I just want to look perfect...

I had 9 beautiful, prescious, peacful years where I was free of a desire to look perfect. To break this week's confession of a shopaholic down will be of great difficulty due to the complexity of the topic. All good things come in threes so I just want to look perfect will come in presicely three consecutive confessions: the media, modelling and friendships.

Serena Van Der Woodsen, Lily-Rose Depp, Kate Moss... basically any living and breathing white girl with perfect tits, a slim waist and a thigh-gap were flauntered in my favourite childhood rom-coms, featured on the cover of vogue or walked the runways in Milan which were broadcasted on pinterest, tumblr, youtube, instagram, TV or the magazines. Perfection was the white noise to my adolescance. Perfection sorrounded me. Perfection was unescapable. Perfection was everything I wanted to be, was everything I thought I should be, everything I had to be in order for love, praise and acceptance to be shwon to me. That's a harsh reality for someone who also wants to clean up with A pluses and B minuses, is drowning in homework and overdue essays and is working the late-night shift at her local restaurant. By age 10 I was skipping the bus and walking home in 30 degree heat following up with fat-burning youtube at-home workouts. By age 11 I started labelling food as 'good' and 'bad'. By age 18 going on 19 I'm an anorexic and ex-bulimic who has her parents worried sick and the hospital emergency room on standby. Am I skinnier than Serena? Most likely. Am I happier? Unlikely.

Oh, to be a VS angel. Soon this became my purpose and it looked a little something like this...

Q: Hungry?

A: Don't you want to look perfect?

Q:Tired?

A: Don't you want to look perfect?

Q: Overworked?

A: Don't you want to look perfect?

VS angels were the foundation of my aspirations. I dreamt of men's attention. I dreamt of the perfect body. I dreamt of smelling beautiful. I dreamt of feeling confident, desirable, and pretty. At age 13, I was scouted by IMG models. I thought to myself that I was in. I couldn't wait. Literally. I thought if I looked how I thought they wanted me to look by the time my braces had come off and I had grown a few inches then I would be walking ths VS runways by the time I'd graduated highschool. It turned out that once I'd ditched the braces and my height improved, they'd changed their mind and moved on to some other girl's dream. I was crushed. I applied to every single modelling agency in Sydney after the fact and was rejected by all of them. I thought I was perfect. I'd worked so hard. I'd chosen my looks over my brains everyday for 2 years. I'd joined 2 gyms, done thousands of youtube workouts, restricted my intake, missed family dinners and cried bathtubs full of tears to be... rejected? And now all that was left was Luka. Luka minus her personality. Luka plus an eating disorder.

I had two best friends in highschools. T, then H. T was beautiful. Beautiful like the girls in the movies. She had big blue eyes and long blonde hair that bounced perfectly as she walked with her long, skinny legs. But she was kind, also. Funny like you wouldn't believe. We laughed until our stomachs hurt but she made me cry too. She could be cold and distant. I really loved T. I loved her more than a friend. H was beautiful also. She had mousy brown hair and green, emerald eyes that sparkled when she smiled with her perfectly imperfect teeth. Her body was natural. Healthy. We stayed up all night watching netflix and munching on boxes of chocolate and homemade pastas. We loved to bake together and going out to eat sushi and pizza. We grew apart after 2 years of fights and disagreements, ungratefulness and selfishness. I'd like to say it was all her fault but in reality I know that I was too immature and petty to paint myself that way. The point is that T ate whatever she wanted, whenever she wanted. And so did H. And so did L (me, Luka) for a longwhile there except the difference was that over the years, thoughts lingered in the back of my head, accumulating data and evidence on how T ate in hopes that with my calculations I could one day, too, be as pretty as T.