When I started dating my first boyfriend in 11th grade, I had been anorexic for roughly 4 years, and was trying to go into recovery.
In the midst of this, my boyfriend told me one day, “I’m glad you have an eating disorder, you could lose a few pounds.”
5 years later and 4 years into recovery, I still think of his comment any time I step on the scale and think about relapsing.
Delivering my first child was easy, but the recovery was complicated. The placenta had been retained and I was still experiencing the symptoms of preeclampsia for almost 3 weeks afterwards. It seemed like every time we would leave the hospital, I had to turn around and be readmitted.
One night, just hours after leaving the hospital I told my husband something was wrong and we needed to go back. He asked me, "Are you even sure you want this baby? Every time we finally get home and should be able to spend time together, you always want to leave and go back. Do you even want us in your life? The next time you go back we aren't going with you."
When we arrived at the hospital I was rushed into emergency surgery. Something was physically wrong with me and I understand he was frustrated and scared but there was no reason to make me feel worse than I already did.
I got a sudden, ungodly pain in my side one day in 2015. It was completely out of the blue. It took the ER 6 hours to find the cyst but then I was referred to a surgeon. He wanted to wait until after the holidays to remove my spleen (it was around December 12th at this point) but something in my gut told me that wasn't a good idea. I asked him to take it out sooner. About 5 days later they told me that the cyst was bigger than they originally thought and was the size of a softball.
Then after surgery, the surgeon came in and told me, "It's a good thing we took it out when we did. If that cyst had burst, you would have died."
This happened only a few years ago, but it will stick with me until I'm gone. Always trust your gut.
For a long time, I felt like my depression was ruining my marriage, but after I started going to therapy, I finally felt like I was making progress towards being "normal."
One day, my therapist told me that often with her married patients, improving their sex life was pivotal in improving their self-esteem. This made sense to me, because my sex life was nearly nonexistent.
I picked my husband up from work that evening, and told him about what my therapist had said. Before I could go further, he interrupted me to say, "I would want to have sex with you, if only you had a rockstar body."
Even when I was thin, my body image was terrible. But this shot what little confidence I had. His cruelty in that moment made me never want sex again, and I've not since initiated.
It's been five years since then. He's had affairs. I've been suicidal. He's told me to kill myself. And one day, I might.
Growing up, I was always on the bigger side. My grandma would try to "help" motivate me to lose weight by saying, "Boys won't think you're pretty if you're fat."
This started when I was five years old.
I got married at 18 and had my son at 19. My husband is almost 20.
I went to the doctor's office on my due date and was told that I had preeclampsia and had to be induced for the wellbeing of my child. While I was in the middle of pushing, they though the monitors were confusing our heart beats. They were wrong. My son had no heartbeat. I felt something was wrong, but the doctor kept dismissing my fears and acting like my son was fine. I kept telling her that something was wrong and to get him out of me.
The doctor just looked at me and said, "What do you expect me to do? How do you expect me to get him out?" I begged her for what felt like forever to just cut me open and take him out. She refused.
When he finally came out, the cord was wrapped so tightly around his neck that it snapped and he lost a lot of blood. He had a seizure. He didn't breathe for over 5 minutes and he was a deep blue/grey. They had to resuscitate him and rush him to another hospital where they had a higher level NICU. I didn't get to hold my baby for over 3 days because he had to be on a cooling pad for HIE and monitored for seizures.
All because a cocky doctor wouldn't listen to me. Fuck that doctor.
My husband was emotionally cruel to me, and then he had an affair. I went to stay with a friend and I asked my husband for a divorce.
This "friend" told me, "You're too much. No wonder he treats you bad. You deserve it."
Believing this to be true, I went back to my husband. I was a horrible person who deserved to suffer, right?
I got back, he got drunk. He told me that the next time I want to die, he won't stop me because I'm worthless, I'm fat, and he could always do better. He reminded me that even my family thinks that I'm stupid, and they don't want me.
I live in utter isolation because I don't have real friends, and I feel like I deserve his abuse.
I was a sophomore in high school, in the second or third week of my relationship with my boyfriend at the time. Homecoming was just around the corner, and I was really excited about going with him.
But then he suddenly broke up with me and said he wanted to go with one of our classmates because, "She dresses hot."
I'd never thought anything about what I wore until that day. Now I'm extremely self conscious and picky about what I wear.
When I was 8 years old, my sister and I went to my grandfather's house in Arizona. His wife loved my sister and bought her anything she wanted. But when I would even look at something, she would tell me, "Fat girls don't get to wear pretty things."
That was 20 years ago, and to this day I believe that fat girls can't wear pretty things, which is why I wear nothing but sweats and t-shirts. It was just in the last year or so that I started wearing tank tops.
Towards the end of my junior year, I was wearing a skater skirt and tight crop top. Our school doesn't have AC and gets extremely hot near the end of the year, so I wore this a lot.
I was talking in art class with two of my girlfriends and three of our best guy friends. We were all chit chatting and laughing when the art teacher called me over to her desk and told me to think about what I wear next time, and that I was violating dress code because half an inch of my mid drift was showing and my skirt was too short. Even though the skirt was at finger tip length, which meets the school requirement on skirts.
She proceeded to say in a sarcastic and degrading way, "There's a reason five guys are standing around you right now." Even though it was three guys and they in no way ever even flirted with me. I was about to explode, so I walked away from her desk and sat and talked to my friends about it. They all were shocked and outraged. The teacher overheard us and then proceeded to talk about it loudly to the whole classroom, degrading my outfit.
My friend spoke up and said, "Stop sexualizing women's bodies."
Then the teacher tried to give me detention and keep me after class for the commotion SHE caused.
I went home bawling for two hours because I felt so awful and embarrassed. She never apologized. And I forever am worried about seeing her in the halls with whatever I wear.
Has anyone ever made a fleeting comment about you that immediately became tattooed onto the front of your brain for all of eternity, impacting your self-perception and self-worth? Whether it was an offhand comment made by someone you love and respect or a fleeting declaration by someone you barely know, we share the moments that stick.
