Melissa Brock: Chubby Ankles and All
 When I was about 12 or 13 I started realizing that there was this whole acceptance thing that starts being demanded of you in our society. One day when I was 13 a boy I liked a lot told me I had chubby ankles. If he thought my ankles were chubby, I figured the rest of me must be too. That weird, random comment started me on the road to the eating disorder anorexia. I remember looking at things the world thought were beautiful, such as magazines and television, and thinking, Well that’s beauty, so that’s what I need to be. My descent into eating disorders was a gradual thing. By talking myself into not feeling well, I eventually felt sick to my stomach all the time and ended up not eating anything. People in my life noticed the changes in me, but they didn’t know what to do.
A couple of months went by and I was eating next to nothing—I lost 20 pounds and was unhealthy—both physically and psychologically. Surprisingly, I thought being thinner would make me happy, but I just became more and more unhappy, and I didn’t know what to do. My best friend at the time had just gone through an eating disorders program for bulimia, and I called her up one day and told her I thought I had a problem. She referred me to some counselors and I talked with them, but she was really the key ingredient in my recovery. I knew she loved me, and it helped so much to hear about how she had dealt with her own eating disorder and what she had gone through. Most important, she told me that the beauty we find in the world is not true beauty—I would only be happy when I saw myself as beautiful. But all I saw was ugliness.
Then one day the way I viewed myself changed in a miraculous way. Normally, I avoided looking at myself in the mirror because I didn’t like anything I saw there. But one morning I got up to get ready for school and I did look in the mirror. I saw myself in a whole new light—not as an ugly, chubby teenager, but as a beautiful young woman. I was able to cling to that moment of truth and honesty and see myself as I truly was . . . a perfect creation. It wasn’t like everything was perfect after that, but eventually I was on the road to being healthy again.
There’s a song on our album Beauty from Pain called “Courage” that’s specifically about my experience with anorexia. I thought it would be helpful to share my story for the kids who might be struggling with issues of acceptance. Yet when the whole thing was done, I sat and listened to it and started crying. I realized that I’d left the bulk of my problems back in high school, but that this is something I still deal with every day. I still struggle with feeling like I’m not good enough or pretty enough.
I thought when I was all grown up and done with high school that I wouldn’t feel those emotions any more. But it’s all kind of the same; we’re always looking for acceptance and for people to say, “We like you; come be our friend.”
Many people struggle with the same feelings of inadequacy, and the one thing I want you to understand is that you don’t have to feel like you need to tackle it all at once and then it will be better. It’s a gradual process . . . it’s waking up every day saying, “I am beautiful today and I accept that, and I’m going to choose to live this way.” But the truth of the matter is, some days you don’t. Some days, everything gets the better of me, and I feel horrible about myself. But I know that I am loved just exactly as I am . . . chubby ankles and all.
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