Saying Goodbye To The Skinny Me I've Always Dreamed Of

if only we could consistently count our calories and make it to the gym a few times a week, skinny us could emerge.

image @lizzobeeating.

by Sarah duRivage-Jacobs.

Last summer, I was getting drinks with a coworker friend of mine at my favorite (very weird) bar. We were tucked away in a corner nursing some beverages and, as is typical for us, our conversation quickly turned serious. We met working at a plus-size fashion company, so we always dug into body positivity and self-acceptance, even after hours. During this particular talk, my friend mentioned letting go of the skinny version of herself she had always hoped she’d be. Out of nowhere, in this strange bar filled with skeleton decorations and early 2000s music, I started tearing up. I didn’t realize I was still, somewhere in the back of my brain, holding on to this imaginary future me that was likely never going to come. 

For some fat women, the skinny versions of us dominate our brain space. If we looked like them, we could get any job, enter any relationship, and basically achieve all of our dreams like that. If only we could consistently count our calories and make it to the gym a few times a week, skinny us could emerge. It’s up to us to chip away at everything that got in the way of that reality. But, as many of us quickly realized, “taking control” doesn’t really work for very long, and it usually requires depriving ourselves and fighting against what comes naturally. Cue waves of self-hatred.

Even with all of the work I’ve done on myself and my body image, for a long time, there continued to be this fantasy Sarah that floated in the deep recesses of my mind. When I was younger, I visualized her as a thin, long-haired girl sporting a lime-green tank top and low-rise jeans. I had mostly learned to love and accept myself as I was, but when my mind would wander, I still wanted to be that other version of me. The skinny Sarah who could shop in any store and confidently go on Tinder dates without fear of being seen as unattractive. The Sarah who I had tried many times, unsuccessfully, to be.

The way I see it, phase one of loving yourself is forcing yourself to feel it. Faking it until you make it. It’s flooding your Instagram feed with body-positive influencers and maybe even encouraging yourself to post full-body photos. For a while, it has to be an intentional choice—I choose to love and celebrate my body as it is right now. But during this phase, self-doubt and self-hatred can continue to creep in when we’re feeling vulnerable. That won’t stop until phase two is finally achieved: genuinely loving and celebrating your body without having to change a thing.

Even as I acknowledge all of this, I struggle to fully enter phase two. So, for me, that conversation with my coworker dredged up my feelings of frustration with not yet being where I wanted to be. 2020 can’t be another year of secretly hating myself, so I decided to start things off strong by freeing myself from fantasy me. But...how exactly does one do that? Is there some ceremony I have to hold where I metaphorically place fantasy Sarah on a raft and let her float away?

Maybe because words are often more powerful for me than feigned rituals, or maybe just because I’m lazy, I decided that writing fantasy me a eulogy would be the right move. So here I go:

Dearly beloved, we are gathered here to say goodbye to Fantasy Sarah: The eternally youthful, skinny (but still with big boobs), and unbelievably stylish woman I’ve dreamed of for basically my entire life. 

Every diet I tried, you were there waiting for me with outstretched (but totally unreachable) hands. Every time I daydreamed about my future, you were the me I imagined. You were there through it all, always reminding me of who I could be if I could just take control of my life. 

But now that you’re floating away on some raft or whatever, I’m going to be honest: Living with you by my side sucked. You made me feel small and never quite good enough. What’s your problem? (This is a rhetorical question, of course, given that you’re dead.)

This might not be the right time or place, but I have to get something off my chest. I killed Fantasy Sarah. I mean, she was never real to begin with, but I killed the idea of her at least. Why would I do such a thing? Because I was on the verge of realizing that I didn’t have to change myself to be worthy of love or success—and that pesky image of a skinnier me kept threatening to bring me down.

So, instead of letting her continue to get the best of me, I got rid of her. (And the start of 2020 seemed like a good time to end her control over me for good.) And for anyone else who might be dreaming of their own skinny doppelgängers, kill them now. Set them on fire. Write a faux eulogy in their honor. Whatever you do, just don’t let them waste any more of your precious time. Because life is way too short to obsess over calories, wish you were someone else, or not enjoy the body you have now.

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Sarah duRivage-Jacobs is a freelance writer and editor who lives in New York City with her creamsicle cat, Jasper. When she's not writing words, she's at a karaoke bar scream-singing "Moana" or binge-watching whatever Netflix releases that week (and talking about it on Instagram).