I weighed myself the other day.

I stepped onto the scale and lifestyle changes aside, I’m at the heaviest I’ve ever been.

My face fell.

I won’t share the number, because in comparison it may seem like I’m overreacting. But I’m struggling, to be honest. It’s hard to see your body change, to feel the zip not go up and parts of your body touching when they didn’t before. In 2014, I was unhealthy, stressed out and dropped a ton of weight. When I look back at old pictures, I see the collarbones, the huge thigh gap and the unhappiness. In a mission to get to a healthier BMI, I actively changed my diet.

In the last six to eight months, I’ve been in the same stressed, overworked and exhausted mode. Except this time, the weight didn’t melt off, it stayed put. In the last year or so, I’ve gotten to my goal of being able to donate blood. But then, my metabolism slowed down and I felt sluggish. I started exercising a bit more but it hasn’t been helping as much as I thought it would.

I thought I made so much progress with the way I view and treat my body. But then I discovered two fresh stretchmarks (yes, just two) and wanted to cry. I saw that one boob was barely lower than the other and started freaking out. How could I be unbelievably cruel to myself, again?

I’m 25 and sometimes loving myself or treating myself kindly is a battle. I now have to approach this with another set of tools. I have to chip away at the underlying issues I have here. Is it a need to control an aspect of my life? Am I just going to be unhappy forever? It seems like a slippery slope.

So I’ve started going to gym again with colleagues. I’ve gotten a new job. We live in a new flat. I am trying my utmost to move out of this space.

I know it’s getting a bit of hand now. My complaints about my body haven’t gone unnoticed.

You see, my mother has hid the measuring tape again.