No one in this world hates me more than I hate me. It’s such B.S. Sitting, or rather laying down last night talking about getting married with my boyfriend. I bring up jewelry and think about how I don’t want him to propose until my finger can fit a smaller ring. How f*kin embarrassing would it be to get proposed to and the ring doesn’t fit.
I have always had this irrational and inescapable fear and shame around rings. I have felt that for the longest time my hands were ‘man-hands’, ‘monster hands’, ‘sausage hands’. I can remember, pretty much as soon as I moved to back to California, feeling like I was bigger than the other girls. I looked down at my hands and suddenly I was so much thicker, much more boyish. Feeling like some Pillsbury dough boy monster. While I don’t listen to Taylor Swift, her lyrics ‘I feel like every one is [you probably know the lyrics don’t make me say this part] and I’m a monster on a hill’. However it goes.
Being taller than everyone just made me feel bigger, and because I was also average and not ‘thin’ (for a 10 year old, major eye roll). I remember trying to adjust to this new world around me with everything else going on and being worried about my size. I began to feel shame for it. I remember trying on jeans, turning around, and asking my mom if my butt looked big. Mind you, I’m like 10-11 there.
The real pain began when it seemed like my friends did not realize I was any different until I could not share their clothes, or their rings. My friends were all shorter, all skinnier than me. I could not wear their bathing suits as a size medium. I could not try on their rings. It felt horrific sitting there trying to slip a gorgeous fake ring from Walmart on at lunch and feeling that heart dropping, gut wrenching fear as it got stuck for a moment or two. How would I tell my mom we needed to get my friend a new ring because my friends got stuck on her daughters fat fingers.
Suddenly, I am no longer 10 years old. Suddenly I am a monster on a hill, looking down at everyone. I feel it now, too. Girls, women, they are just always so much smaller than me. Even just being 5’8, I always feel I stand out because of my size, like I am some behemoth.
It isn’t even about weight, though that definitely adds some level of body dysmorphia.
Yesterday, I could not escape it. I have always over thought and over criticized myself. Am I dressed too boyish? What will people think? Can you see the cellulite? What will people think? Constant. Can they see my thighs touch? Is my hair too frizzy? Can they see that gray patch of hair that grew in the worst year of my life? All of this criticism towards my outwards appearance. It has improved, yes. But some days are worse.
I wish I could be that glamorous girl who has her style figured out, who is always so polished, so put together, but that is not me. At least not now, I guess.
Feeling like you can’t escape it is a nightmare, there are much worse things going on in the world and I am over here beginning to crash out because my hair won’t brush the way I want it to and I can see my tummy through my overalls. Womp Womp.
But they are real feelings, and at this point I have been dealing with it for like 14 years. Almost.
I don’t feel my size, but I know that feeling is pure deception. I know when I go to try on rings, they will not fit the way I want them to. I know that when I go to buy pants, I will not gravitate towards the size that fits, but the size I want to fit into. I know that I will base my worth off of my size, until I learn that I do not need to wait to lose weight or shrink to get married. Until I learn to take up space. To rock the boat. To make rifts, and be myself unapologetically.
