I just want to say thank you to everyone that took the time to read / share / comment/ support my last post. Like I said a billion times, it was a story I’ve been wanting to share for a long time. My Body Positive journey has definitely been one of the most difficult things I’ve had to force myself to do. In the beginning, every day was like a new challenge. Was I going to keep pushing and unlearn everything I’ve ever known up until that point and truly accept my body at any size? Or was I going to give up and fall victim to the same ideals that have held me back for so long? When I say it was a mental battle – Me vs. Me – every day, I mean it in every aspect. It was exhausting.
“You can’t teach an old dog new tricks” is what it would feel like sometimes. Was it too late for me? Am I already set in my ways and I’m in too deep? How long will this take before I throw in the towel? It was truly a metamorphic experience. It took a really long time to get to where I’m at. Not saying I don’t feel shitty time to time – I definitely do. But for the most part I am can truly say I live a body positive lifestyle and it really brought me inner peace.
Especially studying in the Women Gender Studies program, I felt more enlightened. I was taking classes in this field while concurrently working on my mental health and body dysmorphia problems. And it seemed like everything was all meant to be. I was meant to make the conscious decision to accept my body and go down the self-love journey, all the while learning about women empowerment and feminist ideals. I love that my program really stressed the importance of intersectional feminism. It made me realize that just me as a person alone is a rebellious act. I’m a woman, a person of color, plus-sized, and in the terms of living in San Francisco – a broke bitch.
When I started progressing in my mental health journey, I realized that I was acting and thinking exactly how corporations wanted me to. They’d rather have people be insecure and unhappy so they can sell products to their insecure consumers. And I refused to be another statistic.
Self-love really does not happen over night. It’s a journey forreal. And when I say journey, I mean a whole life long journey. You’re constantly changing, growing, adapting, making new experiences. Nothing remains the same, circumstances are always different. And you’ll feel those same highs and lows in your journey as well. It takes time. A lot of people reached out to me after I posted my last post saying they don’t know if they can ever start/ get to the point of accepting their bodies. But it’s really never too late to work on yourself. Best believe I’m gonna be an old ass grandma still struggling with my inner demons and trying to resolve my shit. I feel like as long as you’re conscious and aware that you want to change up your way of thinking/ make steps to becoming a better you, that’s all that really matters. Because there’s nothing more lame than a person who gives the excuse “Well, that’s just how I am.”
Working on my body dysmorphia and discovering the Body Positive Community made me realize that self-love is so much more than just liking and accepting what you see in the mirror. It’s internal as well. It made me realize – looks and appearance aside, am I a beautiful person inside? Am I good human being? I could be the baddest bitch out there, but if internally I’m rotten and toxic, what’s the point? And this journey really opened up so many other doors and layers of myself that I didn’t even know existed. You start discovering yourself. Is this really me, or the me I want people to know?
Anyways, that whole ordeal of me in class unfollowing everyone on social media that made me feel bad about myself happened towards the end of 2016.
Fast forward to last year, Fall 2018, my last semester of college. It was close to the 2 year anniversary of when I decided to accept my body and fall in love with the body positive attitudes and beliefs. And in those 2 years, I’ve tried to brand myself and advocate for bigger bodies and size diversity. I’ve decided “that’s my niche, that’s what I’m going to be known for” -in the writing world and in general. I’m out here putting it on my bio, occassionally writing about it here and there, and doing things that – at the time- I believed made it “obvious” what I stood for and believed.
Since my last post was so heavy and somewhat triggering, I’ve decided to share one of the most embarrassing moments in my life.
To all my friends and family that I’ve told… Yes, it’s the story of when I cried infront of my whole class 😭🤦🏻♀️😫
Listen, this was my last semester of college and then I was done.
I was in the Online Journalism class with Sachi as my professor. I’ve had her in the past, and she’s cool as hell. Every assignment she ever assigned to me – either in the Online Journalism or Multimedia Journalism class – it seemed like she knew that’s what I’ve been wanting to do/ start but didn’t have the balls to do it on my own. Of course, how would she know… but that’s really what it felt like to me! As if the Universe herself was like, “Listen, I’m tired of you dreaming up these ideas and never following through with your lazy ass… so0o0 I’m just going to make your professor assign it to you so you have to do it.”
I’ve always wanted to start a podcast. Of course one that focused on body positivity or anything along those lines. So when Sachi told us our assignment was to come up with 3 podcast ideas, I was all for it. She explained that a good friend of hers who is well-known in the podcast industry would be coming to our class to hear our pitches. We would have to give our reason, why it’s important, why would anyone care, who its geared towards, who we would interview, and basically do our best to try to sell our idea.
And then, the nerves started to get the best of me. When I was planning out my 3 pitches, I even considered not adding the body positive one at all. I’ve never given my “why” infront of people. I felt dumb for parading all through social media that I’m a body positive advocate, yet I’m scared to give my back story. In fact, very few knew why it was so important to me and why it pulled at my heart strings.
“Podcast on ghost stories” I wrote down. The amount of done that I had with myself 🤦🏻♀️ ….. I ended up writing out the body positive podcast pitch, explaining that I’ve been insecure my whole life, how I was in a verbally abusive relationship in the past, my eating disorder, and all the above. Basically, my last blog post summarized into a paragraph.
