My Story - Part 1

Let me tell you a little bit about myself.  I was born on Mother's Day in 1975.  My mother was planning on going to a cookout (aka barbeque depending on where you live in the country), but apparently I had other plans for her day.  My sister was born on New Year's Eve 3 1/2 years later.  We really like for my Mom and Dad to have memorable holidays.  

Since I am a child of the 70s, I spent most of my childhood outdoors.  The only time I watched TV was on Saturday mornings.  Early on Saturday mornings I would get a bowl of cereal and plop down in front of the TV to watch cartoons.  We didn't have cartoons on demand like kids do these days, so you only had one opportunity to watch them - Saturday morning.  The remainder of my time was spent outdoors playing with my friends and riding my bike.  I wasn't a lazy child and I didn't overeat.

Puberty started for me when I was about 9 years old.  I went from a perfectly normal-sized child in 4th grade to a really chubby little girl in 5th grade.  My weight only went up from there.  I was teased relentlessly by my peers.  I couldn't even walk to the bus stop in the morning without one of the boys saying, "Boom bobba boom bobba boom!"  (This is from the movie "Stand By Me" when Gordy is telling a story to his friends about a really fat kid.  The other kids in the story would say that to the boy whenever he walked.)  Apparently, the kid at my bus stop had seen the movie too.  It would hurt my feelings so badly.  Like most overweight kids, I would just bury the pain and try and ignore the teasing.

Middle school (6th, 7th, and 8th grade) was the worst!  There wasn't a day when some kid didn't say or do something mean to me.  Even a girl that I thought was my friend played an awful prank on me.  There was a boy I really liked.  She would put notes in my locker from an "anonymous" boy every day.  One day, she signed one of the notes with the boy's name that I liked.  I knew he didn't like me that way because he and I were friends and he would tell me about the girls he liked.  One day I saw her slipping the note into my locker.  I was so upset!  I thought she was my friend, but apparently I was just someone to entertain her.  

One day, one of the popular girls came up to me in the girl's bathroom.  She told me she wanted to fight me.  I had never even spoken to this girl so I couldn't imagine what I had done to make her hate me.  I asked her why and she told me, "Because you are fat."  I didn't have to do anything to her.  Apparently, I deserved  a beating solely for being fat.

There were lots of instances like this for me in middle school.  In my Freshman year at high school I started making some changes.  I started running and exercising every day.  I also ate very healthy.  I lost a significant amount of weight.  I'm not sure how much because I never weighed myself, but I can tell from my photos from 8th to 9th grade it was probably about 50 pounds.  Although I had lost a lot of weight, I still saw a fat girl in the mirror's reflection.

When I was 15, I went through a severe depression that lasted about a year.  I did a lot of emotional eating during that year and my weight ballooned.  In my Junior and Senior year I weighed about 250 pounds.  I wasn't getting asked out on many dates during those days.  However, there was one boy that liked me despite my weight.  His name was Jason.

To be continued....