Who else has cried in a dressing room?
TW: body image
It was a late evening in summer, I was in high school and feeling insecure as ever. I was invited to go swimming. Something came over me, heart pounding, my breath was short and staggered. I knew I would have to put on a swimsuit. A feeling of sharp dread came over me as I struggled through a panic attack. “A swimsuit...in front of my friends….in front of BOYS,” my brain couldn’t handle the idea of showing anyone any part of my body.
I didn’t wear a swimsuit for 6 years after that.
Obviously I told my friends I couldn’t make it and made every excuse in the book for the next several years to not wear a swimsuit.
Now it is important to mention that I did serve a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints for 18 of those months. As a missionary you are not allowed to swim during that time (and in California it was rough for most people). While that year and a half gave me some of the best times of my life it also gave me something I craved for years before. The idea that I wouldn’t have to wear a swimsuit for any reason.
Finally I didn’t have to make excuses every single time someone invited me to a pool, lake, river, or any sort of water activity. Before my church mission I threw away my swimsuit and never looked back. When I came home I didn’t even bother to buy one, I knew I would not be caught dead showing people that much of myself.
This insecurity had nothing to do with “modesty” and everything to do with insecurity. For me wearing a swimsuit was a sign that you were comfortable with yourself and I was not.
About a year and a half after I came home I decided to go and buy a swimsuit and as I sat in a dressing room surrounded by swimsuits that I hated I couldn't help but cry. I could not get myself to love my body, I couldn’t even look in the mirror. I expected something to happen to me like in a Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants style montage I would find the “magic” swimsuit that wouldn’t make me hate myself.
It did not happen. I even prayed. I asked God to let me just feel confident in myself in anything.
For years I had been buying (and still do) a size bigger in clothes then I need to because I could not grasp my own size.
No revelation has ever been given to make myself feel confident in my body. But eventually I did buy a swimsuit. And I am able to wear it and be okay with my body.
I write this for those who have cried in dressing rooms, that have an insecurity that they can’t get past, we are in this together.
Enjoy summer the way you feel the most comfortable. You are loved, you are beautiful and you can take your time. For me, I am going to make myself look in the mirror and wear the swimsuit outside.