I had my pitches printed out and ready to share that night (it was a night class). Originally, Sachi said we’d be sharing all 3 ideas. But with the amount of time we had and the number of students that were in the class, we’d be there 5 ever. So she said pitch our #1 idea, and you know what else? Fuck it, don’t read from your paper, make it conversational and sell it to her!
😫🦋😫🦋😫🦋😫🦋😫🦋😫 went my tummy.
What’s crazy is I usually don’t really care about presenting. Yeah, it kinda sucks and I get a little nervous, but for the most part I’m like, whatever let’s just get this over with. NOT. DISSSS. TIMEEE. 💀💀💀💀.
Each classmate went up in front of the whole class and pitched their idea to our guest – Sachi’s friend who is well known for her podcasts. Sachi was standing at her desk behind her friend. My classmates were killin it! They were mad chill and sellin it! Nobody read from their paper, shit they didn’t even bring it up with them when they got up. The passion in some of their voices was inspiring. You just knew it was something they were passionate about. Some you could tell it’s their niche in a podcast pitch. I envied how relaxed everyone was.
Because from my seat, I was a mess express. My heart was beating as if I took 2 shots of preworkout. When the person in front of me went up to pitch, I was freaking out. Holy fucking shit. I’m next. I don’t want to do this anymore. Maybe I’ll just pitch the ghost story one. But I knew I’d be annoyed of myself if I took the easy way out and didn’t pitch what I’ve always wanted to start a podcast on.
The classmate in front of me was done. Everyone clapped. Fuuuuckkkk meeeeeeeee. I screamed in my head. My hands began to sweat, I turned red, my heart was racing so fast that I thought I was going to throw up and pass out all at the same time. I decided that I had to read from my paper no matter what Sachi said. I was way too nervous. It was either read from my paper or pretend like I didn’t do the assignment.
I walked up. “So I’m just going to read from my paper….” I said. Sachi looked at me like, bruh… really…. 🤣 I started reading my pitch, and I could hear my voice trembling and cracking. Literally so embarrassing. When I got to the part explaining how I was in a toxic relationship and how I developed an eating disorder, I knew I was going to cry. It built up inside me, I could feel my eyes watering. This was the first time I ever presented to people my why. Yeah, I’ve told those closest to me, but here I was, intimidated as hell because I was pitching to a well known podcaster infront of my professor and peers. My voice got deeper (if that’s even possible) and cracked some more.
Wellllllll if you’re gonna cry you might as well cry now because everyone knows you’re gonna cry anyways. I told myself. …..K! And then bust out crying. Not even talking about like a tear or something, but legit the ugly cry where you’re trying to talk but you’re uh-uh-huh-ing trying to catch your breath. I put the paper down, no longer reading or hiding behind it. I started freestyling on why the topic is important and why women need to hear this kind’ve stuff. It all just came out like word vommit – with a mix of ugly crying of course.
Towards the end of my speech, the girl towards the front of the room where I was standing handed me tissue. Y’all, she got up out of her seat to go to the bathroom to get my paper towels 😭💘 I thanked and her continued on. By now, Sachi was crying and the well-known podcaster was wiping away a tear or 2. I ended my rant with, “Sorry! I’m embarrassed. This is embarrassing.” Sachi and her friend quickly tried to snap me out of it saying it’s not embarrassing and that it just shows how passionate I am about the topic.
Still, I was so embarrassed. Seriously, probably one of the top 5 most embarrassing moments in my life. Everyone clapped as I sat back down and I was even more embarrassed. The insecure in me thought “Y’all are only clapping for me cuz you feel bad 😭.”
But what was even more of a FML moment was when I sat down back in my seat. The classroom is basically a lab room, so every chair had a computer infront of it. YOOOOOO, WHEN I TELL YOU I SAT DOWN AFTER MY PRESENTATION AND SAW MY DAMN REFLECTION ON THE BLACK IDLE COMPUTER SCREEN 😭💀😭💀😭💀😭🤣🤣🤣🤣 THAT WAS THE MF CHERRY ON TOP OF MY EMBARRASSMENT SUNDAE 😭😭💔. I literally look in the computer, staring at my reflection, internally Selena Gomez-ing it with the smile cry thinking “… literally why?! I hate you hahahahaahhahah why are you like this! 😫🤣” Forreal “when you look in the mirror and realize you played yourself.” My post cry computer reflection could seriously be a meme.
Anyways, I was so embarrassed that I really thought of dropping the class and taking it the next semester hahahah. But I was graduating and already applied for graduation. Dramatic. But that was really the first time I told my why. My reason. My back story.
Every single person that I’ve told that story to has literally laughed their ass off while I told it 🤣 To the point where my girls will be like “send pictures of you crying so we know its real,” “but did you cry tho 👀.” At the moment it was so embarrassing, like I truly believed there was no coming up from that 🤣🤣🤣. But now I think its hilarious.
I told Sachi I’m going to return in X amount of years as a guest speaker and tell the story of how I cried in her class to her class. By then I hope I’m doing something great in the journalism world. It’ll truly be an epic moment, and I’ll probably cry then too. 😫✌🏽
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