FAT chance

I do not think there has ever been a moment in my life when I did not see myself as FAT. Not pudgy, or thick, but FAT -regardless of what my real figure looked like. When I was eight I thought I was the biggest kid in the world. I wasn't. When I was twelve and my body began developing a bit earlier than my classmates', boys would look at me or elbow each other when I walked by. This would make me miserable for the rest of the day, because I believed what they were pointing out was how much of a monster I was. Not true, they were only after the tits. By the time I was sixteen I had already adopted a dark sense of style, and had a habit of covering my face with my long locks. I was bullied in school -guess why? Now I look back and realize it wouldn't have been such a big deal if school had not been my entire life, but it was. I did not live in the normal world, like adults, where they can encounter several types of idiots in different settings. I spent my days in school, and my reputation as the class' fatty preceded me. There were times when I was perfectly healthy and, dare I say, IN THE NORMAL WEIGHT RANGE, but my label was what it was and there was no way to overcome it. Men on the street would look at me, and I never understood why, because my auto-concept was clearly atrocious. 

This went on for years. Every time a guy paid a bit of attention to me I would be damn grateful, and a bit suspicious as well. Nowadays I look at pictures of myself when I was eighteen, twenty, twenty-two... And you know what, I was fucking gorgeous. Just like many other women I know. Why could I only see a monster in the mirror when I was actually a pretty decent-looking girl? And I know that every day, now, I'm looking in the mirror and catching a glimpse of that monster, because I have put on even more weight, and it tries to drag me every day into self-loathing territory. But I'm through with that. Because I am well aware of the fact that, ten years from now, I will be looking at pictures of me at my current age and saying: What the hell was I hiding myself for? I looked great.