Infestation

Kid, You're Fat, but Only to Me

I'd say my body image fell to crap way earlier than age 7, but I don't have the best memory of it. I was born on September 29, 1999, lots of nines I know, but what does that even have to do with this. Ok, well so I was born into a family where my parents were both German blood, and my relatives as well. My parents were the first to move to the US actually, so I was the first kid to be born here in my family. My sister came two years after me. What does this have to do with anything? My family had pretty weird eating habits, my grandmother lived through WWII, so she would always make sure we had food on the table and I was told to eat what I wanted, whenever, so as a kid I was sort of bingey, I guess. I was always on the higher end of the healthy weight range, I wasn't the skinniest kid, yeah that's for sure, but y'know genetics play a factor in choosing the weight for a kid. I started up in ballet when I was real small, like age four I think. My friend started to, already there was competition between me and her. I wanted to do it to perform, she, I believe just started because I did. This already caused a sort of manifestation, that would be stuck in my brain for ages. Ages for sure.

Ok so this friend, she's skinny, she was always underweight as a kid, and I never really knew about body types or weight or anything. I was damn clueless about it. The manifestation of the thoughts happened pretty fast once I was exposed though. It was really scary to be honest. I would watch a lot of the movies as a kid. Especially barbie ones. Ok, stop judging me I was like five. Maybe the fact that I watched the Star Wars trilogy by age four would help you see me in a better light. Ok so yeah, you know that the people in those movies are all pretty thin and stuff. I was a kid, I had no perception of my image, and my body, even my face. I had rarely ever looked into a mirror. I didn't know what it was, so I had these ideal of what a face looked like in my head from all these movies I'd watch.

You can probably tell how traumatizing it was when I finally looked in the mirror for the first time and took a good hard long look. I was four, and I was scared of my own reflection, I mean, you ever heard of a four year old scared of their face? God man, so these thoughts started way earlier than you'd expect. By that point all I could wish was that my face was what I wanted it to be. This really started the awareness to my body.

Pre-school had started by age four for me, and it wasn't the best time for me for sure, but I mean I was just a kid, but these weird thoughts had manifested themselves so early, and I was not prepared for them and everything that had followed the years after. So, back to this whole pre-school thing. I was stuck into this thing mom called German School as well, every Saturday morning it happened. I was in a group with a bunch of kids, and my one best friend at the time. These kids were also in my pre-school I guess, so I tried to hang out with them like a cool kid would do, and I'd try so hard to fit in with them. They would avoid me, even my best friend, she'd avoid me because the others did, and god I mean yeah it really hurt my psyche. That really wasn't the worst part about it all though. They loved to poke fun, especially at my weight. A bunch to be honest, it was constant, and it was really fucking painful to be honest. They were your average childish insults, but damn they really did hurt me, even to this day. It was just a lot of those things like:

"Fatty patty"

"Chub"

Yeah they weren't super bad insults, but if they're repeated as much as they were and at such a young age, these can manifest themselves and cause a downfall very quickly. I was not expecting anything of this, and my obsessions started here.

Being in ballet as well, caused a lot of body image issues. I was a bit larger than the others in my classes. It made me frankly feel like shit. I wasn't the most coordinated and I could barely tell my left from right, definitely not the best combination for dancing at all, but I persevered through it all, because I did like the art.