Life's A Mirror

By Kelly Gifford

In the journey of self-discovery and healing, sometimes the path to love takes unexpected twists. Kelsey Elsher, acclaimed romance author, has spent a lifetime battling her own demons-struggling with body image, fighting an eating disorder, and wrestling with crippling

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kelly Gifford
• Release date: May 8, 2024
• ISBN: 9781738334612

Book preview

LIFE’S A MIRROR

A second chance at love (if she can get over her issues)

Kelly Gifford

LIFE’S A MIRROR

A second chance at love

(if she can get over her issues)

Kelly Gifford

Copyright

Copyright © 2024 by Kelly Gifford.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any form whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations in critical articles or reviews.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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Book design by Dave Chesson of Kindlepreneur

Cover design by Luisa Galstyan

ISBN – Electronic Book (eBook): 978-1-7383346-1-2

First Edition: March 2024

1

CHAPTER ONE

Why did I ever think this was a good idea? Being a writer? I guess it must’ve been because my second-grade teacher wrote in my report card that I should become an author because my writing skills and imagination are already extraordinary. Maybe it’s not writing that I’m feeling frustrated with, because I genuinely do love to write. It’s abandoning my usual contemporary romance genre to string together some thoughts and experiences from my personal life that, for some reason on one of my casual two-hour long walks around my old neighborhood in Edmonton, I thought I should write about.

Before I even sent a memoir proposal to my agent, I was thoroughly convinced this was it; this was the creative purpose I sensed existed in me but, instead of acting on it, was spending much of my time between romance novels snuggled up on the couch with a bag of chocolate covered pretzels while doom-scrolling TikTok, simultaneously complaining that I was, in fact, not an exception to the infamous writers’ block infection. The inspired idea, though, instantly felt like my ticket to the life I could only ever dream about; the fulfillment of my life’s purpose and, I guess, whatever magical airy-fairy bullshit I believed was supposed to come from realizing my life’s purpose.

I really convinced myself that this had to be the big break; the very thing that would not only elevate me professionally and financially but, perhaps what felt even more important, would allow me to finally feel healed from my own issues with my body and food by vomiting them into a creative piece and wrapping it with a bow.

Now I’m blocked again, staring at a blank screen with absolutely nothing to show for the passion struck, women’s empowerment, anti-diet culture, radical body acceptance work of art I convinced my agent to co-sign. I'm going to disappoint Laura so badly when I tell her that I have gotten zero words out on this memoir after I begged her to give me a chance at something new. I’m so embarrassed for future me. I’m going to fuck up not only this opportunity but my entire writing career if I don’t get my act together.

I knew today wasn’t going to be a good day for writing. Okay, I knew that I was going to make it unnecessarily difficult for myself to write today, and that’s because I’ve been doing that every day for the last three weeks. Actually, for the last two months. Right after Laura approved me for this memoir, I excused my writing procrastination with the fact that I had to unexpectedly move out of my apartment and didn’t know what I was going to do. It was half an excuse, half truth. I was certainly not going to turn up a reason to postpone writing, but I also genuinely don’t do well with change, especially unexpected change. My landlord deciding to sell the building where the new owner would not be renewing leases at even remotely the same price definitely sent me spiraling. Thankfully Laura managed to extend my deadline an extra month given the circumstances. During that time I decided to pack up all my things and move them into storage, book a cheap one-way ticket to Mexico and live here indefinitely so I can write this memoir distraction-free. I still can’t believe I did that. That is so unlike me, being someone who dislikes change and all.

Now I’ve been here for three weeks and not a single word has been written. This is definitely fear. Fear is blocking me. Fear of rejection, fear of failure, fear of success. Fear of totally shifting who I’ve always believed I am and what I’ve always believed I am, and am not, capable of. I mean, it sounds great to lose my identity as the girl who is inherently unlikeable, unworthy of love or success and must work extremely hard just to get bare minimum results. At the same time, the idea of losing that identity feels threatening in its own way. That identity has gotten me a lot of attention from people who get off on telling insecure people that they shouldn’t feel insecure.

