I’ll start off with why I had a bad day at Bowen.
I have, or used, to have a “friend” named Ryan. I had just met him through Bowen this year and I thought he was a pretty decent person until today. He made a comment that hit me right where it hurts. A harsh comment that he just kept dragging out. He said I have “thunder thighs.” Now I don’t want you to think I’m a cry baby or I’m over-emotional for taking that seemingly small comment to heart. Because trust me I can take a hit. I’ve done so ALL my life. As a child I was bullied for countless reasons. My weight, my appearance, my lack of talking. I was the outcast basically. I was the girl you could pick on and she wouldn’t say a word back to you. I was the girl who hide so much emotional hurt inside her that I wouldn’t speak very much at all. Basically, I just didn’t want to say something stupid then get more criticism thrown at me. So I remained silent the major of my time as a kid. This is strike one for severe upcoming body issues.
It’s sad to think that this little girl was going to have an eating disorder almost take her life.
The only person I really talked to a lot was my mother. She was my best friend, my idol, but also..just another person who criticized me. My mother would make little comments to me. As little as, “You have a zit” to has big as “You were a mistake!” You see.. I had to grow up young. Very young. My mother was a single parent who used to party almost every single night. While I had to fend for myself, alone, in a big house. My father has never been in my life. He has never seen me and I have never seen him. So it was just my mother and I. My mother used to be an alcoholic and when she drank she wasn’t the nicest person toward me. When she would come home.. I was the parent and she was the child. I had to take care of her, make sure she was okay, make sure she was happy without knowing why she would say such hurtful things to me when I was only trying to help her. Subconsciously I took her words to heart. I’m not trying to make my mother sound like a bad person. She’s not a bad person, she just made a lot of mistakes on how she raised me. I’m only bringing her up because she was another cause for my body issues that were soon to be developed at the age of 14. Did I mention all this was happening when I was just a mere 5-12 years old? Strike two.
Alternately I turned to food for comfort. But with turning to food comes weight gain. I started dieting when I was just 12 years old. I went from being 125 pounds, at age 12, to 115 pounds at age 13. My confidence grew. I started getting approached more. My life at the time was great until I met my “first love” at age 14. Long story short, this wasn’t a healthy relationship. He controlled my every move basically. He wouldn’t let me express myself the way I do today. He wanted me to look a certain way and I did what he wanted. Big mistake on my part. Strike three. I look back now and I just can’t believe I went out with this kid for a year and half when all he did was put me down. He put me down about the way I look, how I acted, my dreams/goals. I had no control over my life so I started to control the one thing that I could always control. My weight. I literally starved myself for days and would only eat when I was with this asshole of a boyfriend. I would abuse laxatives at home and take more than the recommended dosage of diet pills. I would force myself to exercise in the morning, during the day, and at night before I went to bed. Starving myself, lead me into a very unhealthy mindset. Food was the enemy. Food was the reason I was “fat” and unhappy. Food become an obsession. All I could think about was how I could get out of eating, or what I would allow myself to eat that day. Soon enough though, all food became “unsafe”. So I started experimenting with purging. When I ate, I would purge. My anorexia soon turned into bulimia with restricting tendencies. I would stuff myself full of food until I was so uncomfortable it would just come back up one day. The next day I wouldn’t touch anything but coffee and water. This was a continuous cycle each and every day. I had a strong love/hate relationship with food. It’s no surprise that I later become depressed and suicidal. My weight went from being 115-100 pounds in just about 3 months. My boyfriend noticed. He would say that I look disgusting because my ribcage became visible and my collarbones stuck out far. He would make me eat a ridiculous amount of food in front of me. He didn’t show concern. He just wanted “his girl” to look “normal”. He wanted me to be “normal” but I was too far gone with my depression and eating disorder that I just shut him out and did what I felt I had to do which was practically slowly kill myself. I hated myself. I hated my life. A few months later I attempted suicide at the age of 15. I don’t want to go into further detail with that but after the incident happened. I no longer had a boyfriend. Which caused me to no longer care for life. I quit school because soon after my suicide attempt, my ex-boyfriend got with my now ex-best friend. My heart was broken and I needed to get away from that situation. I moved to California with my mother and didn’t go to school for a whole year due to my eating disorder having full effect on me. I starved myself from roughly 105 pounds to 85 pounds. My mother than become very concerned and with her help and the help of a eating disorder specialist my weight restored back into a healthy range.
A couple years later..I’m now back in Indiana, due to my mother getting help for her issues. I still struggle. I still have those moments where eating is very challenging. Even though I’ve educated myself on nutrition and know how much I need to stay healthy and content. Even though I now have the most amazing boyfriend of a year and half. [Ironic huh?] Who tells me I’m beautiful. Perfection. The love of his life. He knows about my eating issues but still accepts me and tries to talk me out of acting upon them on those days when it gets hard. But I still get triggered by ignorant comments such as the one Ryan made today. People really should just keep there mouth shut and keep harsh comments to themselves. You don’t know what that person has gone through/is going through. That small comment could lead to a person taking their life.
Here I stand today. At exactly 5 feet and at a healthy 105 pounds. I just have the hugest “thunder thighs” ever riiiiiight? Ya right. I’ll let you be the judge of that. [Sorry about my facial expression. I was being a dork.]
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