this summer, i want to feel human again

is it too late to stop obsessing over my body?

Note: This is a personal piece from someone recovering from body dysmorphia. It’s about my experience, not a judgment of any body but my own. Just something to keep in mind as you read.

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Three days ago, I tried a swimsuit for the first time in two years.

I don’t know how it happened. I promised myself I would never let my insecurities keep me out of any experience again—so many summers lost in the name of not having the so-called ‘bikini body’—but there I was: half-naked in my apartment, in front of my full-length mirror, looking at all the places my swimsuit could fill that my past self didn’t even have.

Hips, thighs, belly. Even my chest looks fuller now.

In The Summer I Turned Pretty, Belly says that her whole life is measured in summers and, I recently realized that so is mine. But not in the same way.

(At least, not in a summer-vacation-house-having-a-love-triangle-with-two-BROTHERS kind of way.)

To me, summer is a reminder of the truth I can slip off under numerous layers of clothes during the rest of the year: that I hate my body in a deep, almost guttural way.

And that, if I don’t do anything about it, this hatred could end up conditioning my life forever.

To be honest, I thought trying on that swimsuit would be way more dramatic. Maybe it's that my frontal lobe has finally fully developed, or maybe it's true that we suffer more from our thoughts than from reality.

As I stood there, alone under the dim, orange-ish light of my lamp, I thought about all the times when my perception of my own body pulled me out of moments that were worth living, worth being present for.

Like when I was ten, and pretended to be sick during our end-of-the-year trip because I didn’t want my classmates to see my body at the waterpark. Or that summer when I was twelve, when I starved myself to the point of fainting in the street, until my grandpa had to come pick me up while paramedics checked my blood sugar levels.

Or every so-perfect Spanish summer throughout most of my teen years, sitting on the beach, fully clothed, watching as my friends laughed, played, and splashed in the water. When I would rather feel like dying in 40ºC heat wearing jeans, just because I was too afraid to show my legs in shorts.

All the times I cancelled plans and watched as others would go on and live their lives while I put mine on pause, just because I truly believed I was not worthy of real experiences because of the shell that was given to me as a body.

There was a summer in my twenties when I finally got ‘everything I wanted’—the shorts, the beaches, the parties, the swimming pools, the summer flings—because, almost a decade after everything started, I had relapsed into my eating disorder. A mix of stomach issues that left me unable to eat, and a non-toxic—yet kind of weird—relationship, made me lose so much weight that all the ‘Oh, you look so beautiful’s quickly became ‘Wait, you don’t look healthy, and we are worried about you.’

When I finally got my ‘dream body’ back—starved, sick, too fragile to even function, or even think at all—I couldn’t enjoy it.

I was the smallest I had been since I was twelve, sure. I was wearing swimsuits, shorts, tank tops, and going to pool parties, but nothing had really changed in my mind. I would still force myself not to eat anything during beach days, because I didn’t want to be bloated. I spent what could have been some of my happiest days in a haze, hands covering my tummy while sitting down, watching as my friends feasted by the pool.

I still remember that table, even two years later: full of chips, hummus, different kinds of cheese, fruits, jamón, sangría, and even white wine.

I didn’t dare to try much. I just smoked a blunt, because that wouldn’t make me feel bloated, right? And if I felt dizzy, I could always blame it on the weed.

There was one night where I was making out with, probably, the most beautiful girl I have ever seen, at the beach. And—despite all of my efforts to be the skinniest I had ever been—I still felt a pit of anxiety when her hands went down my stomach. ‘We are sitting down’, I remember thinking. ‘So she must be feeling my stomach rolls right now’.

If that was at my smallest and my sickest, what could I expect now that I’ve gained weight, that I’m at my healthiest, that I have more stomach rolls, more cellulite, more stretch marks, and more proof of all the things I made my body go through?

That’s what they don’t tell you about recovery. You can gain all the weight back and change your habits, but the voice of shame will get stuck between the folds of your brain until you learn to face it—until you learn to un-believe all the lies it’s constantly feeding you.

I often think about this Margaret Atwood quote that will forever live rent-free in my mind:

‘Even pretending you aren't catering to male fantasies is a male fantasy: pretending you're unseen, pretending you have a life of your own, that you can wash your feet and comb your hair unconscious of the ever-present watcher peering through the keyhole, peering through the keyhole in your own head, if nowhere else. You are a woman with a man inside watching a woman. You are your own voyeur’.

‘The ever-present watcher peering through the keyhole, peering through the keyhole in your own head’. That’s exactly what I have in my brain: a cruel, critical, brutal voyeur.

