I’m staring at a picture of a girl I don't recognize anymore. The girl in the picture is me, but it’s also not me. This girl, peering out of the frame with a happy smile on her face, three years ago on my 21st birthday, registers as me on many levels. I recognize my true-blue eyes, my wide, almost too wide, smile. The nose that I still absentmindedly trace, it’s shape, something geometric--a weirdly-placed, but well-meaning dimple in the middle that gets more pronounced when I scrunch it up. My hair--curly, wild, shorter here than I ever remember it being. Looking at the girl in the picture is like looking in a strange fun house mirror that you see at carnivals. Everything looks like me, but distorted, blown out, my features not nearly as sharp or as refined as they are now. The girl in the picture is 90lbs heavier, which contributes a lot to this distortion I feel, which is funny, because until three years ago, this was the only girl I’d ever know, the only girl I’d ever seen staring back at me in the mirror. In such a short amount of time it feels weird to see her now, and not really know her, not feel the familiarity and attachment I should feel looking at pictures of a girl I knew to be me. It’s not just me. My friends, my family. They all feel the same way. “I don’t remember you looking like that” I’ve heard on multiple occasions. “I can’t believe that’s even you!” The stunned disbelief of anyone I’ve met after, carefully studying me, as if trying to piece my past-self back together, photoshopping me in their minds. It’s even weirder still that I feel the same way. As if I’ve always felt much more like this girl, the one I am now, like it’s too difficult to reconcile those two people, who I was and who I am into the same person.

I may not recognize her, but I remember her. I remember, not loving the girl I saw looking back at me in the mirror. I remember late nights, crying to my mom, asking her if I’ll ever lose weight. Telling her how insecure I felt, how I felt standing next to my thin, beautiful friends who confidence radiated off of. I remember thinking no one would ever love me, and even when someone did love me, thinking that I never truly deserved it. Now I know what you are thinking, “Beauty comes in all shapes and sizes,” “everyone is beautiful and sexy in their own way”, “loving myself was the most important thing”.etc. I know. I’ve heard it all. But I also knew myself. I knew I wasn’t happy or comfortable the way I was. I felt trapped inside a body that didn’t feel like it was mine. And though my big personality always matched my bigger body, I couldn’t help but think I’d shine so much brighter, if I could truly love myself. I remember that girl, because I can still feel her.

It’s strange, how looking different on the outside to me meant solving all of my problems, and in a way, it did solve many of them. I’m happier, healthier, more confident, less scared and anxious about my life, my future, what I’m capable of. But I never realized that in many ways, new problems would creep into my life. No one prepared me for the fact that, for a while, I’d stop recognizing myself on the inside as well as the outside. It took a while, countless conversations with a person who knows me best, a real hard look at the person I am and want to be, to realize that the girl I was would never be completely gone and the girl I am now was going to face new challenges, new disappointments, new experiences, that I wasn’t prepared for. It took me a while to adjust to “having everything I wanted” but still struggling, still experiencing failures and setbacks. I think the healthiest part of the last three years of my life has been learning that we all grow, change, and experience new things. I am still me. I will always be me. But I will not always be the me that I was three years, one year or even one day ago. In fact, I can’t be. That’s the thing about growth, about change. It’s the reason we take pictures in the first place isn’t it? To remember not only a certain time in our lives, but the person we were then, the version of ourselves we had been in that time in place that we would never quite be again. So I look at the picture, and I see me, and I don’t see me. And I realize, that that’s the way it’s supposed to be. And I smile, that same too-wide smile. Only it looks a little different now, and I know that’s okay too.