Turning 30 was the magic number for me. Whilst watching tv one day something just clicked in my head and after 30 years of living I actually felt at ease for the very first time and what I want is everyone else to find that ease within themselves and truly feel good about themselves and not having to wait for years to finally figure that out as I promise you, you will. Let that logical, rational side of you win. Since I can remember I always felt that I had to battle with the world to stay a foot and to keep up as always dreaded the sense of being left behind and being swallowed up. When I was young I didn’t say my first words til I was 5 due to having a massive language barrier of confusion being raised with Arabic and English which in turn let me not being able to speak. When looking at pictures of myself when I was little, most of them would be after me having a massive tantrum or generally looking confused as I remember feeling so frustrated with myself not being about to communicate with others properly on what I was wanting or how I was feeling. Reading my reports from nursery I would tend to point and mumble on what I wanted to get by. Thank fuck for speech therapy and language unit because now I can’t stop fucking talking, I got a lot of catching up to do. As the focus was on English I wasn’t able to learn Arabic well enough as my tiny brain can only take so much so it left me being the only one in my family not being able to speak Arabic as all my siblings were fluent in both. So growing up I felt I missed out on the inside jokes or family discussions, feeling confused and asking my siblings to repeat what they had said which of course understandably would annoying them with consist “what did you say?” “Why you guys laughing?” I remember feeling “left out” lost my roots in a way as I couldn’t even speak my mothers tongue. Being the youngest out of 4 was a battle enough, I felt easily faded in the background. Fast forwarding on to my teens typically teenage woes of wanting to look cool, trying to “fit in”. I would look at my 2 older sisters who were beautiful, smart and outgoing and there was me in my hockey shirt and backwards hat easily being mistaken for a boy. I never hated my sisters but what I hated was the surge of jealousy and anxiety rushing over my body crippling every part of my body and mind. My views were tainted with thinking how the fuck do they have it so easy, why do they get to do the fuck they want? It seemed I wanted to grow up faster than Mother Nature intended. I wished I shared my feelings with my sisters. The worse part of my teens was when after taking out my anger on my family, I started taking it out on my eating. Fuck, I am a bridesmaid for my sisters wedding and I cannot look like this, I literally remember now the day I was bulimic was when we were all trying on the dresses and my sister who at the time was a size 8 looks at herself in the mirror and goes “I look really big, need to lose a little bit” I’m looking at her and in my mind I’m like “if you think that you are big then what the fuck am I then?” I was a size 14-16 who loved food and looking back I had the curves all in the right place but at the time I hated it and even had the nickname of “fatty boom boom” it was never from bullying it was from love from my sisters but at the time I hated it. If only I spoken to them about it.... so before the second fitting I lost a lot of weight but sadly I left my self worth as I felt I wasn’t good enough to go side by side with my sisters. Looking back at that point I feel stupid and ashamed and just wished I did talk to someone about my worries as even my friends at that time didn’t know about it, I just suppressed it and locked it up in the basement of my mind. As the years gone by even though my eating part was nipped in the bud, my emotional being was never dealt with. Moving on to my early 20’s I had a awesome group of talented friends around me that I loved dearly but again still had this panic surge of needing and wanting to keep up. I became tired and emotionally drained with it all, as you know when anxiety creeps in, it starts playing out scenes that 99.9% of the time will never happen but my god ain’t it convincing enough to actually make you believe it. For most of my life I never truly felt happy in my own skin, that is some tiring shit on your mind and body as you are constantly on edge trying to figure out ways of improving your look or mannerisms. Such a shame i wasted my time with those thoughts and wished I was brave enough to speak out and share my woes as what I would have found out was that every single person is going through the same shit and battle of life and knowing that your not alone. “Oh shit, you went through that too?” The more we talk to each other, the less weight of the world is needing to be balanced on your shoulders as you will come to realise that everyone else is carrying that same world, so share the load and weight off. That’s why for the last few years I’ve been putting up daily statuses and my project of act of kindness as I know what I am currently feeling now, everyone else has or is feeling that too. Don’t suppress your feelings and then taking it out on your health and well being as if you fuck up your body you will regret it for sure and might not be so lucky on fixing it. Don’t wait for so long to fully realise that you are not alone and being comfortable within yourself. I truly wished I had the confidence like I have now to speak up about it and if I was honest with myself and others around me then growing up could have been a bit more easier. Talk to each other, share your load and you will be surprised on how many can actually relate to that heavy load. Be proud of your uniqueness and your one of a kind personality and weirdness as there is only one of your make in this world making your own solid footprint. I always say that we are all on the same train journey but just getting off at different stops in life and then back on the train again. Let’s all share that map so that none of us gets lost. Let your magic number be now <3