This piece is part of Allure's coverage of National Eating Disorder Awareness Week.

As someone with a fluctuating self-image and a trans person who feels a simultaneous external demand and internal anxiety to continuously communicate my gender, I’ve never felt at peace with my appearance. Sometimes my desire to be seen can be confusing; I barely have a solid grasp on what I look like, especially to other people. How I feel about myself is nearly always about other people.

Understanding myself through the eyes of others provides a blueprint for me to have control over my self-image. In part, I'm hesitant to admit that maybe the feeling that control eludes me is what it means to have body dysmorphia and gender dysphoria concurrently. Maybe these things are in the driver’s seat more days than I am, and that is a reality I fear confronting.

The Origin Story of My Body Image Issues

Both of my parents grew up poor in Jakarta, Indonesia. With a desire to shift the trajectory of the future for them and their children, they found and worked well-paying jobs. They raised my siblings and me in Jakarta, but in contrast to their childhoods, we were financially well-off. To us, food was more than just food — it signified financial safety, a lack of scarcity and hunger. For my parents, my siblings and I were not just children, we were pockets in which they could invest assurance and safety; a second chance to witness childhoods without want.

In my head, I had a very clear image of what I looked like, and yet it was far from what I saw in pictures and videos of myself.

My parents worried about us ever going hungry, and by eight years old, I was consuming cod-liver oil supplements daily and eating almost nonstop. Physically, I came to embody abundance because, from my parents’ perspective, I should have never gone hungry. But this physicality was also a symbol of shame, because from everyone else’s perspective, I was merely a fat kid. In my consumption of the safety my parents provided, I was losing some of my agency as societal fatphobia affected me. My complex relationship with my body began early; with every look in the mirror, I asked myself, "Am I to be thankful or remorseful for this body?"

Realizing I Had Body Dysmorphic Disorder

Contrary to what I was told by my environment, I felt indifferent about my body fat. It meant very little to me, though I disliked the way it shaped how people treated me. As a preteen, I don’t recall feeling embarrassed about being fat, but I think that’s one of the survival tactics you develop when you’re subject to harassment as a fatter kid in class and at family gatherings.

Though most of my childhood didn’t revolve around my weight, I recall feeling frustrated — even confused — when I had to look at photographs and footage of myself. In my head, I had a very clear image of what I looked like, and yet it was far from what I saw in pictures and videos of myself. Maybe my weight was part of that gap in perception, but it felt deeper and heavier than size. Body weight can change, and I feared that the dissonance between how I saw myself and how I actually appeared would never go away, even if the body weight did. I recognize this now as body dysmorphic disorder (BDD).