I am who I am because of my experiences from the ages of 13-18.
We had to wear navy tights and a navy skirt to school. It was the uniform. There was a dark floor to ceiling glass pane in the window of the door leading to maths class, and every day I would pass it and look at the reflection of my legs. I remember thinking they were shapely and attractive.
I used to wear shoes with a chunky heel so that I could emphasize my legs even more.I used to hike my skirt up to show off more of my thigh. Oh, to have that brazen confidence again!
I loved my body when I was a teenager. I used to spend weeknights after dinner and homework trying on endless outfit combinations. I’m embarrassed to admit that I was so vain, but I’m also jealous that I ever liked my body enough to consider myself vain.
While I loved my body, I hated my hair and face. I struggled with acne all through my teenage years, and I had a codependent relationship with my straightener.
There was a group of boys in high school who bullied me. I have always refrained from calling it that because it sounds so negative, and two of those boys are now friends whom I forgave a long time ago. It was bullying, though, and I don’t think those boys-now-men realized the lasting effect they could have on a girl’s self image with a few well-chosen words.
These boys didn’t make me feel attractive. They didn’t let me feel attractive. There was a phase when they would habitually call me a dog. They would say “woof” whenever I came into a room.
I remember one humiliating incident in particular detail. One of the boys called me over, holding out his hand to me, offering me something. The something turned out to be actual dog treats in the shape of little bones. They all laughed. I felt numb.
At the time, I thought I was in love with one of them, albeit the one who ignored me and only spoke to me when no one else was looking. Every day that he ignored me, I felt more ugly and less desirable. I had close female friends who were loving and kind, but I felt less attractive and less cool than them.
The boys’ treatment of me coupled with my identity as the smart, swotty one meant that I wasn’t invited to the birthday parties, the days out in town, to the late nights drinking cheap cider in some dark field to celebrate school being out for the summer.
I moved to America after high school. Escapism, much?
Years ago, when we had moved on to university and grown up and grown apart, one of these boys actually reached out and apologized to me over Facebook. It was a positive conversation, but I told him that I was only beginning to realize how deeply his and his friends’ behaviour had affected me.
You have shaped who I am and the way that I see myself, I might have said if I had been braver. The foundation of my self-esteem is built upon the comments that you and your friends made to me years ago. You taught me not to feel attractive, you taught me to be wary when a boy pays me attention. You taught me to crave that attention and measure my self-worth by it.
I still feel that sense of dread when I walk into a room wearing a dress. I think that everyone must be laughing at me for even bothering. When I met my boyfriend’s family for the first time a year ago, I thought, “maybe they won’t accept me because I’m heavier than everyone else.”
I look at photos of myself in my teenage years with envy. I want to look like that again. I want to be that size again. But it’s confusing to me, because I’m envious of a version of me that was really unhappy. That version of me was grateful for scraps of attention from boys who did nothing but call her ugly.
Sometimes I think, did I leave my home and my family because I wanted to leave behind this image of me? Because I wanted to go somewhere where I had the space to feel attractive? I think a part of me did. A part of me wanted to escape that narrative and write a new one, one in which I could be confident and cool and beautiful.
I think I have come a long way since those days, and have new harmful narratives about my body to rewrite. And yet, ultimately, the building blocks of my self-esteem were placed years ago, on bright mornings in the school corridor when I felt a lurch of fear seeing those boys approach.
