Hello amazing human :) Uff this question is like MY everyday battle. I am 24 right now and I am probably dealing with answering and figuring it all out for more than 12 years already. Yes, I was very early with my development even though no one every really noticed, because I kept it all inside of me, while being such an extrovert person to hide my inner self. (I thought this is so smart for years). Anyway, I wanna tell you how it felt for me:
confusing, painful, hard. confusing, painful, hard. confusing, painful, hard. confusing, painful, hard. conf....
I could go on and on and on. For me, growing up and finding out so many things, while being constantly confronted by other people´s opinion in relation to my body (weight, size, shape), was hard, even more, it kinda felt like a never ending nightmare. I don´t know if that is normal (I guess thesedays you are already confronted with it at the age of 2!), but at the age of 12, I received my first comment to my look which was: your stomach is a big bigger than your best friends one. Uff. That was strange. I felt weird, but it stuck in my head. This was the first day I ever checked my own body and thought, hm, I don´t know if he is right, but I could just start to eat less and see how that feel and what might happen with my BIG stomach. Well, it was gone very quick and I found myself in the middle of an anorexia disease.
Congratulations darling, you did a great job. From there on, everything seems to get worser and worser even though I soon received nice compliments for my thin shape first, but after some more weeks it turned into "uff you are ugly, eat more, you look like a bone". Well, thank you for your advice, but it was too late already.
12 years later, after having probably almost every eating disorder which exists, I understand the reasons. I guess I know where all these things come from and how we can protect the younger generation in relation to this nightmare. For sure, first of all the parents play a VERY IMPORTANT role and honestly, I don´t know if all parents really understand how serious this is. Mine for example where never helping me in relation to all these things. I can only talk about my childhood and I don´t wanna complain about it at all, but I believe, that if you don´t have a strong family background, with parents who are educating you constantly about life, you feel lost, you get lost and you have it hard to find back on track without falling a hundred thousand times. And when I then start thinking about the school system and the classes we get teached, especially this whole topic (besides some others..) is COMPLETELY MISSING!
Social media has such a huge influence on almost everyone, but no one teaches you how to use it correctly. Mental health is so important and yet so less a public thing! I think, if we really wanna change the world, we need to start making the PRESENT problems public. We need to be aware of what is ACTUALLY really going on in this world.
I received so much rejection in my life, I felt so much pain and I suffered for years. I don´t want that especially the younger generation has to go through it all, too BUT I know that millions of people are already going through it in silence. It is so hard to find out what you really want and who you really are in this life with all the impressions we see, hear and feel every single day. I don´t know how we will be able to get back the real and healthy values, but we have to replace the face-tune and beauty surgery ones. We have to fight for this. Even though I am not a mom yet, I am thinking about my own children and how they might feel growing up in our society in the 21th century and what I feel is pure panic ! It scares me to death knowing what my children will see, hear and feel. For sure, I will try my best to educate them wisely and to make them strong from the inside, but so much is out of our hands. That means, if we are not able to create a society worth it living in, I will probably not able to make my own children, because I really don´t want that they have to suffer so hard.
The reason, I chose the picture you see below is, that I have the feeling that it describes what the majority of the people (doesn´t matter how rich, famous, powerful or what ever they are or think to be) is doing this every day: we smile, we ignore, we pretend that everything is fine even though we know it is not. I truly believe that so many people are so broken on the inside, but still too afraid and too pavonine to talk about it. But I am not. If you step away from it all, deleate social media and stop watching TV or reading the news, If you truly break yourself free from it all, you would be shocked from the second on you realize what is REALLY GOING ON.
It is an uncontrolled, toxic, dangerous, ridiculous, ignorant mess going on and we are all in the middle of the whole party while the majority of us is not even realizing it. STOP BEING F*CKING IGNORANT. Pretending to be fine or that everything is fine is stupid, so you should better aks yourself twice, if you really wanna be that silly person. I am so sorry for my words, but I have the feeling that otherwise no one will ever really listen. We need to change so many things, but I believe that it is not that hard to achieve. If the basics get a touch up, the whole system will heal with time. And I hope that we will all heal and break ourselves free.
Jump on the train of taking responsibility serious. YOUR LIFE MATTERS, so if you don´t wanna do it for other people, you should at least do it for your own self. Your ass is in the game, too my friend and you are not safe either.