That identity has also motivated me to fling myself out of relationships before anyone had the chance to hurt me or reject me. If I play small, ironically, I feel less vulnerable and that’s why I can’t bring myself to finally write my memoir. The worst part about being someone who’s utterly obsessed with self-help and personal development is that I understand why I do the things I do and why I don’t do the things I don’t, and it’s honestly quite frustrating to have nothing to blame but myself for my pesky problems.

Maybe if I go to a coffee shop, I’ll feel more inspired to write. Or at the very least I’ll feel more pressure to write so that I look productive in front of others. Now that I’m thinking about it, I don’t think I like the idea of someone’s first impression of me being based on how I currently look, even if I literally never see that person ever again. My hair is a mess of curls and fly-aways and humidity and probably sand, and in the three weeks I’ve been here I haven’t bothered to figure out how to work with it. I also have been wearing the same two baggy t-shirts and two pairs of stretchy shorts on repeat since I got here, quite honestly because I can’t bring myself to face the fact that all my old summer clothes that I brought with me from Canada might no longer fit me.

It’s so funny to me that I’ve been told my entire life not to care about what other people think of me. I guess the truth is that the very things I’m afraid others will judge about my appearance are actually projections of what I judge about myself, so technically the key to unlocking that carelessness everyone tells me to embody would be to stop judging my own appearance. That would be nice. I long for that to be my reality but I don’t know if I believe that’s possible for me.

Women that are like that must be so happy. I can’t imagine how much better my life would be if it wasn’t so consumed by my own self-judgements. The thin, pretty women I’ve recently scrolled past on Instagram are way better looking than me, which makes me imagine them being free from self-judgment; that they must be so much happier than I am because they look like that. I know it’s not true. Well, logically I understand that it’s probably not true. Those women could judge themselves even worse than I do for all I know, but when I’m comparing myself fresh out of the shower, naked and not posing nor sucking in to their much more attractive, posed and abundantly Liked highlight reel, it’s hard to believe what I know. I know it’s not a fair comparison, but they probably still look better than me when they’re fresh out of the shower, naked and unposed.

I will look better if I change this top, though. I should touch up my lip liner before I go, too. The mere possibility that I’ll see someone at the coffee shop who I’ll perceive as superior to me is enough motivation for me to put in a little extra effort. Now that I’m thinking of reasons why my current appearance is unacceptable, I do know these shorts pinch the fat of my inner thighs when they ride up and that can’t look very flattering. I could just make sure to keep them pulled down but there’s a possibility I’ll get distracted and won’t notice. Someone might see me from a really bad angle and of course, dear God, I can’t have that. Leggings it is.

A soy milk frappe sounds really good. My automatic thought is that I really don’t need the extra Calories, but since committing to rejecting all food rules that were ingrained in me by Diet Culture, Don’t drink your Calories being one of many, it would be silly not to order a soy milk frappe. Committing to rejecting all Diet Culture food rules was an idea I heard in a podcast about eating disorder recovery last year. I remember feeling immediately enticed by the idea of not listening to the voice in my head that’s been restricting my food choices since I was eleven years old. Sometimes I still give into the thoughts, though, like last weekend when I ordered a salad at brunch when I really wanted the pancakes.

I wasn’t feeling very good about myself that day. Worse than normal. I was with Amanda, a girl I randomly met on the beach my first week here, who is thinner than I naturally am which strengthened the incentive to make the anti-anti-Diet-Culture choice of a salad. Specific circumstances make me more vulnerable to fall into restrictive patterns with food like when I’m around someone who I think is better looking than me, or when I’m bloated, or when I haven’t accomplished much writing lately, or when my bank account balance is low, or when someone is upset with me. I’m feeling pretty okay about myself at this moment, though. I’ll just order the soy milk frappe.

