My Story: A Question Of Identity

As I write my life story, I wear my heart on my sleeve and talk about my battle with an identity crisis brought about by inferiority complex and poor self-image as well as my journey toward embracing my true identity and cultivating a healthier self-image.  Growing up I had a skin condition which resulted in rashes and pimples all over my body.  Herbal medicine was the craze and the self-professed herbal doctors recommended I take some green juice that was so bitter and sour that even several tablespoons of honey did nothing to sweeten it and with a smell so nauseating that accompanied it. Unknowingly this skin disease was taking a toll on my self-image and esteem.

 During my high-school days, I had to take two vehicles; one to ferry me from my home town to a bus stop at Limuru and another from Limuru town to my high school. There's this one time as I was going back to school during Opening Day, I got off the bus at the Limuru stage and one man seated at the stage made an attempt to help me with my luggage; I  really did not feel like I needed any help so I turned it down. Boy, I wasn't prepared for the bile that would come after because he yelled: "wewe,  hiyo matiti yako ni kubwa sana na bado uko shule?" (Hey! Your breasts are too large yet you are still in school?)  It is said that the tongue has no bones, but it is strong enough to break a heart. Those words cut deep into my being like a sword. I was angry and I thought I should retaliate and throwback some insults and some punches, but fearing a retaliatory attack I kept silent, walked away wounded and hurt. 

In school I fed on junk, Britannia biscuits to be precise, I wouldn't be caught dead in the school dining hall apart from the days when rice and beans were on the menu. I had an extreme case of a sweet tooth. I must have weighed 60 plus kilograms on a five feet body height. I hated the body I was in and my skin condition only made the situation worse.  I avoided any social events because I didn't want boys to make fun of me because of my weight.

After high school, I was home for several months awaiting enrolment to the university.  My youngest sister was in primary school by then. In the evenings I would take care of her, making sure she settled down to do her homework and that she took her dinner before mum came home from work. One day, my sister came home and confided in me that her teacher had made reference to me and my big bust in class that day. The teacher had said: "you should not wish to have a big bust like Rosaline's sister, Caroline". Such a hit below the belt that was! I hated that teacher and cried myself to sleep that night. These words and those uttered by that stranger on my way to school, the skin condition and my body size were a lethal combination leading to an inferiority complex, poor self-image and eventually identity crisis.  

These words... were a lethal combination...

The next morning I made an inner vow that nobody was ever going to ridicule me about my weight. When you make an inner vow, you have an unteachable spirit. Pride sets in and you become Lord over that area in which you have sworn to yourself.   I deceived myself to believe that slim was beautiful. I wanted to have the body size of the models I saw on TV; on the Mexican soap operas. I envied them and desired to have their body shape and sizes.  Drastically I cut down on eating snacks and fatty foods. I ate only one healthy meal and drank about five litres of hot water daily. Grapevine had it that the hot water would break and burn down the fat so I galloped the hot water religiously.

Within two months I had lost about 10 kilograms. My parents and society took note. My parents were not amused though, they thought that I was starving myself and sought to understand why I was losing so much weight and why I was not eating in large quantities anymore. They thought: 'she must be trying to win the heart of a certain suitor'.  I was motivated not only to look like the size 11 models but I wanted to silence some meddlesome neighbours. You see, in the village, your business was everybody's business. People committed to knowing about everyone else more than they knew about themselves so I heard through the grapevine that my neighbours talked in hush tones about my large body size insinuating that I was pregnant or that I had two children, one of them being our last born sister. It didn't make matters any better when my mum made sure that my youngest sister tagged along with me wherever I went. This was my mum's strategy of keeping a hawk-eye on me because my sister would give my mum a detailed report on who I spoke to and where we visited that evening.

When I lost the weight, I thought I was the most beautiful girl on planet earth, second only to my soap opera idols.  I thought my knight in shining armour would come to my father riding on a white horse to sweep me off my feet. Earth to Caroline! This is the real world Caroline! not the soap opera world you fantasize about.

So this village girl, who thought she was the very definition of beauty gets admitted to the university; in pursuit of a roommate, she spots this lady and they instantly connect. However, something bothered me. Compared to this girl, I was fat. Actually, all my close friends in the university had the slim, size 11 body shape I coveted.  They had no strategic reserves in the abdomen. My image took a thorough beating. My esteem was at an all-time low.