I’ve become nothing but an observer, always looking at myself from the outside, barely experiencing the world through my senses.

When I was a kid, summer was all about salty days, sand getting stuck between my nails, seagull-watching, sunburnt shoulders, and growing freckles on the Mediterranean coast. Weekly beach trips, playing mermaids and sharks with my brother, staying in the water until my fingertips were so wrinkled I didn’t feel human anymore, until I was one with the sea. Picking up so many seashells they would not fit at home anymore, still hearing the whisper of the waves right before falling asleep.

I remembered this endlessly curious, hungry-for-the-world girl while I was looking at myself in the mirror three days ago. And I thought, well. Maybe I don’t hate summer, after all. I hate the constant body-checking, the never-ending voice in my head that tells me lookatyourthighs / yourcelluliteisshowing / don’tsitdownlikethis / lookatallthefatinyourarms / yourfacelookspuffytoday / rememberhowyourbodyusedtolooklike?

It’s exhausting. And unnecessary. And it has made me miss out on so many things...

So I decided to make a promise to myself: that no matter how my body looks (or how I think it looks), I will never deprive myself of a human experience ever again. That I will try to look at the world from the inside, instead of constantly watching myself from the outside.

I still deserve to feel the things I felt as a child—when my conscience wasn’t fully developed yet, and everything that mattered was what I could hold in my hands.

This is what I wrote in my journal after staring at my reflection for way too long, until all the body-image-induced anxiety turned into ‘I don’t know what all the fuss was about, anyway’:

‘I can’t hide forever. Twenty-five will turn into thirty, and then fifty. One day I’ll look back and I will regret all the times I didn’t go to the beach because I hated the temporary shell that was given to me during my time on Earth. What a stupid little thing—the world keeps moving, and one day I’ll forget I was even alive. When eternal darkness engulfs everything, it won’t matter that I felt fat at the beach in June 2025’.

(Yes, a bit mystical. Sorry about that, but it’s my personal journal, and that’s the thought process my atheist, almost-nihilistic-self goes through most of the time).

So, yes. This summer, I want to feel human again.

I want to reconnect with my body and my senses. I don’t want to worry about being seen—I want to see, touch, hear, taste, and smell by myself. I want to drown in reality, and not in my thoughts.

I came across the concept of object writing, created by Pat Pattison, recently, and I’ve been trying to implement it into my day-to-day, whether it’s in my journal or in my head.

It’s pretty simple. It’s about focusing on a certain object, moment, or emotion and writing about it through your senses in a period of ten minutes. It’s been an incredible grounding exercise for me, and there’s even a website where they give you a random word and a timer to do it yourself.

I am not my body, but I do get to experience the world through my body. And, to me, that is one of the biggest blessings of the human experience.

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Note: After writing this, I decided to go to the beach (for the first time in two years!) by myself, and I can’t explain how liberating and transcendental it felt. Me, alone, in the same swimsuit I was wearing when I weighed six, maybe seven kilos less, but when I had six hundred, maybe seven hundred insecurities more.

And I let myself feel. The sand between my toes, the sun drying the salty water on my skin. I let myself live it from the inside, instead of watching from the outside.

I let myself eat chips, because I felt like it, without the fear of getting bloated. I picked up shells and sat by the shore, seagull and people-watching as the sun went down. I talked to an old lady, who was reading a book next to me, and I called a friend on my way home.

This is exactly what I want my entire summer to feel like.

Things that make me feel better in my body, and not about my body:

• The sun stroking my skin.

• The sun drying the water on my legs after getting out of the sea.

• Laughing so hard my ribs get tough.

• Touching as a love language. Both platonically and romantically.

• Doing exercise because I like it, and not as a way of self-harm. Yoga, for example. Bouldering.

• Crying after having emotions stuck for too long.

• Wearing a perfume or shampoo that feels like a signature scent.

• Strokes. In my hair, on my skin.

• Getting in bed and covering myself with a soft, fluffy blanket, up to my neck.

• Eating food that is good and nutritious for my body. Not eating too little, not eating too much. Just the amount my body asks for.

• Sharing a meal with a loved one.

• Cuddles.

• Sweet little treats.

• The evening breeze on my face.

• Dancing alone in my apartment.

• Clean sheets right after showering.

• Stretching.

• Breathwork, meditation—being so relaxed I could fall asleep on the floor.

I’d also love to know yours. What are the little things that make you feel better in your body, and not about it?

And, again, if you enjoyed this and want to support my writing (or just buy me a coffee because you’re kind and lovely), you can do that here. ☕💛