Hola! Un, uh, una? Frappe… con… God, I am so stupid. This is embarrassing. Soy milk?

Si, one frappe with soy milk. Small or large?

I’m so glad I picked a spot in Mexico flooded with English-speaking tourists for this very reason. Large, please.

If I sit at the table next to that woman, she might think I’m weird for choosing the seat right next to her when there are open seats elsewhere. That table is the only one with a power outlet nearby, though. I could sit somewhere else until my laptop dies and by then, maybe she’ll be gone. I’m doing it again. Overthinking. I should just sit at that table. Okay, looks like they’re taking that table. Quick, pretend you weren’t just walking towards it so they don’t get uncomfortable and feel bad when they notice you were about to sit there.

Well, that was embarrassing. I just went through all the trouble of dramatically acting out the mannerisms to portray that I wasn’t just about to sit at a table I was very obviously about to sit at so they wouldn’t feel bad for taking it. Where did I learn this behavior from? Why am I so protective of other people’s feelings? No, better question: why is how I feel so dependent on how the people around me feel? So much of my mental bandwidth is consumed by the need to keep others comfortable so I can feel comfortable. I really wonder what it’s like to not be like this.

My laptop battery should last about an hour. That’s more than enough time to write one paragraph. Just one. One is all I need to feel good about myself today. I just need to go to bed tonight knowing I accomplished something. I could just start typing my thoughts and see what happens.

Chapter 1 (I think)

Why is how I feel so dependent on how the people around me feel?

As a kid, I always felt upset over having little to no friends. The friendships I did build never lasted very long. I was labeled as shy from a very young age, but I don’t believe I was shy, I was just terrified of anyone seeing me. I was convinced that a close enough look would change someone’s perception of me for the worst. I believed that if I was looked at from the wrong angle, said the wrong answer in class or didn’t realize that my clothing was sitting on my body in an unflattering way, no one could help but be disgusted by me. The thought of that absolutely devastated me so I protected myself by hiding, staying quiet and finally, distracting others from my flaws by making them feel extremely comfortable around me. If I agreed with everything someone said, told them what I knew they wanted to hear and let them have their way one hundred percent of the time, they would feel so good that they wouldn’t have a reason to pick out my flaws.

How other people felt around me determined their perception of me. I didn’t have the luxury of a pretty face or skinny body to positively sway people’s perception of me so I needed to find alternative ways to make them like me. If they didn’t like me, it’s because I didn’t do a good enough job at distracting them from my inherent flaws. The real me could never be good enough. I didn’t like me either, so why would anyone else?

Wearing the people-pleaser mask did help me get through some rough years. At least, I thought it was helpful. When Jacey entered my class in the sixth grade, I did sometimes question whether my way was the best way of navigating the terrifyingly critical and downright savage nature of adolescence. Jacey, like me, was not naturally gifted in the looks department. She was very tall for a girl with a pear-shaped body and crooked teeth. Her body was undeniably bigger than any other classmate’s, including the boys. I had fallen into the unfortunate role as the biggest bodied kid in class for two years in a row but Jacey, lucky for me, took that title off my hands.

What I found most fascinating about Jacey was how she carried herself in that role so much differently than I had. She was loud, opinionated and proudly stood up for herself. She didn’t seem to mind taking up space at all. The idea of being more like Jacey terrified me because she was the target of tons of external criticism, much more than I think I could’ve handled, hence why I spent those years bending over backwards to avoid it.

I did see something in her that I longed for, however; she was free. At least, it seemed like she felt very free. She wore what she wanted and let her clothes settle on her body in unflattering ways without paying a mental fee. She said what she wanted and let people have a negative opinion of her without needing to convince them otherwise. I cannot even fathom how having that level of freedom would’ve changed my entire experience of my time in school.

