Eyebrows.

When I was 13, my mom took me to the department store to buy makeup for the very first time. I was excited and nervous. 

The lady at the counter offered to test some out on me before we purchased anything. She did a whole makeover and I felt good!

But right as she was wrapping up, she turned to my mom and told her that she might want to start tweezing or waxing my eyebrows and the hair between them.

That's what that stuck with me.

15 years later, I'm still insecure about my eyebrows and the small amount of blonde hair that sometimes grows between them.

"Too much fat."

As a kid, and even now, I was always thin. Especially before puberty, I was tall, lanky, and naturally skinny.

I remember being about twelve, and I had put on a little bit of baby fat, as lots of girls do around that age as they reach puberty. I remember being in my grandmother's kitchen and going to pour myself a glass of whole milk before she snatched it away from me and poured me skim, patting my nearly flat stomach and telling me in broken English, "No, too much fat, [granddaughter], watch it!"

It was the first time I had felt shame about my body and that my worth was directly tied to my appearance.

It lead to years of being ashamed to eat anything fattening in front of people.

"You're hurting ME and MY family."

Said by my biological dad, after I told my therapist about a fight my family had that caused me to have a panic attack. 

I have been diagnosed with anorexia nervosa, anxiety, body dysmorphic disorder, and major depressive disorder.

Through years of family and individual therapy, my therapists and psychiatrists have concluded that my eating disorder, anxiety and depression were partly caused by my family dynamic. Fighting, lashing out, aggressiveness, hostility, hatred and anger filled my house throughout my childhood. Or this is how I perceived it.

In 2014 my dad lashed out at me, saying that I was hurting HIS, not OUR, family, by making up these stories about how painful it was for him to live through this. According to him, I've overdramatized my family's problems for attention, and I lie to my therapists and psychiatrists. I was making HIS family seem like monsters, and ME as the poor little victim.

I haven't felt part of the family since he said those things. I've been the outcast. The insane one. The crazy one. My parents love me, our family dynamic is better now, but because of that comment I've truly come to the realization that my parents' support through my recovery is all an illusion.

They are ashamed of me and wish I were different.

"Well, she can see you."

Between kindergarden and first grade, I started to put on some weight and developed into a quite chubby kid. My mom was very proactive when I started gaining weight, and enrolled us in many family "get healthy" programs. I was aware that this was an issue, but for me at the time, it was an internal one. 

After one of my parent-teacher conferences in first grade, my mother came home and reported that I got glowing reviews from all of my teachers. She also said that one of my teachers, a beautiful and very thin woman, mentioned to her that she was overweight as a child as well and that she eventually grew out of it. I asked my mom how my teacher knew that I was overweight, and my mom responded, "Well, she can see you". 

I have never forgotten this moment. It was an innocent comment by my mother, one that would be obvious to any adult. However, as a young child that was the first time I realized that others were seeing and discussing my weight gain. That was the beginning of many years of self-consciousness and self-hating regarding my weight and looks.

It is only in the past several years that I have come to accept and like myself and how I look.

I don't think my mom remembers this comment, or has any idea how it affected me.

When I was 13 I went to a summer camp and had to share a shower with other girls. 

While I was bathing a girl yelled out, “What’s wrong with your boobs?!” And all the girls stopped and looked. I couldn’t understand what she meant. They were mine they weren’t overly perky but I never thought of them as wrong.

Another girl asks “Did guys ya know, do stuff with them?” And the same girl replied, “Who would want to play with those?” I lowered my head in shame and confusion.

To this day I’m always self conscious the first time I reveal my body to any guy. Will he want to know what’s wrong them as well? 

I was in fourth grade, it was the first hot day of the year, and I was so excited to finally be able to wear my new tank top from Gap Kids.

When I got to school, the first person I saw was this girl who I had recently become good friends with. She was standing by the door with a group of people, and she said to me, loudly, “You should NOT be wearing that!” They all laughed. 

I was so shocked and caught off guard. I don’t even remember what I said in response. I think I laughed and kept walking.

To this day I’m not sure exactly why she thought I shouldn’t have been wearing that tank top. Maybe it was because I wasn’t wearing a bra, or maybe my arms looked weird or something. But it makes me really sad to think that I’m still trying to figure out what was objectively “wrong” with my nine-year-old body.