I was laughing at something my sister said at the dinner table. My dad was in the kitchen and he gave me this disgusted look and said, "You laugh so loud and strong."
He made it sound like such a terrible thing, so I thought that maybe my laugh must be annoying or something.
So now whenever something funny happens, I try really hard not to laugh, and I just kind of smile instead.
I was maybe five years old, and my grandparents had been upset with me every day that summer. I still don't know why.
I remember sitting on the couch and my grandfather was scolding me for something.
He said, "I'm sick to death of you!"
This not only made me feel horrible, but it scared me. As a little kid I thought, "I'm so bad, I'm going to kill my grandfather!"
This has come up in therapy a few times.
I've struggled with my weight for my entire 28 years of life. I've gone through phases of being very overweight to losing nearly 75 lbs at one point after college. But since the age of 13, I've never managed to be thinner than a size 12. I was constantly teased for being the 'fat girl' in school, but during the summer of my 13th year, I was actually beginning to feel more comfortable in my new, more womanly body. My weight had distributed more evenly to my breasts and butt, I'd grown into my extremely large head, and I'd developed a nice golden brown tan that year from spending a lot of time at the pool at summer camp.
I remember first seeing the halter top on the rack at K-Mart. It was a cotton spandex material with a built-in bra, and the colors were a mix of neon pink, blue, purple, and green. It looked like tops I'd seen my skinny friends wear. All the colors met in a starburst on the front of the shirt then shot out with iridescent sparkles throughout. "This is a really cool shirt," I thought to my 13-year-old self and showed it to my mother. My mom had me try it on and said it looked nice on me and that it wasn't too revealing for my age. Happy to see my recent self-confidence, she bought it for me to wear on our upcoming family vacation to Myrtle Beach, SC.
I remember being very nervous to wear the shirt in public. As much as I liked it, I'd never exposed that much of my back and shoulders outside of wearing a bathing suit. Even then, I was often known to swim with a t-shirt covering my swimsuit. Didn't only skinny girls get to wear those kind of shirts in public? That's what I'd thought for so long and I was losing my nerve to put it on. As our vacation drew to a close, it was our last night at the beach and my mom encouraged me to put on my "new pretty shirt" for our last dinner out as a family.
I got myself ready, pairing the shirt with a denim skirt, sandals, sparkly lipgloss, and a tiny bit of blush and mascara I borrowed from my mom. I looked at myself in the mirror and thought, "I actually look kind of normal!" I felt pretty. My tanned skin glowed golden brown and my light brown hair had lightened with the saltwater and sun. My dad also commented how grown up I looked in the shirt, wondering where his little girl had gone.
We headed to dinner and I climbed into the back of our Ford Thunderbird. On our way to the restaurant, we drove down the Myrtle Beach strip. I sat behind my dad in the driver's seat and watched the cars come toward us on the opposite side of the road, some filled with families like ours and some filled with obnoxious college kids on summer vacation, drunkenly dancing in the car.
We ended up sitting in slow moving traffic for some time. I looked to my left and saw a handsome young blonde guy, driving a black pickup truck, coming toward us. His friend was in the truck with him and as our car passed his, I looked up at him. Our eyes met for just a second and my first instinct was to smile at him.
I smiled at a cute guy in my new halter top, full of confidence. A woman unleashed.
But what happened next would shape the way I felt about myself, and how I thought men viewed me, for quite some time after.
When I smiled at him, he looked down at me from his truck, and even though our windows were rolled up to preserve the air conditioning, I watched him mouth these exact words down at me, "Don't you smile at me, you fat bitch!"
As he drove away, laughing with his friend, I felt so exposed and wanted to be wearing anything but my new halter top.
My parents were deep in conversation and had not seen the boy make fun of me, and I was too embarrassed to bring it to their attention.
As we pulled up to the restaurant, I didn't want to get out of the car. I spent all of dinner upset, barely touching my food, and self conscious that everyone was staring at the fat girl in the shirt she shouldn't be wearing.
It would be several years before I had the courage to wear another halter top or something similar in public. The shirt I once loved so much, laid shining in the bottom of my dresser, until one day I finally threw it out. All because some stupid college guy on vacation decided to make fun of a 13-year-old girl coming into her own.
To this day, I think of him when I wear something that makes my upper body feel exposed.
I feel this story is a little silly, but it did really affect me when it happened.
I've dealt with bullying from preschool straight through high school. By my sophomore year, I thought I'd convinced myself that nothing else could hurt me, that I've heard it all.
I was in a club meeting after school and I wasn't really feeling it. I stepped out to use the bathroom.
The halls were quiet and the bathroom was empty. Then some girls came in after I started going, and one of them yelled, "Damn waterfall!" The girls laughed loudly and left.
I didn't see them, and they didn't see me, but it really bothered me for some reason.
I've had a very shy bladder for about 5 years after.
It's the same feeling people get when they're eating chips, like they're chewing too loudly, even if it's not actually bothering anyone.
When I was 11 years old, I hit puberty. I got taller and thinner overnight. I developed faster than the other girls, and they all made fun of me for it.
I came home crying about it to my parents and they told me to laugh it off.
Over the next few months I became even thinner. I was a stick.
