I have always been more or less fat ever since I was a toddler.
And as if that wasn’t enough to make my life miserable,
I have a very thin fraternal twin sister.

Ever since I was in kindergarten,
And even before that, I got comments like,
“Do you eat your sister’s food or something?”
Or “How come you’re so fat and she isn’t?”
Even from teachers and my school principal.

When I hit puberty I started naturally losing some weight,
And things were starting to look up.
But not even a year later, I got really depressed,
And I started emotional overeating and binge eating as a coping mechanism.
I was diagnosed with depression shortly after,
And ever since then, it has been an uphill battle with food and learning to love myself,
Or at the very least accept myself.

From 9th grade to 12th grade,
I can count on one hand the number of pictures I accepted to be taken of me,
because I was so self-conscious of how fat I looked.
I avoided mirrors obsessively and would shower with the lights dimmed,
To avoid as much as possible focusing on how I looked.

Instead of enjoying outings or parties,
I hated and mostly avoided them,
Because they always reminded me of how much I hate my body.
I always tried to choose outfits to wear that would cover up my body as much as possible.
I never really did my hair or my makeup,
Because I always felt like it was trying to put lipstick on a pig.
There was a time in my life when I refused to step foot in a pool or the sea.
I avoided wearing a swimsuit for years on end.

Now, I’m in university and I’ve gotten better.
I’m still fat and trying to lose weight,
And depression isn’t helping
But I’ve learned to try as much as possible to stop my insecurities from making me miss out on life.
I’ve lost years of my life hating myself for how fat I am.
I barely have any pictures of my high school self or pictures of events I went to or vacations I took at that time.

I lost my mother to cancer at 16,
And I don’t have many pictures of my teenage self and her together because of how self-conscious I was.
If you’re the kind of person who makes fun of fat people for simply existing, getting out, taking pictures, or trying to look nice, FUCK YOU.
You don’t have to find me beautiful or attractive,
And I don’t find myself beautiful either,

I’ve lost years of my life hating myself because of how I looked.
I’ll forever be reminded of how much this period hurt,
Whenever I search for recent(ish) pictures of my mother and me and don’t find any.
Maybe you think bullying someone because of how much they weigh is helpful,
Because you’re somehow encouraging them to get healthy and lose weight.
But as someone who’s been on the receiving end of such comments,
You’re not the reason people get healthy,
You’re the reason a 12-year-old looks at a bottle of antidepressant medication,
And hopes that even if they don’t make her less depressed,
They’ll suppress her appetite enough to make her lose weight.