Instead of choosing this freedom like Jacey so naturally did, I decided I was going to earn it. The only way I knew how to earn it was to manipulate my appearance to look like someone who was naturally able to wear what they want to wear and say what they want to say without anyone blinking an eye. To me, that meant I needed to be skinnier; the smaller the better. The less space my body took up, the more space I felt worthy of taking up with my voice, personality and opinions. Thus began the pursuit of the smallest body possible.

Well, at least the thought of the pursuit began. At eleven years old, I didn’t really have much knowledge in the weight-loss department. Social media fitness influencers posting What I Eat In A Day To Stay Fit videos wasn’t a thing yet. Instagram carousels of exercise videos for Booty Gains And A Flat Tummy didn’t exist at this point, either. I only knew two things: that my overweight family members would buy diet soda instead of regular soda when they complained about their weight and that the skinny girls in my class ate smaller lunches than me. My bright idea was to throw my lunch in the trash every morning when I arrived at school because I figured if I ate less than the skinny girls, maybe I’d get skinnier than them.

After twiddling my thumbs through snack and lunch times, I’d leave school complaining to my parents that I was starving to persuade them into running through a drive thru for a supersized meal of chicken nuggets and, of course, a diet coke. I’d then spend the evening locked in my bedroom shoveling as much food in my mouth as I could with my eyes glued to The Family Channel until I fell asleep. I’d wake up dreading the next several hours of mental and emotional torture until I could come home from school and numb myself all over again.

This became my waking reality for most of the next five years; going through the motions each day while anticipating the sweet release I’d get after taking the masks off at home, shutting the world out and distracting from the internal chaos of my mind the best way I knew how. This was my first experience with restrictive eating. Although it didn’t really work to make my body skinny, it at the very least gave me a reliable means of comforting myself at the end of each torturous day and an excuse to avoid eating in front of others because being seen eating in the body I was in felt shameful. I figured that if everyone noticed I wasn’t eating, they wouldn’t be able to judge me so harshly for my body because at least I’m doing something about it.

Where am I going with all of this? Is sharing all these details problematic? I’m afraid someone will interpret this as fatphobic, or as promotion for disordered eating, or blatantly a catastrophic overshare. Nothing that I wrote feels helpful. Maybe I just need to let my story evolve into something helpful as I write. Maybe I don’t need to have it figured out now. I just need to have it figured out in, uh, what’s the date? Shit, five weeks.

What if I spend hours writing this and all I have is a very dramatic journal entry detailing my little-t traumatic experiences with food and my body? Well, I guess that would mean I’d have to drain what’s left of my little savings to get by until I get back on track with regular romance storytelling. The savings I already drained by buying a plane ticket and six weeks of AirBNBs in Playa Del Carmen, Mexico. That, and tainting my reputation with my agent who I’m afraid is already a bit skeptical considering I’ve been procrastinating answering her emails about how far along I am on the memoir. Whatever. Not whatever, but whatever. This is a start, I guess.

There are so many people here. I didn’t even notice how busy the coffee shop became all that time I was glued to my screen. Did anyone think I was being selfish for hogging this table while others were coming in looking for a seat? I guess that’d be silly. It’s a coffee shop. People expect other people to sit and use the tables. Oh, my mom texted me. No, she sent a photo. A screenshot of her FaceBook feed. How many times do I have to teach her how to use FaceBook?

What the fuck? Anthony. On Facebook. My mom still has my ex on Facebook? God, she would. Why is she sending me a screenshot of… Playa Del Carmen? No. He’s here. No. He can’t be. Maybe it’s a backdated post? No, it says in the caption he just arrived, and it was posted a few hours ago. No fucking way.

Fucking Anthony. Not thinking about him and that whole situation was nice while it lasted. I know my avoidance of our entire situation is really me avoiding looking at some really toxic patterns inside of me that I’ll eventually have to look at if I ever want to have the type of romantic relationship I’ve written about in books and in my manifestation journal. I know I am, in many ways, keeping myself blocked off from love and, even more so, intimacy. But that’s what I’m going to therapy for. Well, sort of.

