But I simply don’t have the guts to say it to your faces.
To my best friend,
I had a crush on you for the past three years, and never told you, mainly because I thought it would ruin our friendship. Although you didn’t know it, you made things quite difficult for me over those three years, because I felt like I was wrong for liking you. But I’m over it now, and I’m a lot happier for it. But you also make me feel like shit about myself, with your ‘oh look, I ran really far today!’ and your ‘look at me, I can eat whatever the hell I want and still stay skinny’. If you say you’re fat, then what the fuck am I? And you’re so much cleverer than me, and you make me feel stupid. But you deserve every success, and you should be proud of yourself, because you’re a nice person. And maybe it’s just me being bitter, and you’ve done nothing wrong. But just know that I love you to pieces, because you’re my best friend, and please don’t ever leave me. I feel like you’re the only one that cares about me, and if it wasn’t for you, I probably would have tried to kill myself again.
To my mother,
I’m gay. I want to go to therapy. I think I have a mental illness, or multiple mental illnesses. I have issues with my weight. I don’t want to eat. And I sometimes wish that I didn’t live with you. I sometimes wish I could run away, then maybe life would be better. And that’s what makes me a selfish *****. You’ve done so much for me. You managed to get us away from Dad, and hide from him for nearly a decade now. You’re the bravest woman I know, and I love you dearly. Even though you’re a controlling psychotic ***** who thinks it’s perfectly acceptable to go through my belongings and phone, and doesn’t trust me in the slightest.
To my sister (1),
I hate you because you’re skinny. You’re really fucking skinny, and you feel the need to remind me of that every day, with your ‘these jeans fit me a month ago, look how much weight I’ve lost’ and ‘look, feel my hipbones, they stick out’. And even though I’m older than you, you still manage to blackmail me and beat me up and make me feel like shit. We have our good times, occasionally, but for the most part, you’re horrible.
To my sister (2),
You’re annoying. You wind me up on purpose, because you know I can’t deal with it. Maybe you think it’s funny to watch someone who is six years older than you fall to pieces with a single remark.
To my aunt,
You’re a *****. End of. I have nothing nice to say about you. You’re the one who sparked off my eating isues, when you gave me a tiny portion of something, and I went to get a bit more and you yelled ‘stop being so fat and greedy’. I was seven years old. And since then, I’ve always thought I was fat. You make comments all the time about what I eat, telling me it looks disgusting and you don’t know how I can eat it. Maybe it’s my fucking food and my fucking body and I’ll do whatever the fuck I want. You’re a massive ****.
And I would love to be able to tell all of you all these things, but I don’t have the guts. I’m too weak.
4 comments
I am gay too. But, more than that, I also have eating issues. I was a fat little kid. One Grandma (who I otherwise like) offered me a bike if I lost 20 pounds when I was six. Message to me: you’re fat and unacceptable. My other set of grandparents who I saw just once a year mailed me a long letter about my fatness when I was 8. My dad used to stare at me with a look of death every night at dinner. I became anorexic and, later, bulimic. I still grapple with bulimia and now exercise to levels that are dangerous and I still feel fat. It’s a *****.
I tell myself people don’t know what they are doing to us, but I don’t know if I believe that really.
Anyways, I hear you on this post and sincerely hope life gets better for you.
I know they’re your family, but that’s horrible, and they shouldn’t have done that to you.
Sometimes it does seem like they know full well what they’re doing.
I hope things get better for you as well, you deserve it 🙂 – M
That’s tough to have experienced growing up about weight matters–situations of paranoia and anxiety over eating crept in no doubt. I’m sorry to hear.
It’s kind of shitty, but I’ve learnt to deal with it, I guess. Thanks for your comment 🙂 – M