though I refused to say it for almost a year.
With him being 4,000 miles away in London and me in Orlando, we debated at length about giving our obvious mutual interest in each other a genuine go. Long distance isn't easy when you're a couple states away from one another, let alone have a massive ocean to separate you. And if it weren't for the progress I had made with my self confidence, thanks to the lessons I learned through body positivity I'm not sure I'd be sitting here writing this right now. I probably would have been an insecure mess and sabotaged a wonderful relationship with my micro-aggressions and constant self deprecation. Instead, I was able to enjoy a difficult, but healthy and loving partnership, without letting too much of the pain of my past get in the way. Thanks to body positivity, I was unafraid to be assertive and vocal about what I needed from Jack. I even felt bold enough to be makeup free with my hair a mess when we FaceTimed, because this was my authentic, natural state of being, and he'd have to accept that. (He gladly still does three years later.)
If I had never been bullied and never had my heart broken, then I never would have sought out body positivity. If I had never sought out body positivity, I surely would have never met Jack. I know now that all the pain and heartache of my past were necessary experiences I had to endure in order to become who I am today: a happy, confident woman who's unafraid to make the most drastic changes to her comfort zone.
I am so excited to see what adventures my body positive journey will lead me on next...
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