What does it mean to recognize yourself?

On seeing myself and feeling pride instead of panic.

As always, check out the audio version of this post to hear me read this essay and talk in more detail about this week’s essay subject (which you can subscribe to on your podcast feed so it populates automatically when it goes live, by the way!). Paid subscribers: I have a lot of fun content coming your way, including a May/June Month In The Life post + podcast *and* a Pub-Month Recap, where I’ll talk all about the highs/lows/in-betweens of my publishing experience.

I grew up watching reality television. It was a time when watching American Idol was a social event, when The Biggest Loser was not only socially acceptable but a national inspiration. I watched The Swan as a 12-year-old and never once thought there was anything wrong with it, instead questioning which procedures professionals would suggest for me. I asked myself this with a type of casual curiosity. It was less a moment of conscious self-hatred or deep insecurity than it was a logical calculation. I had grown up in a media landscape littered with makeover montages. The idea that you were either a before or an after was embedded into every Seventeen magazine article I read, every romantic comedy I watched. I knew the odds. I could do the math. Everything I saw added up to me being more of a before than an after. But that was fine, I thought. That only meant there was work to be done.

I think, maybe, this is why I have always been so drawn to social media. I could choose what photos to upload to Facebook albums in high school. I could crop and edit and angle myself on Instagram. I could control what the world saw of me, inching myself toward better or thinner, forcing myself there. This, it turns out, has been one of the most interesting parts of going on tour for my book Such A Bad Influence this month. I am all at once insanely flattered that anyone would want to take a picture with me or of me, and inevitably, when I see the tagged image on Instagram, I am also horrified. That’s what I look like? I wonder. That’s me? That’s my arm? My leg? My face? My stomach lurches with the realization that I am somehow disappointing all the versions of myself through the years. I think of the 12-year-old me watching Jillian Michaels yell at people on treadmills. I should be so much better by now, I think. I’ve had all this time, I remind myself. I am all at once impossibly small and the largest thing in any room.

Without even thinking about it, my mind flashes to people being interviewed on The Biggest Loser or Oprah or Dr. Phil, the part where they’re asked what their breaking point was, how they decided to change. How more often than not, their response was: “I saw a photo of myself and I didn’t recognize myself. I couldn’t believe that’s what I looked like.” Every photo I’ve seen of myself over the past two weeks, I’ve wondered if maybe I should be thinking the same thing. I have a moment where I don’t think how incredible it is that anyone would read my book or ask for it to be signed or attend an event or take a photo with me, but that maybe I’m staring at an impetus for change. My mind flashes two years in the future, where I imagine I’ll stumble across the same images of myself, and shake my head. “I can’t believe I let it get this bad,” I’d say. I’m regretting the moment in real time. I’m ashamed of myself not only in the present, but in retrospect, and preemptively, too. I’m staring at what should be one of the happiest, proudest moments of my life, and I’m imagining it as rock bottom.

I’m not proud of this instinct, not pleased with the way it seems to surprise me even though it shouldn’t by now. It’s certainly not based in gratitude, which is the only real goal I’ve had for myself throughout this publishing process. It’s a dark blanket suffocating everything, stamping out joy. But then it lifts. And this, maybe, is something I am proud of. I simply refuse to let it stay, to let it win. I refuse to believe the thing that says if I looked different, I would deserve all of this more. I think it, sure, but I don’t let it sink in anymore. I fight against it every fucking time. If it won’t back down, I think, then neither will I.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about being 17 and tagged in a photo on Facebook I didn’t like, gangly and thin but completely unaware of it. That’s what I look like? I would ask. That’s me? I didn’t recognize myself then, either. Maybe I have never, not even once, looked at a photo and seen myself. I wonder now if that was inevitable. I was never going to see an image of myself and have it be good enough, not when every voice in the world was reminding me that there would always be better. That it would always be acceptable to run until you vomited or passed out, to weigh yourself weekly on national television and hope that finally holds you accountable, to endure hours of invasive, bloody procedures all in the hopes of being smaller or firmer or sexier. Of course I don’t know how to recognize myself. I never learned how to point out the things that actually mattered. I recognize myself in the fight, though. I see the way I kick and scratch and push at the notion that I don’t deserve any of this. I see myself in the stubbornness, the commitment, the fight. I see myself and I nod, assured, comforted. I see myself and I am proud.

PS: One last thing before I go… you can order my first novel NOW! I appreciate your consideration, time, and support immensely.

A portion of June’s subscriber proceeds will go toward the Center for Reproductive Rights, which is currently working to build, enforce, protect and defend legal protections for reproductive rights around the world (including in Florida, where I grew up, and there is currently a 6-week abortion ban).