Sticks and Stones

Happy Tuesday everyone,

I've been overweight for as long as I can remember. Kids can be cruel so I was harassed in elementary school, but no more than anyone else. It was when I got to middle school that I was really bullied because of my size. A day didn't go by without harsh words from people who judged me based on my appearance. I was terrified to go to high school because I thought the ridicule would get worse. You hear so many horrible tales from the adult generation who suffered tremendously in high school. But when I got to high school, it's hard to describe. The bullying just stopped. And for a while I was confused. It was hard for me to trust people because I was just waiting for them to hurt me. I have not been bullied once in my high school experience. And that’s pretty amazing.

I still see the boys from my P.E class in middle school walk the hallways of high school. They go by me without a second glance, no recognition sparking in their eyes. I used to walk by them with my head down and they’d pick me out of a crowd and say even the littlest thing that would break my heart. Now I walk by them with my head held high and watch to see if they remember me and the cruel things they said to me. They don't.

This brings me to what I want to write about today. I want to discuss the fact that I remember every single person who called me twinky in the eighth grade. I remember every incident that sent me to the bathroom stall crying. Yet they don't even remember who I am. Writing this I’m remembering a specific group of boys in my P.E. class. They said such horrible things to me that I just don’t understand how they can look me in the eye now. I bumped into one of these boys accidentally once several years after their ridicule, he apologized to me and kept on walking. I stood there staring at his back completely dumbfounded. He didn’t remember a word he said to me.

I realized then that most bullies don’t understand what they’re doing. They don’t understand that a silly joke to them could just break that person’s heart. My friend once told me, after I got home and sobbed into my pillow because of what they said to me, that they were “just joking”. I told her “just joking to one person is another person’s heartbreak”.

“You don’t know a person’s daily struggle.” Is what my wise teacher Mrs. Smith always says and of all the things she said to me that has stuck on hard. Maybe those boys didn’t know that I was hurting enough without their words. To them, it could have been a “just kidding” situation. That could have been why they don’t recognize me now as the girl they hurt so much.

I felt the urge to write this entry after a recent event that occurred in my fifth-period class. One of the senior boys walked over to my table, sat down, and looked at my very good friend and said, “Hey, you know (I almost wrote his name then realized that would be rude) so-and-so . . . “ Here we go! Another joke from the annoying seniors in the corner. Would these boys ever grow up? I’ve built up a tolerance for these immature boys but what he said next, words cannot describe the anger I felt. “Well, he thinks you’re cute.” That boy was lucky I didn’t leap across the table and claw out his eyes.

I told my teacher, “Mrs. Smith, I swear to god you better get so-and-so off my table or I am going to punch him in the face.” Or something like that. The threat wasn’t my most creative but he seemed pretty alarmed and scurried off. It took me a minute to get under control. I realized then people were laughing. My friend was rolling her eyes. A girl on the next table asked me what he said to make me so upset and I told her. She laughed too.

I know, I know. It seems as if I’veoverreactedd. But like Mrs. Smith said, “You don’t know a person’s daily struggle.” No one in the class understood what that phrase meant to me. I heard those words or a variation of those words every day for most of my life. I hadn’t heard them in a while so I wasn’t ready for the response I would have.

It usually involved a group of two or more boys. One spots someone they see as "undesirable", to say it nicely. They nudge their friend, nod to the "undesirable" and say, “Hey that’s your girlfriend”. Or said "undesirable" approaches and the one who sees her first says, “Hey, my friend has a crush on you.” I was chosen as the "undesirable" so many times that just a couple simple words were weighted down with the amount of times I’d heard them. The words were weighted down until they became heavy enough to leave cuts that turned into scars on my heart.

When I was real young I didn’t understand that having some extra weight was seen as socially unacceptable. All I understood was I got more tired than any of my friends on the playground and buying clothes was a different experience for me. It took time for the other kids to convince me that I was fat. I wasn’t. I was at most overweight. I still feel overweight but looking at pictures of myself in middle school I see a big change. I know I’m still overweight but instead of crying over it I’m exercising more and eating better. Like I said in my last entry I love myself now. But as it took time for other’s to convince me I was fat it took time for others, my friends who love me, to convince me that I wasn’t. I would make a lot of self-deprecating comments about my weight. And at first, I was surprised when close friends would try to persuade me that I wasn’t what I’d grown up being called. I understood who my true friends were then. The one’s that helped me to look in the mirror for longer than a second because I hated what I saw. Words cannot describe how thankful I am to them.

Until next time,

Totally Ky