"sticks and stones will break my bones but words will never hurt me"
When I was younger, I used to sing the above and really believe it. I have always believed that I was always proud of who I was. And to a certain extent, that's true. I have never cared if I was different than others, I'm always happy to embrace the quirks of MY personality. When other teenagers were becoming interested in boys, I will still happily obsessing over television shows. In fact my obsessions were actually what I was known for in school. I spent the majority of my teenage years on online message boards, meeting people online and I wasn't ashamed to admit it. I had plenty of friends offline too because I simply would ignore whenever anyone tried to bully me for things I liked. I was who I was and I was never ever going to apologise for it. However, although I was comfortable with who I was on the inside, I have NEVER been comfortable with who I was on the outside.My problems with my weight began in my early teens. I was always slightly chubbier than other girls my age. It was simply puppy fat. I remember the first time I was called fat. It was actually when I was much younger, I must have been about 5 or 6. It was a boy who lived in my street who made the comment. I can't actually remember the circumstances but I remember the comment and it has stuck with me til today. The thing is at that age, I wasn't even chubby in the slightest.
I remember being really upset by the comment and running home to tell my Mum. She was comforting and she told me to stand up for myself if anyone ever said it again. I don't think I ever did though. Words weren't supposed to hurt me and I don't think I really understood that something that wasn't physical could hurt that much. I was pretty much self conscious about my weight from that day on. But it didn't exactly repel me from food, infact it had the opposite effect. Food was my comfort zone. I had never ever been a fussy eater, I would always eat my vegetables and I loved healthy meals. My Gran lived across the road from my Mum and I and all too often I would go over and get treated with sweets and cakes. It's only looking back now that I realise that this is a pattern which has followed me almost my whole life.
When I reached my teenage years, I had a paper round. I earned about £30 a week because I used to do two rounds everyday and four everyday at the weekend. That is an insane amount of money for a 13 year old to earn. I had nothing really to spend it on apart from sweets and chocolate. I put on quite a lot of weight from them onwards. I still wasn't huge or obese but I was around a size 12/14 by the age of 14/15. I remember clothes shopping used to fill me with dread. I used to live in jeans which were always too small or too big for me. Around this time, my Mum would constantly tell me I needed to lose weight. She didn't used to say it horribly, it was just concern from a worried Mother. But to me, all I heard was her telling me I was fat.
There were a lot of other factors in my teenage years that constantly reinforced my belief that I was "huge". My first year of college, I found out a few friends on my course had a less than flattering nickname for me. There were often comments about my weight brought up in conversations. The first boy I ever liked called me fat and told me I should lose weight. Another led me on and then told me it was a joke. Another pursued me for months and then told me he didn't want a relationship. A few months later he started a relationship with a girl a lot smaller than me. I'm not saying the last two were because of my weight. Infact, they most probably were not. But to me, everything that went wrong was because of my weight. Through all these issues, I still took comfort in food.
Around the age of 20, I had put on a significant amount of weight. I had gone from a size 12/14 to a size 18/20. I had started dreading going out and always felt huge in comparison with other people. I felt disgusting and I remember the exact moment I decided it was time to change. It was June 2009. I had been in London for the weekend. I was sat in Leicester Square. I decided something had to be done. And with that I started "dieting". I lost over four stone in just over a year. I don't know exactly how much because I refused to weigh myself until December 2009. I don't really want to go over the details into what I did or how I lose the weight. This isn't about what I did to tackle these feelings, it's about the triggers.
It isn't just weight related comments that stick with me. It's anything to do with my appearance. A number of people who have made comments with negative connotations. Every single one, I will obsess over. And the stupid thing is, the person responsible probably won't think about that comment ever again. Over the past few years, I have put over a stone back on. I'm still under 10 stone. I'm nowhere near as big as I was before. People still comment on my weight. It's happened a lot over the past two years. There have been a few incidents that have made me feel as big as I was before. Just yesterday, I had a group of boys opposite on the train platform calling me a "big girl". A few years ago, a boy called me fat at the dinner table. Although he immediately apologised, I still think about it to this day.
Words do hurt. And how you use your words matters. You have no idea what the other person is going through and how your comments will affect them. Something as personal as appearance, unless you are giving a genuine comment: "you look incredible" or something that can't be skewed negatively, is something you shouldn't comment on. Ever. Period. If a person is obviously uncomfortable with something, please don't press them on it. Leave it be. Sticks and stones do break your bones but words can break someone's self esteem. So really, is one worse than the other?
