Natalia's Story - When you think you can't change anything

Trigger Warning: This story mentions eating disorders. If that is something that can affect you negatively, please be cautious.

Hi everyone,

My name is Natalia. I would like to share my gratitude story with you because I think it might be helpful for someone.

One year ago, I was going through a bad phase in my life. I really thought that nothing could change that. It was getting worse and worse day by day.

I'd been hating my appearance. I thought that my body was not enough, and I wanted to change that through diet. I didn't starve myself, but I'd been eating too few calories than my body needed. Additionally, I was underweight already.

As a result, I lost weight, and there were days when I liked that, but most of the time, I still hated my body because I lost too much weight, and my skin and hair got hurt, so it was like a bad circle.

I also had problems with my personality and relations with other people. I thought they all hated me, including my family, and people from my school class. I thought that I had nothing to be happy about because I didn't have the body I wanted.

My skin got worse, I couldn't control my emotions, so I got angry easily then. I thought people didn't like me at school, and they laughed at me behind my back. It was a bad time for me.

Then my stepfather told me that I was ungrateful for what I had. I laughed and said that I've got nothing and I hate myself. I remember that back then I had suicidal thoughts; I just wanted to disappear.

In my school class was a girl with whom I started hanging out. She had some eating disorder, and she was talking about non-eating for 3 days or something, and I think it affected me (I don't blame her, I know that she is alright now, she doesn't starve herself anymore, at least she said that to me).

So I thought that I did not have a chance to live normally anymore, I was stuck, and there was no way out. One day I was scrolling Pinterest and I found some posts about gratitude, self-acceptance, and that only you can decide how you feel about yourself.

I read a lot of posts of this type, and I understood how much I have. I understood that other people don't define me and that sometimes you just have to let go. I was so tired back then of everything, but after seeing this, I felt some type of power that till I am alive, I can change anything.

My family was worried about my physical health, my doctor wanted to put me in the hospital, and I've come to realize that I don't want to live this way. I understood that I just have to accept myself the way I am.

Since then everything's changed, of course, I still have bad days, because no one is perfect, but now I know that everything in our lives is temporary, and bad days will pass.

Since I started to be grateful for everything that happened in my life, I noticed that I am happy with what I have, and finally, I feel I have enough because I have a house, water, food, and family that I just couldn't appreciate before.

Surprisingly, since I stopped taking care so much of how I look and just started doing my thing, I noticed that it's way easier for me to take care of my skin, hair, and body properly, and healthily.

I realized that the best you can do is just keep everything simple. Now in the evening, I just accept the day as it was, I remember that I did the best I could. The Gratitude app really helps with motivational quotes and interesting examples of entries.

I hope that you have had a wonderful day so far, I wish you all the best, and remember that you are not alone, I believe in you, and you have to believe in yourself, you can make a change, because you are a master of your mind, not anybody else, no matter what happens, choose life and get through it, I know you got this.

Take care, Natalia