Growing up, people told me that I was too weird to ever find a guy who would marry me. I was told that I'd have to find a guy who could "tolerate" me, and that I would have to be the one to propose.
My art teacher in high school told me that the man I'd wind up marrying would probably be a serial killer.
When I was in middle school, my mom told me that I was "a fat girl" and that "fat girls don't have friends, and they certainly don't get boyfriends."
Small 12 year old me truly took her words to heart and developed a severe case of anorexia due to what she said. I'm now 23, and I have been battling the eating disorder ever since. I also have an intense fear of gaining weight and suffer from extreme depression if I do gain any weight.
My mom was dating this guy a while back, and he brought us up north to meet his family. His dad was an awful person, to put it nicely.
As my brother and in were waiting in the car to leave, he came over to say goodbye. He stood at my window, looked inside at me, and yelled to my mom's boyfriend, "No wonder you have a flat tire, all the weight's on this side of the car!"
I was barely 13.
When I was 10 or 11, my class split up into groups and competed to see which group could put a puzzle together the fastest. I essentially finished our group's puzzle on my own, and the boy I was working with said, "You're really smart for an ugly girl!"
It took me a long time to get over this.
One day when I was 11 and in 6th grade, everyone was in the hallway switching between classes, and a kid I thought was my friend told me to go kill myself.
Seven other classmates who were around agreed loudly and high-fived the original guy for saying what they were thinking.
When I was 12, I had to go swim suit shopping with my mother for a one piece to wear to my cousin's church camp. After picking an orange swim suit to represent our group's color, she pointed and the clear plastic mannequin the swim suit was on and laughed, "Oh look, even the mannequin has bigger boobs than you do!"
Once when I was in middle school, I was joking around with my dad and we were just having a grand ole time. Then I tried to climb on him, but he wouldn't let me. He said, "You're too fat to be doing this."
I immediately stopped and ran and locked myself in my room and just cried and cried. I could hear my mom yelling at him for being such a dick.
To this day I'm still conscious about my weight because of him, even though I'm a 130 lbs and 5'7" college girl.
"You talk too much. No one cares." - My aunt, when I was 8.
"Who sings this? How about you leave it to them?" - My father, when I was 11.
"Your hair doesn't matter. No one is going to be looking at it with those thunder thighs in the picture. You'd be pretty if you'd just stop eating." - Also my dad, when I was 13.
"No one will ever be as amazing as you are." - My husband, frequently.
When I turned twelve years old, I overheard our our 45-year-old neighbor say to my dad, "I can't wait until she turns sixteen so I can fuck the shit out of her."
My neighbor didn't know that I heard him.
And my dad didn't know that I saw him punch our neighbor in the face.
When I was in 7th grade, I mistakenly thought I was supposed to dress up for career day. I didn't know any better. People made fun of me for it, telling me I was weird and stupid. They laughed at me and joked about me.
This was the moment in which I became extremely aware of myself. I started to get my entire self worth from other people's meaningless jokes, side comments, and attention.
I am now in 11th grade with social anxiety, and can't even talk to people I don't know or only sort of know without crying and hyperventilating. Those comments definitely stuck with me.
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.
