Is Plucking My Chin Hairs Self-Hate?

They called me Needle in elementary school because I was so skinny. I was picked last for sports teams. On top of the frizzy curly hair, over-sized glasses, and braces, my body became another one of my many unfortunate physical characteristics.

In high school when apparel with feminine contours began to overtake the baggy, over-sized clothing trend, I wore thick tights and woollen leg warmers stretched all the way to my upper thighs underneath my flared jeans to make my legs appear a little bit thicker.

I was a bookworm who also pored through the latest issues of fashion and beauty magazines every month. From those glossy pages, I learned I had a fast metabolism, and I needed to gain muscle rather than fat. So fifteen-year-old me began lifting soup cans, to no avail.

My little brother got into a fight at school one day compelling my dad to enroll us three kids into kickboxing. It was an intense workout, a mixture of body weight exercises, technique training, and sparring. I was there for the fun and didn’t know I would be building muscles. After several months, I grew abs, a butt, and noticeable muscle lines on my arms and legs. I still considered myself too skinny, but kickboxing laid the foundation for an active life.

In college, I joined a gym. I bulked to the point of developing stretch marks, but I didn’t care. Stretch marks over pointy elbows and knobby knees all day.

Because I had a hard time putting on weight, I never thought about food in terms of healthy and unhealthy. I ate what I wanted. Adulthood brought with it some guilt-ridden thoughts, like I should probably eat a vegetable, but they were easy enough to bat away. Spending $15 on a salad only to be hungry 43 minutes later was a fool’s errand.

I have an inflammatory bowel disease that makes my large intestine bleed. Breaking bad eating habits for healing has been a process to say the least.

After years of struggling with healing my body, I recently buckled down hard, which has involved, much to my discontent, a severe calorie restriction.

My healing journey has brought me to a crossroad. I’m caught between gaining weight and healing my gut. The right path is clear, but my whole life has been spent putting and keeping weight on my body.

My gut has a shortage of beneficial bacteria. The number of beneficial bacteria one has determines the severity of gut issues. I have IBD and, though I’m able to keep the bleeding away, the imbalance in my gut microbiome causes inflammation and leaves me chronically bloated.

I portion my meals now, so I don’t overburden my gut. I also have to let it rest, so no snacking either. Harrumph.

I had forgotten how skinny I actually am.

I want to be healthy. The healthier my gut is the more foods it's able to digest. This disease is teaching me that the focus of exercise and diet should be on my health and not my body.

I grew up hating so many things about myself. I’m beginning to think that perhaps accepting my natural body the way it is rather than forever trying to fit it into some ideal is the healthier option. Life would be easier if I just accepted my natural body. How freeing it would be to not care about how others see me.

My mom had guests over recently and one of them asked me if I eat. It confirmed that other’s will pass judgement on my body, and that is something that I have to accept.

I clearly have inner child wounds surfacing. I want to be comfortable with every part of my natural self, but practicing self-love turns into a completely different ballgame when I tell myself to face the world with no make-up, natural curly hair with its strands of grey, and an underweight, but healing, body. Self-love is self-acceptance, isn’t it?

How deep is self-love? Do I have to love the natural hairs on my face and body? Am I hating a part of my natural self when I choose to get rid of it?

Is it self-hate when I think I’m having a bad hair day, and I hide it in a bun? Because what even is a bad hair day? What ideal are we basing bad hair on and where did that ideal originate? Why is hair supposed to look a certain way to be accepted? I feel like the ideal is easier for some to attain than others and that doesn’t seem right.

Is it self-love when my confidence is dependent on a product?

These are honest questions. I’m trying to figure out this self-love thing. Am I overthinking again?