Every photo was a nightmare, and now only some are. In today’s world when our lives are documented in every way on social media, pictures plagued me. I hated every picture of myself. Spent hours analyzing all the ways in which my choices had led me to become the person in the picture.

Now, I still analyze pictures, but this time I’m proud of the choices made and the person in the pictures. I used to hate being the big friend in the group. Hated so obviously standing out because of my size with no filter able to hide the fact that I was far heavier than those I loved. In my photos now, I may still be bigger than many of my fit little friends, but I’m amazed by the blessing of looking normal. I look at the picture and I don’t see a huge blob. I just see a normal girl. I’ve never been a normal size, but I am now. Not where I want to be yet, still working towards my goal, but an actual normal size. I’m celebrating it. Reveling in it really.

Until you’ve spent your life dreaming of just being able to look at yourself in a picture without the emotional turmoil of shame, guilt, and frustration for being so incredibly different from the group, you’ll never know just how much normal means.

It is more than just vanity. It’s liberation. It’s going out with friends and on adventures without being completely plagued with insecurity. It’s quickly running into almost any store and being able to find clothes in your size if you forgot to pack something without having to seek out one of the few plus size retailers. It’s taking risks and doing things you wouldn’t have done before. It’s freedom in a way you’ve never felt it, maybe by these photos you can picture it:

Same friends, different me. You wouldn’t know it to look at the picture, because I’m an Oscar-award winning actress sans the Oscar or any other award other than Most Dramatic at my 8th grade dance, so I smiled and carried on with nights out with friends, after them begging me to do so trying to overcome my insecurities through their dedication for me to live life despite my best efforts to debate them that it or more so I wasn’t worth it. They would win out and I would go, and usually have fun, except for picture time, but I’d take it because you have to or it didn’t happen right? However, the rest of the night and next day would be spent in self-lecture mode reviewing all the ways in which that photo pixilated all the little failures that created a mosaic of the unhappiness that hid behind the smile, confirming my suspicions that I shouldn’t have gone because now there existed documented proof of how much larger I was then my fellow humans. Granted I know this mean inner dialogue was over dramatic and life shouldn’t be measured in pounds, but rather wonderful moments, but for me, I couldn’t see those moments for the pounds. I told you, I was plagued. Literally, the fat began to rot me from the inside out taking fun and even a few friendships with them. It had been doing it for so long I couldn’t see at the time just how much of an impact it had on my life. I was no longer just abnormal in photos but in my thought patterns and actions.

In this new phase of life, I see things more clearly now, but there are still people I’d like to go back and apologize too for letting the burden of my weight and insecurities as a result of it become a burden on our friendship. I’d like to go back and apologize for letting my personal plague infect my relationship with loved ones and in general the world around me, and to apologize for still sometimes being guilty of it. While I can’t change the past, I promise I’m working on doing this less in the future.

Although I’m still very much on my journey with roughly 40 pounds to go before I’m truly at my dream weight, I am enjoying this stage of semi-normality. It’s been something I’ve dreamed about for a long time. Sure my stomach is far from flat, my thighs protrude a bit more than I’d prefer, and the junk in my trunk could be more toned, normal is what I wanted. Normal is what I dreamed about. Now that normal is where I am, and while I am not complacent in staying here, I am celebrating this point. Skinny may be the goal, but normal is not overrated.

So here’s to normal me and to the photos that no longer terrify me and to living a life with less self-deprivation and plus-sized plague.