Am I Enough?

Thursday

God, today was one of the worst mental health days I’ve had in longer than I can remember.

Sure, I have anxiety at times. I go through stages of depression, more seasonal than not, but I don’t really count those as mental health days or issues. They’re just part of life to me. Maybe that’s because I’ve spent most of my life pushing through things that probably should have stopped me. I’ve always been the person who keeps moving, keeps functioning, keeps showing up, so I’ve never been particularly good at recognizing when something is affecting me more than I want to admit. It takes a lot for me to finally look at a day and say, this isn’t stress, this isn’t a bad mood, something is genuinely wrong.

Things people probably don’t know that I’ve been diagnosed with, and rightfully so because it’s embarrassing as hell, are Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria and Body Dysmorphia.

Body Dysmorphia is what has kept me from looking in the mirror more times than I can count. It’s why I got the tummy tuck and I’d do it a hundred more times. It’s the reason I’ve had complete sobbing meltdowns because I’m terrified of returning to a version of myself that carried so much shame, judgment, and self hatred that I fought like hell to escape. I’ve lived in that body before. I’ve felt the rolls when I sat down, the tightness of clothes that no longer fit, the constant awareness of every flaw and every change. When you’ve spent years being judged by how you look, those experiences don’t simply disappear because you’ve healed some of the wounds. Trauma changes your brain. The pathways become ingrained and your nervous system learns to scan for criticism, rejection, comparison, and danger long after the danger has passed. Brainspotting has helped and therapy has helped. The fear isn’t as loud as it used to be, but it’s still there, buried deep enough that most days I don’t notice it until something triggers it and suddenly I’m right back inside those feelings again.

Something triggered all of this. I’m not entirely sure what.

RSD, that’s an easier one to identify. You get rejected for long enough in your life and eventually your brain starts looking for it everywhere. You learn to read people’s presence or lack of it, changes in tone, increases or decreases in communication, shifts in energy. There are so many signs. If you care, look it up. If you don’t give a shit to understand me, I get it.

Add intense body dysmorphia to the mix and Thursday became the perfect storm.

I woke up feeling it before my feet even hit the floor. I tried on outfit after outfit and hated every one of them, not just because they were tight but because of how they felt. I have tactile sensitivity too, another lovely gift brought to you by years of abuse, so when the body dysmorphia gets triggered, clothing stops feeling like clothing and starts feeling restrictive. The tighter it is, the more trapped I feel, and that morning everything felt wrong.

I know I’ve put weight on. I don’t mind my ass and breast being bigger. Finally. But my stomach, my sides, the love handles, the saddle bags, those are the areas that break me. And Thursday they did.

Everything I tried on was too tight. I felt huge.

All of my pants are zeros and twos. Smalls and even some extra smalls. My shirts are smalls too. I’ve gotten rid of everything bigger because I swore I would never be “big” again. And if you want to criticize that those sizes are too small, save it. What I feel and think in these moments are what matters. All criticism does is validate the RSD.

Years ago, my Grama told me to put the clothes that no longer fit into totes because my size had always fluctuated. She told me I would eventually need them again and that getting rid of everything only guaranteed I’d have to spend money replacing it later. You would think I would have listened to the most loving and knowledgeable woman in my life, but every time I lose weight I feel so much victory and relief that I can’t get rid of those bigger sizes fast enough. Then life happens and I find myself standing in front of a closet with nothing that feels safe to wear.

What size am I now? Who the fuck even knows. Shirts are definitely mediums with snugness and larges if I don’t want them snug. Pants are probably fours or sixes. The pair of small pants I ordered recently couldn’t even be buttoned. I exchanged them for a medium and while I could technically button them, my stomach and sides looked like a busted can of biscuits spilling over the top. So I exchanged them for a large. It almost makes me sick to even write that.

The thing about Body Dysmorphia, RSD, and anxiety is that when one gets triggered hard enough, they all feed each other. They become a vicious cycle that is nearly impossible to escape. The emotional toll is exhausting and eventually your body starts carrying the weight of it too.

The trigger, I think, started the night before. I am preparing for my first confession at church Sunday and started reading about what I was supposed to confess beyond the obvious. As I worked my way through the Ten Commandments, I wasn’t just examining sins. I was examining myself. Every choice I’d made, every person I’d hurt, every justification I’d ever given myself, every failure, every insecurity. The deeper I dug, the darker the hole became. By the end of it, I wasn’t just thinking about confession anymore. I was carrying the weight of every version of myself that I wished had done better.

The envy I carry because the RSD tells me I’m not good enough to have the things other people have. The voice that tells me that’s why I’m never picked, why I’m overlooked, why I’m not promoted, why my hard work on projects is quite literally never acknowledged and accolades given to others and why people leave. I sat there speaking those things aloud and with each one I felt angrier, smaller, and more ashamed. By Thursday morning, that was all she wrote.

…

When someone truly cares for you, they usually sense you’re off before you ever say a word. They don’t try to fix you because they understand there isn’t anything to fix in that moment. They learn about the things that hurt you, the things that trigger you, and the things that help. They sit with you in the darkness instead of trying to drag you out of it. Sometimes all I need is consistency, a good morning and goodnight, a check in, a hug, or someone willing to remind me that I’m not alone. When those things are missing, the RSD fills in the blanks. It convinces me that I’m not even worth talking to, that I’ve become a burden, that people are pulling away, that I’m being left behind again. Rational or not, those thoughts don’t feel imaginary when you’re in the middle of them. They feel painfully real.

When I tell you I’m a lot, I’m complicated, and I need consistent communication, I don’t say that lightly. I may be strong. I may be resilient. Most days I carry things that would break other people and still show up smiling, still show up working, still show up caring for everyone around me. I don’t need a “good job”, I’m a big girl.

But there are parts of me that are still broken.

Parts that were shaped by rejection, criticism, abandonment, and years of believing my worth was tied to what I could do, how I looked, or what I could offer other people. Therapy has helped. Time has helped. Most days those parts stay quiet. But every once in a while something cracks the door open and all of those old voices come rushing back in.

Thursday was one of those days.

By the time my head finally hit the pillow that night, I was exhausted from carrying a battle nobody else could see and even more so, one nobody could feel. Not because I needed someone to fix it. Not because I wanted sympathy. Because fighting your own mind is exhausting, debilitating, and some battles leave bruises that nobody else knows are there.

Maybe that’s what Thursday really was.

Every wound I’ve spent years trying to heal showing up at the exact same time and asking the same question they’ve always asked.

Am I enough?

And if I’m being honest, some days I still don’t know the answer.