Gathoni Mwaura
My name is Gathoni Mwaura and I am a teacher by day, and an artist by night.
I feel like I’m not supposed to be here. I feel like my “flaws’ are not pretty enough. Looking at other people’s flaws, I think that they are so pretty, like they are pretty enough to be “accepted flaws” but I look at my tummy or my arms or my scars and I think, “I need to keep them hidden”. I have struggled with my weight for a very long time. Like, since I was eleven years old I’ve been dieting, starving myself and over-exercising. I’ve been bulimic, and I’ve been anorexic, where I’d have like an apple every two days.
My skin has also been another struggle. I have eczema, then a couple of years ago my forehead broke out with acne. I had never dealt with acne before so I just did what I knew, I started bursting the pimples and that didn’t really help things.
As I mentioned before, my weight issues began when I was pretty young. I remember one instance when some relatives were coming from the UK and they were bringing clothes, so they asked for our dress sizes. I gave my size, or rather, what I thought my size was, and my uncle said, “No, you’re very fat. You should give them a bigger size.”
That was October. For the next two months I pretty much starved myself, and by the time the relatives arrived, I had shrunk down to the size I had originally stated. That’s when it clicked in my mind, “This actually works!” And that began my whole “starving myself” journey, although I reckon I had issues way before then.
I realize I probably didn’t value myself highly, because the things I did to lose weight were extreme! I tried every cream I could, every pill; I walked up and down River Road visiting those quaint Indian shops to look for diet pills. Do you know I once tried to give myself food poisoning? A friend of mine had lost loads of weight when she got sick. I told her, “Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry. But it was so worth it because, look at how skinny you are!” She looked at me like I was crazy. Then, I went ahead and asked Google “How to get food poisoning”. I read this thing about bad chicken and fish and I tried it. Of course it didn’t work. First of all, I actually gained weight, then it made my stomach so tolerant of bad food, I can eat almost anything now and not get sick.
I also tried the cayenne pepper-maple syrup diet. In fact, I don’t remember having proper meals when I was a teenager; I would just nibble things here and there. I didn’t understand how people would sit down and eat a full meal of like rice and chicken and veggies. It wasn’t until a couple of years ago that I realized that I could actually eat a meal and I would be fine.
I have an apple-shaped body, so when I gain weight, it’s on my upper body. I had always wanted a sizeable bum and thighs so I tried “bum growth” creams. I even considered suing a particular well-known chemist in Nairobi because they promised me that a certain cream would give me a bum in two weeks. Of course, it didn’t.
Growing up, I didn’t really have a lot of positive body affirmation; not the kind that I would like to give my kids in the future anyway. The first person who affirmed my beauty was a man, who later took advantage of me and molested me. I lived with that for many years. For the longest time, I thought that that’s what I was good for. I was really cute when I was a kid, but because of that experience I started praying to God to please take away my beauty! The bulk of my issues started from there. Later on, I started seeking validation from other people. I had to constantly hear people tell me that I was beautiful.
It sucks to dislike yourself, because you’re with yourself 24/7, so you can’t run away from your negative thinking.
One of my mainest flaws is that I have scars because I used to cut myself. I’ve come to terms with depression; how it’s a disease and I don’t have control over it, but I tend to dislike the scars I got from cutting more than my other “flaws” because I did it to myself. When people ask me, “What happened to your arm?” I’m not sure what to tell them because it was just me doing it to myself. You see, with “flaws” like stretch marks I can say, “Yeah, I just gained/lost a lot of weight.” Or, “I had a baby.” But how do I say, “I did this because I disliked myself”? Cutting for me was never a “high” like I hear people say. It really hurt. I was so miserable for so long, and a lot of that misery had to do with how I looked, so I guess that’s just how I expressed it.
I was always a drinker, even when I was young, as young as eleven. As you can tell, that eleventh year was a significant one. But my drinking escalated and got really heavy when I got into a deep depression a few years ago. I went through a phenomenally difficult time and after that, I felt like I had two choices: either kill myself, or deal with the depression and the issues.
I’m still here. In the past couple of years, I have been getting help for my depression. The person I went to see about it guided me through a self-love process. It was hard for me to love my present self, so he said to me, “Why not focus on loving Gathoni as a child?” When I thought about myself as a child I could see “her” so clearly: scared and insecure and already hating herself. I felt compassion for her. That child faced a lot of difficult things and she grew into me. Considering what she went through, I was doing pretty okay. That self-love process helped me to start loving myself. And I was able to see the support around me, too. The family that I considered to be judgmental actually ended up being my support system. I have been cutting myself some slack since then, understanding that I’m going through a journey of healing. It has helped accept some of my “flaws” too, like my scars, especially from acne, which developed because I was taking anti-depressants. I look at them kindly because they were a part of my healing.
Right now, I’m not yet where I want to be in terms of confidence, but I’m definitely not where I used to be. I’m still on a journey to self-acceptance. I still have days where I’ll wear high-waist pants to hide my tummy or I’ll wear all black to look slimmer, but I’ve done a lot of work on myself in the past two years; a lot of self-love self-affirmation, where I tell myself “I’m good enough”.
I was drawn to Flawnt It because I love all things body positive. I have come to see the beauty in imperfections. So I thought to myself, why is it that I can look at someone’s imperfections and love them but when I look in the mirror, even when I’m skinny, I have a hard time accepting my own? I want to begin seeing the beauty in my own imperfections. I want to be significant to myself; to have self-confidence and value myself. I also hope that my story will help someone see that for themselves, and help them begin to love and accept themselves.
I think if I was to project myself into the future, and I was loving myself totally and being confident and happy, and I looked back at this current Gathoni, I would want to say to her, “You’ve been fine all along. You didn’t have to work so hard to change anything about yourself. You shouldn’t have accepted everything that every human being told you about who you are, especially guys. You are alright. The battle was worth it to get where you are.”
Then, I think I’d hug me.
Photos courtesy of Kombo Mutuku Muoka, Urbantu Media