My stepmom and my dad told me, "You look like a boy from behind," because of my lack of curves. They continued telling me this for years.
I'm 19 now and I still think about my "lack of curves" and how I "look like a boy from behind."
I cant shake that.
One day, when I was in the first grade, I was playing on the playground at school. I was never very outgoing and I didn't have a lot of friends. A second grade boy came over to me. He looked at me and said, "You aren't pretty."
As a child, my first instinct was to say, "Yes I am! My momma told me I am!"
With that, he quickly lashed out with, "Well, she lied."
As I grew older, his words stuck with me. They took a bigger toll on my self confidence than I would like to admit. Something so seemingly small that happened to me as a child in the first grade impacted me for the next ten years.
Then, one day when I was a camp counselor, I met a boy who told me he loved me. I thought I was sitting among the stars. No one outside of my family had ever told me they loved me before. For the first time since first grade, I felt like I was pretty enough. Like I was wanted.
Time went on and so did the relationship. Then one day, he spoke four words that cut me deep. "I don't love you."
I felt unwanted, unlovable. I was depressed for the longest time.
Eventually I figured out how to enjoy just being me. I loved being myself again.
Then, one day, I met an amazing man with a great personality, and equally great looks. I was a second semester freshman in college. I quickly learned about him: his past, his family, his likes and dislikes, his dreams. He made me feel loved, wanted, and important. I loved him more than I ever thought I could love someone. And for the first time in a while, I knew I was good enough. Life seemed to fall into place. We talked about marriage, children, and growing old together.
Then, one day as we were Skyping, he dropped his head in silence. Then he uttered the words I thought he would never say. "I don't think we're going to work. I don't love you".
I was more than devastated. I was so heartbroken, I couldn't even cry. It was almost like my heart broke into two pieces, and then a million more. I could feel my heart shatter like glass in my chest.
Days went by and I tried to hide the pain, but the nights were long. Often times I cried myself to sleep, other times I fell asleep from the pure exhaustion of crying so hard the night before.
Weeks went by and I still missed him, but the tears stopped. Slowly but surely, I started to be me again.
With the help of my best friend, I realized I was depending too much on others making me happy, that I had forgotten how to make myself happy.
Now I am happily single. I enjoy every day. I'm going to take life by the horns. I'm going to keep knowing that I am pretty, I am wanted, and I am loved.
Then, one day, I'll get make someone else feel the same way.
As a kid I always knew that college was the end game of going to school. You do well in school so that you can get into college. It was an assumption I had.
Then one day when I was about 7, my college dropout mom said to me, "College?!" Followed by hysterical laughter. "You won't ever go to college! There's no way we could ever help you pay for it. And good luck paying for it yourself!"
I've struggled in school since then. But not because it was hard. I always tested well. I just never put in any effort. I wasn't going to be a doctor or a lawyer, so why did it matter? I just wanted to be a mechanic or a construction worker after that. That was what everyone in my family did that had dropped out of high school, and they had their own lives, nice trucks, houses. I just wanted to quit school and get to it. I felt like I was wasting time there ever since my mom made those comments.
But I had to stay because my family wanted me to have a high school diploma.
The same people that told me I could never go to college.
I am Caucasian, African American, Irish, and Native American. I have caramel light skin and extremely curly hair. So I always stuck out like a sore thumb.
When I was in school the question I always got was, "What are you mixed with?"
Once I got to middle school, it turned from genuine curiosity to physical and verbal abuse.
People would drag me by my hair or spit gum in my hair, so I had to cut it.
People said things to me like:
"You're a mixed breed. A mutt."
"You have no place in this world."
"You need to go kill yourself. The world would be better off."
I guess you can say I'm a rebel or a loner now, but I'm turning twenty soon and this is something that has always still stuck with me. I could never shake it.
Now I take a high pride in being biracial, but back then I could never understand why people didn't like me.
When I was twelve, my dad and my mom split up because my mom had a serious drug and alcohol problem. I lived with my dad, who eventually got a new girlfriend.
Of course having her as the new mom-like figure in my life, and me being an immature teenager, I always told her that she wasn't my mom and shouldn't act like it. It always made her furious, which I enjoyed.
But I'll never forget the last time I said that to her. We were arguing outside of my brother's school in her van, waiting for him to come out. Full on screaming and pulling each other's hair.
When I said it, she replied with, "I know I'm not your mother! I don't want to be your mother! Your own mother doesn't want to be your mother!"
I let go and sobbed into a big ball.
She felt terrible, but I'll never forget how her words made me feel.
I knew my mom wasn't around, and I had always blamed myself for that for absolutely no reason. But now my dad's girlfriend was giving that fear a voice that would always play in my head from then on.
My mother's husband always disliked me and frequently physically and verbally abused me. It got worse when I started fighting back, at around 9 or 10. One day we got into a vicious argument, and he locked me out of the house.
My mom eventually came home and asked why I was crying on the porch, and I told her what had happened. She told me that I was instigating trouble with him.
I asked why she always sided with him, and her response was, "I will always side with him. I picked him but I didn't pick you."
I've never forgotten that.
Every time I see her, that's what I think of. I'll never forget that she didn't "pick" me.
Ever since then, I've never picked her either. And I never will.
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.