Intimacy. What a word. Having a fear of rejection makes sense. So does having a fear of abandonment. Saying I fear intimacy sounds like I fear chocolate cake. Something so innately gratifying, something that our bodies are physiologically designed to sense pleasure in, should not be scary. Now that I think about it, there are plenty of times I’ve feared chocolate cake, too. Diet culture ingrained in me that I must not trust what my body finds pleasurable because it will undeniably bite me in the ass and become the root cause of much of my future suffering; like in dressing room fiascos and dreaded trips to the beach. The best way to avoid future pain is to refrain from present pleasure.

Intimacy feels good. No, it feels exhilarating. Not just physical intimacy, either. Even mental and emotional intimacy lights every sensory cell on ecstatic fire the same way the first bite of chocolate cake does. Not long following the exhilaration does an emergency alert start firing on all cylinders of my body and mind warning of the impending doom that exists. With chocolate cake, the impending doom comes to fruition the next time I look in the mirror and am reminded of how much more acceptable my reflection would be if I stopped eating chocolate cake. With intimacy, the impending doom exists in the moment someone sees too much of me.

It feels damn good to be seen, and for someone else to want to see me, but the underlying belief that I’m inherently flawed and unlovable means that I have to keep someone at far enough of a distance that they won’t see that very specifically unacceptable part of me, whatever that part is. The part of me that will instantaneously poison their perception of me for good. That’s where the fear of intimacy stems from. True intimacy cannot have boundaries; the nature of intimacy is found in the innately vulnerable, limitless extent to which you’re being experienced by another and vice versa. And I'm way too scared, no, terrified, that having someone experience me limitlessly will inevitably prove to me that the very thing I've been running from my entire life is true: That I’m not good enough.

Anthony was just a giant, unignorable, right-in-my-freaking-face token of all of my unhealed relationship wounds. The worst part was that he knew he was, too, and he wasn’t letting me get away with ignoring it. He saw right through everything I said, did and felt and unapologetically held the mirror up for me to see the truth behind it all; the truth that I had locked inside a box and convinced myself didn’t exist while falling asleep in self-sabotaging patterns.

I loved it. Well, at first I did. I loved how he challenged me. I loved how he saw me more than I’d ever been seen. I even kind of loved how he knew me better than I knew myself, which says a lot considering I’ve spent more than half my life utterly obsessed with any vehicle that which I could better understand myself through, including therapy, astrology, self-help books, podcasts, coaching programs and personality type quizzes. A childhood colored with loneliness and never fitting in anywhere will do that to a person. That’s what my therapist told me, anyway.

Going so long feeling painfully misunderstood created an incredible passion for deeply understanding myself and others. Anthony understood me better than any human psychology expert or personality quiz ever gifted me the ability to understand myself. It was exhilarating and absolutely fucking terrifying. I’m sure that’s just scratching the surface of all the reasons it was so easy to justify pushing him away. I’m nauseated even at the idea of trying to dissect it all right now. This is all too much. This is not at all how I imagined it’d feel to be sitting beachside at a café trying to write my book.

I’ve been imagining myself feeling so much freedom in the exact circumstance I’m currently in: Sitting alone in a beachside cafe with a delicious drink, which means I ordered what I wanted without considering the financial or Caloric consequences of it. That's freedom. And on a Sunday, which means my plans are totally in my hands and I don’t have to write or, at least, I’ll have no self-inflicted guilt for not writing because I usually give myself Sundays off when I commit to writing Monday to Saturday. Therefore, Sunday is also freedom. All of this I decided must be the epitome of freedom. Funny how I am feeling the furthest from free right now.

