A letter from Nov 06, 2022

Dear 24 year old FutureMe, Never in a million years would I have imagined myself to have body image issues at the ripe age of 23. Since gaining some weight I just haven't felt like myself at all. I haven't felt like myself in a while tbh. Might even be before I started wearing the hijab and before the body image issues. It was great for a while when I was in Egypt. I felt at peace. I haven't felt like that ever since. The moment I set foot back in the Netherlands I just felt off. I'm not sure what's wrong with me anymore. I'll just dump the issues I'm dealing with here. Maybe if I write it down and read it back it'll make more sense to me. First off, I feel like everyone thinks I'm annoying. Like I just don't feel like people actually like me or like spending time with me. I feel like I talk to much. I wish someone would be honest with me and just tell me if I'm annoying them or am annoying in general. But that also stems from years of people telling me to shut up as a child. It's funny because the first time I was forced to sit down with my own thoughts in 2020 I finally realized why I went from being an extroverted child to an incredibly introverted person. Although it has become better over time due to me trying to work through my traumas. When you're a child and everyone around you except your parents tells you that you talk too much and that you're annoying, you start to believe them. You start to shut up more. Now that I'm learning to become more social again, this has been very hard on me. I kid you not, this voice in my head just tells me constantly that I'm annoying, not interesting and that I should stop blowing up peoples brains from talking so much. I know that I can overdue it sometimes. But I just have a lot of thoughts and an active imagination. Plus I hate long silences. They make me uncomfortable. But this trauma just taught me how to be unkind to myself. I'll just stop talking to not absolutely bore the person in front of me. Literally tell myself to stop being annoying. This is resulting in me not trusting anyone's reaction. I automatically assume that people don't actually want to spend time with me. Or when they do they just want to leave soon bc I'm annoying. I curse at my family every day for doing this to me. I was a child. I just had so many ideas. My imagination was spilling out of my head. Instead of nourishing it they crushed it all together. And here we are. Now to the more recent problem. I gained weight. A bit much in a short amount of time. Not sure why either. I was already kind of dealing with not liking how I looked. But this was also a pre hijab issue so you could say it's been a very long journey that just doesn't seem to want to end. But now with the weight gain, I just feel ugly. For a while even before knowing how much weight I gained I just felt very blown up and uncomfortable. I wasn't comfy in my own skin anymore. Then I weighed myself and it started a whole anxiety induced obsession with losing said weight. I was and still am very worried that I'll develop something alarming like an eating disorder. So I make sure I eat my 2-3 meals a day. After thinking about it I think I've been overeating a lot due to stress and anxiety in the past year. Now that I started school again I'm eating less by default. But that wasn't good either. I was eating less but what I ate was always ****. And if I ate well I would just eat A LOT. I'm not sure why either. So as I've been spending some time living alone I make sure I eat well but also healthy and started taking my vitamin's again. I want to start taking care of myself again because I feel like I haven't in a while. I already lost some weight by just drinking more water and not eating every bag of chips or cookies in a 2 meter radius. But I catch myself looking at others and just feeling like I'm huge. Yet I went through my old pictures and I don't feel like I changed that much. Like you can't really see the weight gain. I feel like I'm insane. I really don't want to feel like this. I think the low self esteem started after I broke things off with he who shall not be named. Somehow I got used to getting validation from others. Not having that anymore is taking a toll on me for some reason. Now to the realization I just made yesterday. Yk my favorite trobe in a tv show or book is when the guy falls first. Like he secretly already loved the main lead girl. I think thats because I can't imagine myself falling for anyone first. I don't trust men enough to do that. Besides, I feel like it would be a waste of time bc why would anyone fall for me? I know people have liked me in the past but idk. I lowkey feel unlovable? My standards are also quite high because of all the ****** men nowadays. Even though I feel unlovable at times I also don't think I should accept just anything. Anyways, it's almost like I need a confirmation first so I can decide. Which is just very ****** of me tbh. Am I just traumatized? No clue. All I know is that I feel unlovable and that sucks because I do really want to feel a special connection with someone. I really REALLY want to be a mom. But I'm 23 and so young. It just sucks to feel like this. I just want to stop crying and not worry about any of this anymore. Sometimes I want to go back to when I was 15 and just stopped feeling anything for a while like the dramatic ***** that I am. But yeah, that was the result of even more trauma that I don't think I ever got over so that fun :) When will I become someone that can share these things with others. I feel like I have this facade that I keep up. The strong unshakable woman. Head strong with iron like feelings. But I really am not like that. Deep inside I'm still that overly imaginative child that just wants to talk about her ideas and tell every single person she loves that she loves them. On the outside I show none of that. Instead I just cry on my own and keep it all bottled in. I'm really ******* depressed. And I lowkey hate who I am. Maybe someday I'll actually tell someone about all this. But then again I wouldn't want to bother anyone with these petty *** problems. Bc compared to other peoples problems, mine seem insignificant. I know I'm even lucky to have my problems be like this. I'm just really ******* tired man. Please tell me it stops hurting.