“Self Love or their perception,” what will you choose?

What is your struggle? Why is it even your struggle?

In life, as we grow up we face different struggles and adversities. For some, it is “simple” things like Weight loss and for others like me it is weight gain.  I say simple in quotes because it appears simple only and only if it is not your struggle.

As you may have noticed from time immemorial and even more vividly now since the Covid 19 pandemic brought parts of the world to a standstill; there have been memes doing rounds about the possible outcome of the lock down. To imply that you either get out of the lock down looking like a model because you have been on a perfect diet or differently beautiful with a bump because you are either carrying a child or “fat” because you have been eating your food “carelessly”.

It’s also common for us to generally make some remarks about other people’s appearances oblivious of their struggles.

I will tell you a short story just to give you my dear reader perspective and get you thinking about what your struggle might be. For the record this is not just about weight, it can be anything that you are struggling with. As a child I knew nothing about weight gain but as I grew older I was made to believe that I needed more weight; almost everyone made me feel like being as small as I am made me less than ENOUGH. What followed was a “must achieve weight gain campaign” which failed miserably.

I have always been petite! I struggle with weight gain and my eating habits are extremely terrible. It could take me an hour to finish my meal. My body is in no rush to adjust unless it is growing another human. Interestingly, the few times I feel like I have added weight, if I happen to feel unwell/overthink anything, I will lose that weight in an instant but guess what the BMI reader shows I am very normal. Only once, when life was trying to squeeze some goodness out of me did the BMI appear below normal clearly showing that I was underweight. I thought I was about to die. I didn’t die though, unfortunately my baby girl ILIA did during that time. I could say, she went ahead of me so that I may live and tell stories such as this. It is only now that I am confident to share my parallel life with the world, if she was here I would be writing about other things.

This struggle dates as far back as primary school where given my size, one “smart kid” then thought it was very sweet of him/her to nickname me “Ka Pipe”. You know those water pipes they lay underground? According to them, I was as small as an underground pipe. Imagine that! I don’t know if I cried about it or if I told anyone how I felt but I must have been sad. It is the only explanation I can give for the fact that I remember this  incident.

Ps: I don’t remember that kid and I don’t know what they are up to today but shout outs to them! The size still hasn’t changed years later and I am “piping it up” the best way I can.

Then, there was this notorious primary teacher who was a bully, in my village the kids used to call him “Tr.Gustin” now that I look back this was meant to be “Tr. Augustine”. These are struggles of studying from upcountry schools. Smh. One day, he came to class and I don’t remember for what reason but he lifted me by the collar with one arm and swung me around like he was swinging a lifeless bird to the amusement of all the other kids. What I remember about this incident though, is that as soon as I reached home I told my Grandpa (RIP) who looked for the Teacher, confronted him and changed my school right away. Tr. Gustin, today by the click of my finger on the keyboard and for the benefit of my readers I forgive you!

That is not all, some of my friends are so mean when it comes to describing my size; don’t ask me why I still call them my friends. I do because now that I appreciate myself better I feel bad for them every time I see them struggling to lose weight; spending a lot of money on their gym membership not only to look curvy but to shed off that weight. This their struggle, is not my struggle.

Why am I sharing this 30 years later? (30 sounds strange but age is wisdom, lol). Brene Brown notes that owning our stories and loving ourselves through that process is the bravest thing that we will ever do.  I also know that no matter what your perceived struggle is, there is still something another person is going through that you are not and for that alone you need to be grateful. Affirm yourself positively, you are perfectly perfect because your creator says so.

The past couple of years, I have encountered people with even deeper struggles than I and questions like these below keep coming to mind.

a) How did you get here?

b) How has this affected you?

c)How does it make you feel?

d) How do we get past that struggle and live our best lives?

Personally, because of the past struggles I started competing for attention at an early age and trying to prove myself worthy in so many aspects of my life. I remember one Auntie of mine who said I was only good in matters concerning the classroom because I couldn’t do house work like cooking. Truth be told, up to now whereas I can fix some meals I sometimes think maybe she was right.

That one single comment also got me too focused on “classroom affairs” and nothing else to the extent that the day I had an “accident” in the classroom affairs it seemed like my world had come to an end. It seemed like I had failed at the one and only thing which I was made to believe I was good at.

I am however grateful to God and his creation that things have been simplified; there is a handy electronic for almost every house chore and therefore all I need is to work hard and afford such luxuries. There is also Google and Youtube too for all the recipes.

If you are still following, I believe that by now you know that I want to dissect Self Esteem, more so it’s relation to your mental well being:

Self-esteem is generally how you view yourself and it is influenced by several things such as events in our lives, our relationships, our living situations among others. All these influence the ideas about oneself resulting into either a low self-esteem or a normal/balanced self-esteem.

I will focus on low self-esteem which is majorly the negative things that influence the idea about yourself.

These negative things if unmanaged define who you are and you are made to believe that it is indeed who you are. They become your “I am”. As a result, you begin to behave in a certain way that you believe is aligned with the negative aspect of the “I AM” including unhelpful behaviours.

I don’t know what your struggle is but I want you to evaluate your life and ask yourself why that struggle is even a struggle at all.

Think of things in your past that have negatively affected and defined you and what ways you have  adopted to as a way of coping with these things that have led you to live in your shadow? What are the negative beliefs you have of yourself?

What do you believe is expected of you by society as a result of these negative beliefs?

Today, I don’t want to take much of your time, so I will end this post here with just those few questions above and I will be back in the next post to explore how to move past that struggle and live your best life out of the shadow. Also, just to remind you to be proud of who you are and not ashamed of how someone else sees you.

Remember, stay safe, keep showing up and stay F.I.R.M! Don’t let your perceived struggles limit your potential. You are greater than those struggles. Allow yourself to break free.

If you would like to share your story with me, please leave a comment or send me an email to fabfamshop@gmail.com.

Blog by:

Fortunate Ingabire Rwalinda Mugarura (F.I.R.M)