Charles Dickens once famously wrote “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” And as far as time, or better said, timing goes, this statement couldn’t be more true. How many times do we say to ourselves that timing is everything? How many times do we ask ourselves what if we’ve been to a certain place at the right moment, what if we have met a certain person earlier or later? Perfect timing doesn’t happen too often. But what is this perfect timing anyway? Because to me it’s seems there’s no such thing. Time does indeed control our lives but we sometimes are afraid of at least trying to take control. It’s probably when we don’t like what is happening to us that we begin to seek for hidden reasons and explanations for something that we can’t quite understand. More often than not, things just are what they seem. They just happen and there’s no secret meaning to be later discovered.
If I look back, I can find many things that I’ve thrown away or missed just because I put the “bad timing” label on them. As my best friend says, in business timing is everything but there’s more to life than business. Maybe I would have had a father now if he hadn’t decided that 21 years ago wasn’t the right time for him to have a child. But on the other hand, I am quite happy that my mother didn’t think that at 23 was the wrong time to have one. After all, most of one’s life is just the sum of the decisions they’ve made. And the power of choice may overcome that of time because the fight against the latter is just lost from the very beginning. To seize the day might seem the best option in any circumstance and since both reason and feelings have failed me before, I tend to have less regrets when choosing to follow my intuition. Saying what I think, doing what I feel or what I want aren’t always easy choices to make but I know that this is what I owe to myself.
There is this funny saying “when life throws you lemons, make lemonade.” I say when life or people offer you something, a gift, an opportunity or just a smile, take it. When you meet someone and find that you have a wonderful connection or chemistry, jump. Leaving doubt, suspicion and fear behind is probably the lesson I try to learn everyday but even if I don’t make it all the time, I will not give up on this. And I will not do it for those rare moments when I realize that the only thing standing between me and something wonderful is my little stupid fear. Fear which is only built on past experiences or memories and on that futile thought that no matter what I choose, there’s always going to be another option. But for now, I really try to only choose the best of times and squeeze the last drop of juice from the lemons that I’ve got.
A few months ago I entered the ELLE Talent Contest and written a piece on an event in my life that has helped shape who I am. The winners were published recently and although I am not one of them, I am very happy that I finally found the courage to stop keeping my writing to myself and actually send it out. You can read my piece below and all my gratitude goes to Milo for being a wonderful editor.
More than perfect
I guess every woman goes through this at some point in her life. For me, it was late last year, on a gloomy November evening. I was crying on the kitchen floor of my flat in south-east London. There was a half-empty jar of peanut butter in my hand. What had begun as an attempt to do the usual Tracy Anderson workout had ended in tears and physical pain after gorging on greasy, forbidden food.
After months of living on raw carrots and salad leaves, I didn’t have the energy to lift a leg, let alone do 40 minutes of dance cardio. But I wasn’t on a diet; I wasn’t one of those silly girls who starve themselves to death. I was enjoying – or so I thought – a healthy lifestyle, eating vegetables, seeds, the odd bit of fruit. No more than 700 calories a day. No meat, no dairy, no cooked or processed food, no sweets or bread, nothing but fresh food; quantities measured and calories counted. But after four months of carrots and apples, my body was starting to betray me.
I missed my period for three of those four months. My doctor told me I was suffering from amenorrhea, caused by weight loss. But that was ridiculous: I was far from anorexic. Nothing like those 45 kilo girls on the runway. Surely a 17.7 BMI didn’t mean I was underweight? I mean, I didn’t look skinny. I wasn’t taking pills, or throwing up. I was just a rational 20-year-old girl in charge of her life… wasn’t I?
The truth is, I thought I could be perfect. Of course, I failed. I failed because my idea of perfection bore no relation to the person I really was. I’d been hijacked by a Barbie ideal of beauty since I was five, and never shaken it off. (Perhaps I’d replaced Barbie with Lara Stone). It didn’t matter that everyone told me I was beautiful, special, had a great body and so on. My response was always the same. “ I know it sounds superficial, but I need to be skinny to be happy.”
I argued with people who said I was a victim of the media. And I refused to blame the ten years in a Romanian ballet school where I’d traded chocolate for vegetables, and was screamed at every day for being fat. At the time it didn’t seem much of a sacrifice. (I only discovered later that what it actually meant was getting used to lubricating every mouthful of food with a generous dollop of guilt.)
It didn’t occur to me that jumping for joy when I fit into a pair of SX trousers was absurd. Nor did it occur to me that wearing heels for a walk in the park, or not sitting down on the tube because I wasn’t burning calories, was odd behaviour. But it was odd. As odd as checking a restaurant’s menu online before going out and ending up drinking still water anyway, while my friends were enjoying dinner. And as the weight crept back on, and my depression started to bite, I was in Hell.
Finally, after what seemed like an eternity of soul-searching, I got it. It was a lesson. I had to understand and learn something from all this. At first I thought it was about accepting and loving myself for who I was and all that kind of frothy stuff you read in self-help books. But it was about more than that: I now had the opportunity to decide the sort of person I wanted to become. I could spend the rest of my life comparing myself to models and feeling like the ugly duckling, locating my self-confidence in my dress size. Or I could forge my own identity and start living. Health for me was suddenly about feeling good.
I’d become a victim of obsession because I’d been looking outwards instead of examining inwards. Punishing myself for culinary indulgences wasn’t balance – it was madness. But the madness, the pain and the breakdown gave me strength to realise that I was in hock to an impossible, homogenous ideal of beauty. The day I realised that I saw optimism flood back in. And I felt hot.
I still love skinny models. But because I don’t take myself so seriously anymore, I’m not devoted to them. I’m not trying to imitate them. Because I have a sense of humour and perspective now, I can laugh at the thought of Lara having a bad day or looking ghastly in the Daily Mail.
That’s what’s made me determined to prepare for the day I will write, photograph, style and surround myself with beautiful girls. I should say: with other beautiful girls. Because I’m now ready to enjoy fashion in all its wondrous beauty, creativity, danger and excitement – without feeling like a slave to it. (Although I admit: I certainly haven’t shaken off my weak will when it comes to pretty dresses or handbags.) Maybe the runway only has one size, but the real world has plenty of them. And size ten isn’t that bad after all.
When you shatter your idols, you discover something even more compelling standing behind them. You discover you.