After I lost my virginity, I contracted my first UTI. I had no idea what was wrong. Being raised Christian, I was convinced God was punishing me for having premarital sex.
I went to my mother in the middle of the night on my hands and knees, crying in pain and fear.
She forced me to pray while reading the Bible and asking God for forgiveness for two hours, while I was still in pain, before taking me to the hospital.
My mother is a nurse.
I was riding my bike in the street, and I came to a crosswalk. I waited for the "Walk" signal, and crossed. As I was crossing, a massive truck started turning into the crosswalk at full speed. I tried to simultaneously stop my bike and yell to the driver to stop. The truck was so huge and he didn't see me, and I was very close to being hit. Thankfully at the very last second, the truck driver saw me and slammed the brakes.
I was shaken up and terrified. The driver waved at me in apology.
Then all of a sudden, a random guy walking on the street muttered loudly under his breath, "Stupid b*tch."
I was shocked. I asked if he was talking to me.
He kept his head down as he passed me, saying, "Stupid f*cking b*tch."
Apparently I am a woman who voluntarily chose to almost get hit by a truck, just for fun. What a b*tchy thing for me to do.
When I was 11 and my sister was 15, my sister and I were having yet another argument with our mom about us being so overweight.
According to my mom, we, "Would never find love," and, "How could anyone love us when we are just a couple of fat asses?" The usual arguments.
(Note: I was only about 40 pounds overweight, my sister about 75. We weren't gigantic, but overweight.)
I was crying of course, so my sister spoke up mid-argument and said, "This is why so many kids our age are killing themselves!"
I'll forever remember the tone in my mom's voice and the look in her eyes when she looked at us and said, "I'll give you the f*cking gun."
I still think about it every single day.
Growing up, I was always a little on the curvy side. I developed very early, and by age 8, wearing a bra was not even a question.
One day while walking to the local park with my neighbor and her granddaughter, the granddaughter turned to me and said, "I don't know how you're going to play at the park. You're probably going to break the slide going down, because you're too fat."
I felt the tears begin to swell up in my eyes. I turned to go home, but I was too far to walk on my own. My neighbor saw me begin to tear up, and all she said in response was, "Well, are we going to cry or walk to the park?"
Even as a child, I knew that the way they were treating me was wrong. I trudged on to the park, but didn't get on any of the equipment.
Ever since this experience, I always feel like everything I sit on is going to either break, crack, or fall apart.
One day in 8th grade, while waiting for my parents to pick me up, I was talking to my ex boyfriend and his group of friends. My ex and I had just broken up, but we were still on good terms.
While we were all talking, my ex's brother interrupted us and said, "You're so ugly. No one will ever want to date you, besides my brother."
I've always been bullied and called ugly, but it hurt even more coming from someone who actually knows who I am.
I'm still not over the insecurities that came from middle and high school bullying. And I'm starting to think I never will be.
A few years ago I read something about truthfulness, and that when a person is angry, that is when the truth comes out. And I felt it made a lot of sense, so I always remembered that.
One day, my mother asked me to do the laundry, so I went to go get my clothes and I put them in the washer and she cleaned them. But after they were done and I had put them away, she asked me if I put the laundry from behind her door (we don't have a hamper) in the washer too. And I didn't, because she didn't tell me to, so I figured it was already in the washer.
She got really, really mad at me, and she told me she hated me.
I went to bed early that night and cried until I fell asleep, thinking about how when people are mad they tell the truth.
My mother has told me she hated me on 5 different occasions since then, and during all of those times, she was very mad.
Throughout my entire elementary/middle/high school experience, I was bullied. If it wasn't my weight, it was my scars; if it wasn't those, it was something I said. The way I walked. Anything.
In grades 6 & 7, there was a specific group of kids that bullied me, and they had a ringleader. He was always the worst - he tried to start real, physical fights with my boyfriend at the time - and I was pretty tired of it, so I reported him.
Of course it only got worse. But the weird thing - the odd, wonderful thing - was that, a year after these incidents, he apologized. He sent me a message asking my forgiveness for all the things he'd said to me.
And then, years later, in our junior year of high school, he really floored me: I was tired one day, and I decided to lie on the floor during lunch. He and his friends (the same group that had bullied me for so long) were standing across the hallway, talking amongst themselves. I was lying on the floor, my eyes closed, wondering if skipping class was worth my parents' anger, when someone touched my arm.
I looked up, and there he was. The kid who'd spent a good portion of our middle school years making my life miserable.
"Hey, are you alright?" He asked. He looked sincere. His friend, another big bully, stood behind him, nodding. "Yeah, you okay?" He added.
It's stuck with me ever since, that a kid who was so awful to me and so many others could have such a huge change of heart.
My boyfriend and I were staying alone together one night, something we rarely got to do since he went to college about 5 hours away. Needless to say, it was a supposed to be a special night.
We'd been having sex for a year by then, but it was starting to hurt. I didn't know what was wrong, but I knew that I physically could no longer have sex. And I honestly wasn't in the mood to do anything sexual because I was feeling so depressed about not being able to do it.
That didn't seem to deter him.
He kept kissing me and it got to a point where it felt like we were fighting. It almost seemed like a game to him. It took me hitting, kicking, and biting him until he nearly bled for him to stop.
He lay down next to me while I curled into the fetal position, fighting back tears.
He said, "Well at least I know you'll never be raped!" Then he chuckled and went to sleep like nothing had happened.
It still haunts me how close he came to succeeding, and how painful it would have been if he had.
Turns out I had a condition that makes sex very painful and I'm having surgery this week to remedy it.
He didn't believe me and thought he'd take advantage of the situation.
Screw that, I'd kick his ass every time.
When I was in middle school, I got bullied a lot for being on the heavy side.
On the first day of 8th grade, I was sitting by myself at lunch when a group of girls came up to me and told me I was too fat for food, and they threw my food away.
I was raped last year by someone I trusted with my life.
After almost a year, we spoke again and decided to be on semi-decent terms since we had to see each other at college.
He expected us to go back to being close and talking and hanging out all the time. That wasn't happening.
We had a phone conversation once where I told him I had no trust regarding him. He got upset and said that I was wrong for not trusting him.
After arguing for a long time, he told me that since it has almost been over a year, "You should be over it by now."
That I should be over the fact that he raped me.
I will never be over my rape. It will always affect me. How dare he say that.
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.
