so when i first saw those kids health ads driving around atlanta they made me physically sick. and so when this project popped up on my tumblr earlier, i decided to send in my picture to get my own poster made. it’s completely fucking horrible to be targeting children’s health like this.
i was born with thousands of health problems. my mother and i both almost died during my birth, and i was considered to be in a critical condition for a few months after i was born. but i had a relatively normal childhood up until age six or seven, when i started gaining weight. i did all of the kid things, playing outside from daylight till sundown, running around, falling asleep exhausted. i was on basketball teams and swam in every body of water i encountered, whether my parents wanted me to or not. i was, in a healthy term, “active”. at age five is when i started gaining weight, and at age seven a doctor told my mother that i had some sort of growth disorder, where my bones were growing twice as fast as they should have been. at age seven i had the body of a fourteen year old. i became clumsy, i’ve broken feet and kees and legs and arms more than i can count. my motor skills were off. i was still running around and playing, but i was also still gaining weight. my mother wanted me to have surgery. i have been in and out of doctors and specialists ever since i can remember. my mother hated my body, and so did i. everyone i encountered told me that my body was wrong. when i was fifteen, after refusing gastric bypass for years, i told my mother okay. i was convinced that i was never going to be able to lead the life that i wanted to live if i was in this body. i spent every thursday in clinics for two years, sitting in a room with other girls my age who were in line for surgery, talking to them about what they looked forward to the most about being thin. we wanted to ride horses, we wanted to go to the beach without a t-shirt on. we wanted our family members to love us. we wanted to fit into chairs.
when i think about the amount of time that my parents and i have spent sitting in a waiting room, talking to doctors about how to fix my body, how many notebooks i have filled with what i ate each day, the smile on the nurse’s face when i came in having lost a few pounds, and the disappointment on my doctor’s face when i had gained five, all i feel is anger. i am so utterly angry at my parents for raising me to hate myself, for the world at large for making me so insecure, and at myself for taking such a god damned long time to love myself.
a year ago i had finally finished what they call “pre-op”. i had been a member of a weight loss clinic for years. i had journals of my food intake. i had journals of my exercise. i had documentation for everything. i had taken classes on what my diet would be like post-op. on january seventh of last year, the insurance company declined to pay for the surgery. i was devastated. i felt like i had worked so hard and achieved nothing. i had been preparing myself for this massive change and suddenly it wasn’t going to happen. over the next few months i made several attempts to kill myself.
this has turned into a long-winded slightly-directionless emotional rant for me, but i guess the bottom line is this: i am only nineteen years old, but i feel as if my childhood was ruined for me. i was never truly happy, because i was taught that my mere existence was wrong. that i was wrong. and seeing these advertisements that delegitimize children (specifically: “it’s hard to be a little girl when you’re not”) hurts me in a very personal kind of way.