FAT FAT FAT FAT FAT FAT FAT FAT

Today is my tenth day of positive thinking.

I have spent ten whole days being kind to myself and not putting myself down.

I can honestly say getting out of the habit of constantly putting myself down is harder than it was to quit smoking.
When you are negative about yourself it becomes a habit, and that habit is hard to break, especially when you know that it started before you had even got into double figures (that’s age not weight btw).

I wrote a piece for the paper this week that brought **school** flooding back to me. I’ve never been skinny, I’ve never even really been slim, it’s all been good angles and lighting if I’m honest.

I’ve definitely been SLIMMER than what I am now, and I’ve also been bigger.

I was seven-years-old when I was first called fat. And I can remember the girl who said it. And I can remember how humiliated I was. I remember being sat in a blue and white checkered dress, with knee-high socks, it was about May time and it was warm. But not warm enough to hide the flush to my cheeks or to pass the tears off as beads of sweat and I remember replaying that word over and over in my head.

A few years passed and I remember getting into an argument with a boy when I was about 11. We were arguing over the teacher telling him off for something that he thought I’d done. He called me fat.

Fast forward to university and I fell out with people. They don’t insult who I am as a person they go straight for my Achilles heel. So in the middle of an argument? They call me fat.

It’s a trigger word for me and the second I hear it I regress. Even if it isn’t said to me, I turn into that seven-year-old girl at playtime, looking for someone to stick up for me, looking for someone to say “She’s not fat! She’s kind, she’s generous, she’s clever, she’s happy.”

And the older I’ve got, the more I’ve started to realise that the person I’m looking for to stick up for me, is me.
People calling me fat are not harming my character. People who have hurled that word as a form of abuse are investing in something they think will hurt.

They think anyone who is bigger is going to be devastated when they hear that word and that’s why they use it, but they are wrong. Because what is fat? Being big to one person doesn’t necessarily mean you are fat. I could have the figure that someone bigger than me is dying for.

Being someone’s opinion of fat does not take away from your character. And if I’m fat to someone so be it. I’m also pretty smart, pretty funny, pretty generous and oh yeah pretty pretty too.

So you can throw that word at me and I can promise you that seven-year-old me, eleven-year-old me, nineteen-year-old me and present me will all be showing you the finger.

 

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