The low blood pressure thing reared it ugly head shortly around the worst time of my eating disorder, when I was a senior in high school. I hate sometimes admitting that I have an eating disorder, not because I am ashamed but because it seems like some sort of sick fad in the media these days. Like every young girls right of passage these days and that just fucking wrong. I know it's about control and all that but I can remember being teased viciously about my weight as a young girl (I tipped the scales as a whopping 150 lbs at 5'3", kids can be assholes) and on top of that I wanted to be an actress but there were no real looking women or teenagers on T.V for that matter, let alone Latinos (the only Latino I can remember seeing on T.V. as a kid was Desi Arnaz, until John Leguizamo came along). I got so bad that once coming out of the shower I knocked my funny bone and just passed out, I hadn't eaten all day. Since then I have had these fainting spells which the Doctor's can only attribute to lack of eating mixed with blood pressure.
It's scary trying to push your body to be as small as it can go. As I get older the less sense it makes to me. Whenever I see myself, especially now in this blossoming career I have in film, I can feel the ugly self loathing monster in the back of my mind creep up when I have to watch my work on screen. Now It's been a long time since I have really sat down and worried about my weight and actively starved myself. It's taken me a lot of work on myself to get to where my self esteem is today.I don't worry about men finding me attractive or feeling attractive myself outside of this new medium that I work in.
But with this new career I am trying I can't help but wonder about what I look like physically as compared to other women, and thats just wrong to feel that way. I think it has a lot to do with the fact that there are no women that I would consider my type. You've either got the leggy Latin beauties that are so thin and long your like "Where the hell are you from ese?" or you've got the tiny little pretty-ugly-beautiful America Ferrera or Sara Ramirez (I mention them by name because they are the type, there are only one of each). My worst fear is going into a casting office and having someone go "no thanks hun, we already got America." I look nothing like her by the way, not at all, and I think the reason why most people say that is because she is the only example of my "Type" (you know short, curvy latina, ahem... normal) in the public eye. I fucking way older than her anyway.
The best support that I have in my life now are my friends and family, they are always the ones who tell me that I am beautiful when I am feeling low about my looks, especially after losing out to a role or a potential relapse. I miss them, It is hard being out here and not seeing them as often as I would like. I want to stay strong for them. I want to "make it" whatever "it is" for them and myself. I feel truly blessed to have such a supportive team on my side, that's really all I could ask for.
1 comment:
You know, I have low blood pressure too, and I had an eating disorder in my teens/early twenties. I never thought about whether or not they were connected. I'm not completely sure why, but the low blood pressure seems to be a bigger issue when it's hot out, and then I get super light-headed and have dizzy/fainting spells. It was way worse when I was on the east coast, so be sure to keep your blood sugar stable and drink lots of water!
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