never good enough

by Sharnetta C.
(Michigan)

As a young girl I was always a very confident happy child who loved food and love to eat. I was never over weight but some might say I was overly chubby. When I was in middle school It was apparent to me that I was bigger than everyone else because I wasn’t in my eyes. I thought I was fine the way I was and that I would grew into myself and that it was just baby fat. I started getting comments about my weight from other people even people who I thought were my friends. I never let them know it bothered me because they were my friends and I thought they were kidding and I was just being overly sensitive. I started hearing more and more comments about how I was fat and I needed to lose weight and how I wasn’t cute, it hurt a lot. And it hurt even more when I would hear it from my parents. I could hear them talk about how I eat like I’m eating for two or three or how I can’t wear certain things because I’m fat or how you have to lose weight because you have to fit into certain clothing. My dad would call me nick names like: pugsy, tubby and lot sorts of inappropriate names regarding to my weight. It all hurt me so bad that I got really depressed and started to be really introverted and really self conscious about everything I say, eat and wear. I hated everyone for making me feel this way. When I got into high school I started taking drastic measures to lose weight, like eating less and over exercising. It seemed to be working and I was very pleased but I knew it wasn’t right, but I just couldn’t stop I loved the way I was looking and

I could wear things that I could never wear before and I started getting a lot more attention. Even though I seem to be happy on the outside I was miserable on the inside and still had low self esteem. In my spare free time I started to exercise more and more and it got so bad that my parents actually started to notice and ask me what I was doing and they think I had a problem and that I should l stop. My parents don’t really believe or understand eating disorders or depression and they judge a lot so I never told them exactly what I did just that I would stop and to leave me alone. When they noticed it scared me because I thought they would talk to me about it and I didn’t want to at all because they’re so difficult to talk to. So I started to calm down a bit and not work out as much and just eat normally. To this day I still have problems with my weight and also think I could be thinner or weight less but I’m starting to realize with the help of god that he made me this way for a reason and I’m never going to be as thin as any model I see in the magazines I just have to except myself the way I am. Even though my dream is to model, but I want to be a real model and show people the real me, and show people that real women have different bodies and curves and not everyone is a size 0. It’s hard and sometimes I get really down on myself but I never want to go back to that place where I would barely eat anything and constantly work out. And with the strength of god and I never will.