When you look in the mirror

In my marketing class, we’ve been talking a lot about “the self.”

When you wake up in the morning and take that first look in the mirror, who do you see? The actual self. Who do you want to see? The ideal self. And the gap in between? The fantasy self.

All these versions stare back at you simultaneously with the gaze of society, the male, and yourself. Society says skinny is in, but the boys say you look curvier. Your mom says you need to eat less, but what do you want?

I want to be strong.

Fitness saved my life more times than I can count. Working out was never about changing the way I looked. It was about changing the way I felt. Changing physically was just a bonus.

Every time I looked in the mirror, I saw someone I didn’t recognize. I saw someone that was displaying society's gaze of what I was supposed to look like instead of displaying my gaze. When I was by myself, I thought I was the most beautiful person but still I would find myself:

• skipping meals when someone commented on my weight,
• wearing a certain hairstyle because everyone “loved me in it’” even if it meant I’d have a headache for the next three days,
• waking up early to shave my armpits because people said it was “un-ladylike” to have hair under my arms.

Like seriously?! I guess if men find out we grow hair they’ll riot lol ... I say let them.

With each rep I’m gaining confidence, releasing anger that’s been trapped in my shadow for as long as I can remember because I was so exhausted from looking like someone else, I was afraid to let my hair down metaphorically and quite literally.

When I tell people I work out the question I get asked immediately is “How do you stay motivated?” This question doesn’t just apply to people who are trying to get started on their gym journey, this question applies to life.

Motivation wasn’t what I needed; it was self-discipline. My problem with motivation was that she never wanted to stick around, especially when things got hard and because of me being a full-time college student and also a full-time person who has no clue what she is doing, life was hard a lot.
Once I became friends with self-discipline I realized motivation was nice because motivation helped me, but self-discipline was going to make sure I got to where I needed to go.

We hear a lot about who we are and who we want to be, but not a lot about the in between. The fantasy self.

The fantasy self plays a bigger part in my journey than I’d like to admit. On days where I’m not out of class till 9 p.m. and every inch of me is crawling to the bus stop, but my brain forces me to keep walking towards the gym and most of the time I listen. Don’t get me wrong, there's times where I’m taking my butt onto the bus with no hesitation or remorse and the word “gym” is nowhere to be found in my vocabulary.

When in the gym I spend a lot of time getting to know myself. It points out every inch of my weaknesses with the biggest foam finger. But with weakness also comes strength. The strength of me starting when everyone is saying I/m not able to stay consistent. The confidence when I walk to my workout station in my all pink workout set in a place that’s dominated by men, and the glow of finally finding something that feels real in a world that’s content with being fake.

As a senior in college, there is an assumption that I am supposed to have my life together and a plan of what comes next. I have an idea of what comes next, but there are so many of my answers that start and end with I don’t know and honestly, I don’t know is okay and I don’t know is real.

I'm in college, in my early 20’s and nine times out of 10 I don’t even know what I'm having for dinner, but all this figuring it out is the fantasy self, the in-between.

I thank my fantasy self as it connects me to who I want to be and who I am. Without me not having all the answers it would not be a journey. I wouldn’t have anything to learn and no process to embrace. Even the smallest compliments wouldn’t be so impactful and so worth it especially on days where everything in front of me is dark but the spark of a small building that connects me, that brings me back to who I am.

The girl who is a beautiful disaster and doesn’t have all the answers, but that is why she is in college, that’s why she is trying to embrace all parts of herself in and outside of her room.

So, I ask …

When you look in the mirror, who do you see?

— Jamilia Hall, a senior communication studies major with an emphasis on organizational communication, is interning with the Office of Marketing and Communications this spring. She is a native of Darby and is a fan of the Vampire Diaries.

#BloomOnward #HuskyLife