Marzipan is a twenty-five year old with an English degree, a penchant for body image activism, an over active imagination, and a desire to love and adore herself and others truly and imperfectly and to the best of her abilities. Her blog, Medicinal Marzipan, is both a record of her recovery from a lifetime of fear, mistrust, and self loathing, and a testament to how wonderful life can be once you decide to let go and learn to love yourself.

When I was a kid I rarely felt fat when I was naked. As if somehow out of the confines of clothing and sizes and labels, my body looked just like the bodies splayed all over magazines and television. I remember running my hands over my stomach and thinking that it felt flat, it felt like those stomachs looked.

I have been overweight for as long as I can remember. I don’t even know if I wouldn’t have noticed if I hadn’t one day become aware of the way that people’s stare would catch on my stomach when they looked me up and down, or the look in my mother’s eyes when she looked at my thighs as I pulled on a swim suit. It’s always that one second of looking to long that snapped me right back into reality, slapping me back into my place if I dared to move about in peace, taking up too much space or smiling too big – for a fat girl.

For the majority of my life, my body has dictated my experience with the world around me. Don’t talk to loud in class, don’t assert yourself, stay small, smile, be nice, treat people kindly, be funny. I would dress my fat up and take it to parties where I wasn’t welcome, where the frat boys would call me Shamu, affectionately zoning directly in on my favorite aspects of my childhood and the hours I spent crying/planning/dieting/failing/binging/and crying some more. I would dress my fat up in loud accessories, perfect make-up, and straightened hair.

During high school and college, my impaired body image and low self esteem pushed me to make choices that were detrimental and horrible to my psyche. To my core, I felt as though I was so worthless I couldn’t say no to anyone, which, as you might have guessed, found me in many a sexually traumatic and damaging experience. I knew that I was smart and academically successful, strong and athletically successful, but the negativity that surrounded my feelings about my body led me to seek validation in ways that I still cannot understand. I wanted to be the beautiful girl who had a bevy of suitors. I wanted to be courted. I wanted my hand held in public places. Instead I was the secret grope in the closet girl, the girl that you never told your friends you banged, and the girl that you could tell wouldn’t say no.

It took me until the year after I graduated college to understand that when I thought I had been looking for love and romance, because I didn’t truly believe I deserved it, I never found it. I started – very slowly, mind you – to work on love myself. When I describe this process to people, I always feel like an idiot because I describe it so simplistically when I know (believe me) that it is the hardest thing for a person to do.

And honestly? At first I faked it. I would summon up whatever possible strength I had and I would practice walking tall, feeling sexy even when I felt disgusting, asserting myself, and believing that I was worthy of blissful, satisfying, and mutually adoring relationships. I buy clothing that fits, even when it kills me to go up a size, because I truly believe that you look beautiful if you feel beautiful – no matter what your size – and you will not feel beautiful if you have to constantly tug at your clothing or if it pinches and hinders your range of motion. I would pursue people that I found attractive and was SHOCKED when I realized that people didn’t run away screaming. I did things that terrified me, such as becoming a professional hula hooper and performing on stage in scantily clad outfits in front of an audience, or on the street with many people watching.

I literally forced myself through the shell of low self confidence that had kept me at arms length for the majority of my life. And at first, it worked like a charm. I felt liberated and fantastic and like I was on top of the world. I felt like I could do anything. The reality is that now it has become more of a struggle again, because I fell in love, gained some weight, and now am consumed by some of my old feelings. The thing about body image really that it is something that you need to keep working at. There are times when you feel amazing and it is so easy to love yourself you barely think about it, and others when you are all torn up inside and want to hide and cry. The real strength is keeping hope through those times, pushing yourself to keep making good choices, and cutting yourself some slack when you don’t.

Visit Marzipan’s [amazing] blog, Medicinal Marzipan!