I’ve been telling myself that once I get to Mexico, I’ll finally feel the freedom, and the distraction-free creative inspiration that comes with it, that I’ve been desperate for. When I was still in Edmonton awaiting the day of my flight, I told myself I just had to stick it out a little longer. It meant waking up on my 6am alarm to ensure I had enough time to go through my morning routine of meditation, journaling and working out before I tried to write for the rest of the day. I would endure an intense self-inflicted guilt trip had I not gone through the motions of that morning routine unless it was a Sunday. Sundays have always been a free-pass for an alarm-less wake up and to do whatever I felt like, but any other day, waking up any later than 6am meant I was inevitably falling behind on something even if I had no tangible proof of what that something was. It also meant I wasn’t taking my life seriously enough, which meant I would undoubtedly fail at everything that was important to me. That’s what Hustle Culture taught me, at least.

I also told myself to just stick it out when I’d rummage through my kitchen for something to eat that wasn’t oatmeal or carrot sticks and hummus. I figured if I was going to stretch myself beyond my comfortable, controlled eating habits, I may as well wait until I can do it with fresh tacos at an authentic Mexican taqueria. I told myself this even when I started getting my routine ick towards the fixation meals I had been eating every single day for several months. I even told myself to stick it out when I would swipe through social media watching other people socialize and have fun as I laid in bed at 8pm on a Saturday night. I imagined that when I got here, I’d naturally start socializing and having more fun.

I imagined this whole new life. Scratch that, I imagined a whole new self and, as a result of becoming a more spontaneous and fun version of myself, an entirely different life. A life not bound by the rules and restrictions I’ve created over the years to feel safe and, if I’m honest, to avoid feeling many uncomfortable feelings. Strict wakeup times, morning routines, eating habits, social isolation and bedtimes are all examples of how I try to control my inner environment by controlling my outer environment. I wake up early and go through the motions of a morning routine that consists of activities I’ve learned are supposed to make me a more productive and successful human. If I’m more productive, I won’t fall behind or miss anything. If I avoid falling behind or missing something important, I can avoid stress or the shame of disappointing someone else.

I also typically eat the same things every day for as long as I can tolerate doing so, which typically stretches between two to six months. This allows me some level of control over what my body looks like without intentionally dieting, which would reactivate my lifelong struggle with disordered eating. That way, I can still try to avoid the types of humiliating situations I’ve created in my head, like where I am taking off my clothes in front of someone and a wave of disappointment washes over their face, without having a full blown eating disorder again. I must do everything I can to avoid seeing anyone’s expression that would signify that they might wish my body looked differently than it does, but I also must commit to my eating disorder recovery, and so eating the same meals every day and justifying it because I have ADHD food fixations sort of supports the best of both worlds.

Wow, all my routines have been motivated by the need to avoid feeling the hard feelings that I’ve spent my lifetime running from. Speaking of there being hard feelings that I’ve spent a lifetime running from, I can feel them right now. That’s probably why I’m procrastinating by being in my head. Staring down at my phone screen, I feel a familiar pit of swirling anxiety, shame and humiliation. Am I really about to do this?

Kelsey: You’re in Playa Del Carmen, too??

Yeah, maybe that is the vibe I want to give off. Using two question marks feels playful and lighthearted. I guess my anxiety isn’t about the wording of the text. The anxiety is about his thought process once he reads it, which I can imagine will inevitably lead to him questioning how I found out that he is on vacation in Playa Del Carmen. I imagine that will lead him to assume I’ve been lurking on his social media, which is true. I don’t want him thinking that though, especially because I’m sure he’s noticed I unfollowed him on social media after he unfollowed me. Therefore, my lurking on his social media would have to be inconveniently intentional, which it is.

If he does ask me that question, how I found out where he is, I’m not even sure it would be any less embarrassing to tell him the truth; that my mom sent me a screenshot of a post where he tagged his location in Playa Del Carmen, Mexico. His inevitable thought process following that could be that I’ve still been talking to my mom about him, which is also true, but I also don’t want him thinking that.

I have to be honest with myself. I think above all, my fear isn’t actually about what he’s going to think about how I found out he is here in Mexico. My fear might not even be in what he’s going to think about me reaching out to bring attention to the fact that we are in the same location at the same time for the first time