I constantly watched what they ate in an attempt to find out why they were much slimmer than me. To my surprise, they ate much larger quantities than I did. I wondered “Do they pray that God directs the fat out of their bodies? Do they rebuke the fat in the food so as not to be stored in their stomachs?”  I often borrowed and wore their clothes to appear slimmer.  I did a wardrobe makeover, buying smaller sizes of clothes to look like my friends.  I had two sets of wardrobes; the skimpy, tight clothes that I wore in and around campus which I could not dare wear at home and those baggy but decent clothes that I wore at home to please my parents which I could not wear at the university for fear of ridicule from my friends. My challenge was transiting to and fro- home to university at the opening and closing of the semesters. One of my greatest fears at that time was the thought that my two worlds would one day collide: that the person I pretended to be at the university would meet the person I pretended to be at home in the presence of my parents or friends.  I had to get another set of clothes that would enable me to transit between my two worlds. The stage had been set for an identity crisis battle.

I wanted to be like my friends with slim, size 11 body sizes. I often prayed that " Lord, if you cannot make me thin, please make my friends look fat!"Walking on the city streets one day I spotted vendors selling slimming soaps, I bought two cakes of the soap in the hope they were the answer to my problem. Bathing in these soaps required that you rubbed the soap only on body parts or areas where one had a ‘fat issue', for my case the abdominal section only. I thus had to bathe strategically making sure the soap foam did not land on any other parts of my body.   Since I did not get the results I hoped for I decided to try slimming creams but I still did not get my ideal body size. So I tried my hand on the slimming belts. I had one tightly wrapped around my waistline hoping to burn the abdominal fat as I went about my daily duties. Looking back I often wonder how I was able to move around with that belt tied tightly around my waistline. I bet breathing was a strain. In frustration and desperation because the slimming belt did not give me the results I desired, I contemplated going under the knife, to have plastic surgery done.

One time, I remember a male student who was a friend to one of my close friends made a comment about my body size specifically on the mid-section strategic reserves. I flew into a rage like an angry mother buffalo.  I could not stand to see him let alone speak to him for a year or so. 

Like most I forsook my faith at the university as I battled identity crisis. The fun and freedom created the perfect condition for me to seek for love, acceptance, and approval from the wrong places. But how was I expecting someone else to love and know me when I did not know and love myself? Not only did I leave a trail of broken hearts but this left me hurt, wounded and angry.

With my bleeding heart, I went all out to prove to society that I was beautiful. I had a popularity based identity: defining myself by who liked me and society's opinion of me. I sought for the perfect body shape in vain often comparing myself with others. But the world treated me the way I treated myself.  In frustration, I allowed anger to transform me into someone I was not.

When I landed a better job I enrolled in a gym. I exercised six days a week and watched what I ate. I was on a strict diet, eliminating sugars, deep-fried foods, and red meat. Some days I would jog alongside some military men and I would be able to keep up with their pace. Some of my friends and colleagues at work wondered why I obsessed about working out. They would lambaste me saying "Sasa wewe unachoma mafuta gani?"  (What kind of fat are you burning out?).  Later it dawned on me that some people liked me when I had put on some weight so when I lost the weight I was no longer beautiful in their eyes. Some other people liked me when I had lost weight, and I often worried that they would not like me if I gained the weight and some were indifferent. With the exercise and diet regime, I had finally gotten to the model size 11 I coveted so much but to my shock, I still felt empty inside. I still didn't love me. I felt I was not good enough, that I was unworthy and undeserving. I didn't feel valued. I was searching for something deeper; I just couldn't figure it out. I was ignorant of the fact that my value did not diminish based on somebody's inability to see my worth. While you live in a proving mode, it is like you are on a treadmill. As soon as you prove to one person that you are beautiful, or great or superior, you will see somebody else you need to impress. It is a never-ending cycle.

My journey to embracing my true identity and cultivating a healthier self-image began four years ago when I rededicated my life to Christ. Many are the lessons that God has been teaching me. Tears have flowed freely from my eyes like water in a river when the master potter has pulled down all the labels and perceptions that gave me a false identity.  God has been moulding me back, piecing back the broken pieces and opening my eyes so I  can see myself as God sees me. 

Would you like to meet you? Perhaps like me, you think that you are who society says you are or that your identity and value is based on what you have, what you do, how famous you are etc. Nothing could be further from the truth.   “I am the breath of God!”  How about you?

Based on the True Story of Caroline Gikonyo: a blogger at wholesometalks.wordpress.com.

Edited and proofread by Miss Kavata.

 

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