Ah, childhood....

When I was little I never felt guilty about eating junk food, but I did feel guilty about not feeling guilty. I knew what people were thinking (and sometimes saying) that I shouldn’t probably eating my CRUNCH bars or pizza (stuffed crust, extra cheese, yum!) my families favorite dessert Ding Dong cake, or just your run of the mill Little Debbie or Hostess cakes, but I still ate them, because why shouldn’t I if the other kids got to? But I knew I was expected not too. To be so worried about being chunky, that I would not eat that stuff. To me I thought it was so unfair. “Why do the other girls get to be skinny?” No one had an answer for me. I played outside, I rode my bike, swam in the summer time, but I always kept gaining weight. I didn’t know what else I could’ve done. It wasn’t like all I was doing was lying on the couch drinking soda after soda, eating crap all the time. We didn’t have crap in the house all the time. So what was the deal? When I was twelve I was diagnosed with type two diabetes (thanks Dad) and polycystic ovaries (PCOS). We learned that PCOS can cause weight gain, and make it harder for some people to lose weight. Okay, one mystery solved. You start to wonder if when all you do is drink Slim Fast diet drinks at twelve years, and GAIN weight, if there’s something else going on. But to the kids that you go to school with, they don’t really care, at least the bullies don’t. I was different, I was their prey.   

I remember being on the bus, the older girls would surround me on my seat (where I sat alone) and would start their daily torture. “Hey, what are you going to do when you get home? Eat all your Oreo’s?” or “Hey how much do you weigh anyway? It’s got to be a lot! Do you break the scale? Hahahahaha!” They would try and poke my giggly flesh, as I tried to stare ahead, to not my tears fall that were burning behind my eyes, to ignore their laughing and poking and pointing. I remember feeling like I couldn’t breathe, like if I just stayed still that maybe they would leave me alone. The seven minutes it took to get from the school to the apartment I lived in with my mom and my brother were the most painful times I can remember, trying to figure out how to wiggle my pudgy body out of the window of a moving bus, because I could not think of a more painful situation than what I was going through on that bus. I would trudge down the steep hill to my home, drop my backpack by the front door and bawl my eyes out on my brother’s chest (secretly a part of me hating him because he was thin) hiccupping and still crying as he called the principle about the bullies. I remember the next day stepping on the bus with my grade school principle and watch her ask the girls if they bullied me. Of course they said no, and that was the end of the investigation. I can picture my eight year self, staring at my principle, the woman who was the boss, and who just accepted the bullies answer.  I wish I could go back in time, back in time to say “Seriously lady? Did you fucking expect them to fess up? What the fuck?” It was at that time that I learned to not tell adults about any teasing that came my way, because all that happens is that nothing happens. I keep getting bullied, but now with the added bonus of being a snitch. Awesome. All this comes back to the fact that I was, and so were others that were different, were brutally teased and taunted because we didn’t look or act like everybody else. Why? Why do people need this power, even at so young an age?

I have to admit that at one point in my childhood I did have the opportunity to bully someone. And I had a rush, I thought “Finally, pay back, here we go!” but I hate myself after I teased this girl. And later I apologized and we became friends. But I still feel guilty over it. I’m not proud of it, and I told myself “Never again, she’s no different from you,” The rest of my school career I would try and help out kids that I saw being bullied, I felt like I had more control if they were attacking someone else instead of me, and would try to be strong and basically tell them to fuck off. Didn’t really help though.

I am very rarely am teased now, but by social norms, I am not desirable. I have family members who to me look like super models. They would never say that, but that’s what I think. They are movie star pretty, and when I was little I was in awe of them. I would feel weird though, like I didn’t fit.

Now? I plop my double digit sized jeaned butt next to them, and don’t feel any less desirable. I don’t feel any less pretty. And I just want to make it clear that they never made me feel less than them, this is just the thought process of a little girl, wishing she looked like her big cousins.

I don’t care if you are plump, a jock, a nerd, a geek, a goth, artsy, dorky, or all of the above. Whatever, makes you YOU, is the most important thing. I DO care however if you are ignorant, bitchy, an ass, a bully, or anything hurtful, because if you are then you are the one who is ugly. I also care if you don’t care enough about yourself to love yourself, because to me that is tragic. 

I know that I am funny, smart, and again I don’t feel like I am awful to look at. I wish all women, could look at them self in the mirror every day and tell their reflections that they are worthy. That they are beautiful, and desirable to the right man (or woman). To not think they are less important than the size 0 models, with their airbrushed pictures splashed all over the magazines. Everyone is worthy, everyone deserves to feel good about themselves, if you’re plumpier or skinny, tall or short, whatever.  I think the world would be a much better place if people stopped beating themselves up over whom they are. Love yourself, I know it’s a cliché, but it’s the most important piece of advice I can give. Thanks for reading!

“So raise your glass if you are wrong in all the right ways. We will never, never be anything but loud,” – P!nk