A lot of people on this website have opened up about their eating disorders and the damage it has done. I believe it is important to get the stories out there, and feel obligated to tell mine.
As a young child, I was extremely thin. I had barely broken ten pounds by my first birthday, and my whole family thought I was destined to be tiny. By the time I was in about third grade, we realized this would not be true. I was gaining weight at an amazingly rapid rate, and gained seventeen pounds between second and third grade. By the time I was in fourth grade, I weighed 104 pounds and had not broken five feet.
I knew I was bigger than all the other kids in my class, but I was very fortunate that I was not ridiculed as much as other people have been. There are two incidents I remember vividly, though, and believe that they were my breaking point. The first one was in fifth grade. I was sitting in math class next to a boy who I had admired since about second grade. He was joking around with me about something I cannot recall now, but I remember I told him that I was a big girl and could take care of myself. He looked at me with his amazing good looks (this particular boy remains very handsome to this day), and said "Yeah, you are a big girl. Actually, you're a really big girl. No offense."
The other incident, to me, is worse to me. In third grade, we took a family trip to Washington D.C. We were walking around the Air and Space Museum, and I had just learned a rhyme in class to help remember the order of the planets: "My very elderly mother just saved us nine pizzas." I turned to my mom, and, in what I thought was a joking tone, told her that she was my very elderly mother. She looked at me and said "Stop that. I don't make fun of you for being fat, do I?"
Now, in defense of my mom, she is a wonderful person and probably was just extremely annoyed with me (I was an annoying nine year old:)). She wasn't trying to do any damage. But I have heard these words ringing in my ears for half my life. These comments just go to show that even little, off-handed comments can cause damage, so be careful with what you say.
This was just the very beginning of a long struggle I had with weight and eating disorders. I will continue on with my story tomorrow.
