Lost and found

I used to be thin. I say this with a reasonable amount of certainty because I have pictures to prove it. Despite this, the doubt remains still. Somewhere along the way I'd forgotten, truly forgotten, what it was like to be thin. There was no then anymore. It was as if I'd always been overweight and the thin girl in the photos was someone else.

Consequently, as I started to lose weight, I'd observe thin people wherever I went. Imagining myself to be them because, as I said, I could not remember being anything other than overweight. However, as time went on and I lost the pounds, watching thin people no longer held the same appeal. On the contrary, it stirred up decidedly uncomfortable feelings. Instead of exploring said feelings, I took the easy way out. I stopped watching thin people.

It wasn't until recently that I figured out why watching them made me feel uncomfortable. It was because I was seeing something in those people that I hadn't seen for years: myself. Or rather, the doppelgänger of my thin self - entirely unrecognizable and yet eerily familiar all the same. No wonder I wanted to run screaming in the other direction.

Nowadays, I no longer feel that strangeness. I'm starting to remember what it was like to be thin. I'll be looking at myself naked in the mirror and think, "I remember my back looking like that." Sometimes, I'll catch myself standing in a certain way, a way in which I used to carry myself when I was smaller. That feeling of being petite but with an indomitable spirit.

Everyday, I see more and more of what my body used to be. It has more scars and stretch marks, but the shape is the same. I've found what was once lost. And I've come to believe that the same could be said for many people. The thin girl - or boy - has always been inside of us. We might not remember or recognize them, but they're there all the same.