Growing up, I learned early on how to pretend. Not pretend in the playful, childhood sense — like dress-up or imaginary games — but a more quiet, painful kind of pretending.
I learned how to act like everything was fine even when it wasn’t, especially when it came to food, my body and how I saw myself. And If I’m being honest, a lot came from growing up next to someone who seemed to have the body I was always told I should want.
My sister has always been skinny. Naturally thin, effortlessly “perfect.” I’d hear people compliment her over and over: “You’re so tiny!” “You could be a model!” Even when they didn’t say anything directly to me, I could feel the comparison hanging in the air like a fog I couldn’t escape. Like a moth watching a beautiful butterfly flying through flowers. I was growing up in a body that didn’t match hers, and somehow that made me feel like mine was wrong — like I was the “before” picture no one wanted to be. I remember my mom saying, “Put the food down Saybel, your sister needs it more.” This cut deep between me and my mother’s relationship.
So I started hiding. I didn’t talk about how hard it was to eat in front of people. I didn’t admit how often I skipped meals, or how much shame I carried around after eating something “bad.” I smiled. I laughed. I made jokes. And inside, I quietly punished myself for not being “enough.” I told myself if I could just be skinny like her, things would feel OK. That I’d feel OK.
But it wasn’t just my sister’s body I was comparing myself to — it was every girl on my screen. Social media, TV shows, magazines, ads … they all sent the same message: thin is beautiful, and everything else you have to “fix.” Every time I opened Instagram or TikTok, I saw endless videos of girls with flat stomachs, perfect angles and “What I eat in a day” clips that added up to barely a snack. When those images are all you see, they start to feel like the only standard that matters. What made it worse is how fake so much of it is – filters, Photoshop, angles and lighting tricks. I didn’t just want to be skinny ; I wanted to be accepted, loved, and seen the way those girls were. I didn’t realize that I was measuring myself against something that isn’t even humanly achievable most of the time.
But here’s the truth : Striving to look like someone else — especially someone you love — is a trap. It doesn’t make you feel better. It just makes you feel invisible. I was fighting a battle inside my own mind, and nobody knew. And I let that happen, because I thought admitting it would make me weak. I didn’t know that there is real strength in saying, “I’m not OK.”
Now I’m starting to learn that I deserve to be seen as I am. That my body is not a failure just because it isn’t like hers. That no one should feel like a failure because their bodies are different. That food is not something to earn or fear. And that pretending doesn’t protect me — it only isolates me. What I needed back then wasn’t perfection. It was protection and compassion. It was someone to say, “You don’t have to look like her. You’re already worthy.”
I am proud of who I am and how I look. I’m not going to pretend anymore.
Rock Star Writers Blog 