As I write this article, I sit less than five pounds from being underweight. When I look down at myself, or in the mirror, all I see is fat. I can pinch and hold love handles and back fat. Every time I go home I weigh myself on a scale to make sure that my number stays constant at the very least. I now weigh less than what I did in high school, where I used to run six or eight miles every day at Cross Country practice to now a sedentary lifestyle in college. After fighting eating habits, depression, and low self-esteem in high school, I have trained myself to only need two meals a day to survive and keep weight constant. Now that I'm in college, I only eat with friends or starve by myself in my room.

As a hopeless romantic, I think that someone is going to fall in love with my personality and we would get married and have kids and cats (and probably dogs too because knowing my luck, my soulmate is a dog person) and live happily ever after. However, life has shown me that a majority of people look for the physical apperance of a person. I could wait for that special someone who loves me for me, but as each day passes, and as my waist gets smaller and face gets clearer, I lose a little more faith that someone would want somebody who looks like me.

I have been told confidence is sexy, but how can I be confident when my only boyfriend took me seventeen years to get and ended with him cheating on me? How can I feel attractive when he wanted an open relationship (which I am against)? How can I love myself when someone who was flirting with me, and could have three hour conversations on the phone, get in a relationship with someone else and not tell me? It is as if any man who takes interest in me does not take me seriously. So... what do I do?

I starve myself. I work out every day in the summer, even if I am tired after work or volunteering. When I eat, I eat less. Still, I am single and wear the weight of the world that no one likes me or would ever like me. How does one live every day thinking he is ugly, unwanted, and unliked? Sometimes it feels as if I am just tolerated rather than having friends or best friends.

There is still hope! When I lift up my shirt and pinch at love handles and back fat, I also see one of my birthmarks. I cannot help but love it, a part of me that is unique and no one else on this Earth can have. Sometimes I go on a scavenger hunt to find three of four: left arm, right shoulder, and stomach. I may not like my body, the acne I have, the hair on my face (which will not make a beard), or the sound of my voice. However, sometimes when I am caught alone, I can either love myself and embrace the lines I cannot change or hate them and let tears flow to wash me clean of the bad thoughts I have about myself. I know in the bottom of my heart, my lover is waiting for me to run into him and life will follow through. I just have to make it through until then.