I Was Labeled, but It Gets Better

Oh Mama Kat, you always know exactly which topics to pick to get us writing from the bottom of our souls and pulling from all of those memories we try so hard to repress.  I'm not sure whether I should hate you for it, or love you for forcing me to be a better person.  Forcing me to pour out my innermost pain right here in the blog.  Readers, if you want to link up with Writers Workshop, click HERE.

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From an early age, I was a vibrant blonde-attention loving child.  I was normal sized at that point in my life.

Somewhere around the age of 8, I ballooned into a much larger-darker haired-less vibrant version of my younger self.  This earned me the label of "the fat kid."  A label I have been carrying with me my entire life.

(I'm on the left in the ugly denim dress.)

I was teased, I was picked on, and none of the boys liked me.  Between 4th and 6th grade, the elementary years, this didn't matter so much.  Kids would pick on me and I would retort with the phrase my dad had taught me to throw back at them.  "I may be fat, but you're ugly and at least I can lose weight!" It got me by.  I was smart, I had a lot of friends who really liked me, and my teachers seemed to adore me when I wasn't tagging along with the bad girls in school.

I was used to being chunkier, and it didn't seem so wrong at that point.  My grandmother's were soft and warm to snuggle into, and my mother was large AND the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen in my entire life (she still is the most beautiful, by the way) so what was so wrong with being big?  Everyone always told me how pretty my mother was, and if she could be big and pretty, I could too-right?

(Mom's on the left, holding my brother and sister.)

However, as I moved into those dreadful teenage years, it got harder and harder to be who I was.  Kids became more cruel, all mixed up in their own hormones and self-loathing, and the insults became harder to handle.  I spent a good chunk of my teenage years losing myself in my books.  My grades suffered, I chose friends who treated me horribly, and I convinced myself that it was my lot in life to forever be unloved.  How could any boy ever want this?  This chunk of human being all fleshy with mousy brown hair and acne?  

I'll admit it, there were days when I contemplated suicide.  Sometimes I felt like I would never come into my own.  I would always have friends that yo-yo-ed me, never real friends that actually cared.  I would never fall in love, never get married, never have children-all because no one would ever want to be with my lard-ass.  I felt worthless, and I had no hope for anything more for my life so I never tried to be anything more.  I never tried to get good grades, or go to college, or date; I was simply trying to survive.

 After high school things did get much better.  I learned how to dress, how to do my hair and makeup, and how to work with what I had.  Mostly meaning my cleavage, boy do I have some good cleavage.  But even with all of that, those words from high school still stick with you.

I tell myself I'm better off, tell myself it doesn't matter what people think, but as my roommate said the other day "We tell ourselves 'sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can never hurt me' but it isn't true.  Words hurt, they hurt a lot."  

Not only do they hurt, but they work their way into your brain like little burrowing worms; planting themselves there with no way for you to extract them without a full on lobotomy.  There are days, even now-over ten or more years later, that I still think to myself "Fatty fatty, two-by-four, can't fit through the kitchen door."  There are times when I look in the mirror and taunt myself, that hurtful little rhyme running on loop in the back of my mind.  Those teenage years are permanently branded in my brain, and now and again I still feel that old burning pain-all hot and tender and stinging as if that the iron, pulled straight from the fire, was once again pressed tight against the mark left by those difficult years.

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I'm going to end this with something I feel is very important.  So many teens are bullied these days, during the hardest years of their lives for things they cannot change.  It is becoming an epidemic in our country; all of these suicides we've been having lately.  It's tragic.

I just pledged to help support the IT GETS BETTER project, because it does.  Even though the old familiar sting of those words still creep up now and again, and we should put a stop to the bullying and teasing-I am so much better off where I am today than I was back then.  I have people in my life that keep me going, that love me, and who I love more than I can possibly say.  It. Gets. Better.

Let's help kids realize that even if they're being bullied, it isn't a reason to stop living; and let's help put a stop to the bullying by teaching our children to love and accept people.

Will you stand with me?

www.itgetsbetterproject.com