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Kids can be cruel. Oh how cruel they can be. Growing up overweight, like so many other kids, I got hit by that realization again and again. The words they said, the things they did ... both left deep emotional scars. Scars so deep they still hurt today. After all it’s not easy to shake of things you’ve heard for at least 13 years.
When you’re a bully you don’t realize what you do to someone. When you’re a kid you don’t realize what it can do to your victims permanently. You just don‘t think about it. Why should you? You had a laugh. And surely forgot about it by the time your puberty ended. But the person you hurt may still hurt ... decades after.
There’s one incident like that in my life which is a good example.
I think it was in 7th grade. On a hot summer day my parents took me to an open air pool. I had a good time, I swam, I went diving, when I spotted two of my classmates. Or should I say they spotted me? The rest of the day was hell from them. They followed me everywhere, imitating loud booms for every step I did. They even brought their mat and their stuff to make themselves comfortable next to my family and me. I could have told my parents ... but I didn’t. Looking back I can’t even say why. It could have spared me a lot of problems.
When I swam the two boys followed me, walking along the pool-side, yelling something about saving the whales. After a few rounds in the water I’ve had it and swam towards the boys, looking them into the eyes and asked why the hell they were bullying me like that. They looked at me puzzled, then looked at each other, before looking back at me. In a tone I will never forget they simply said „Because you’re fat.“ Their voices are still in my head. They sounded as if they had occupied the moral high ground. As if they just had no choice, as if hurting me was the only reasonable thing to do. Because I was fat.
I was 12 then. And I never did as much as put my feet into the water since. Not on holidays with friends. Not even when I got invited to a pool party. What a horrible experience. I went to the party’s hostess' house with another friend. I remember her opening the door and how I froze in panic when I saw our hostess wearing a gorgeous green bikini. From the garden I heard the other girls, all of them I considered Friends, having fun in the pool. Oh no. She turned the barbecue into a pool party?? One of the girls passed by in her bikini on her way to the kitchen and happily embraced me. I smiled - but I screamed on the inside. As soon as she let go of me and everyone else headed for the pool I headed for the bathroom. I started crying the second the door closed. I hated my friends in that moment. Again and again I had told our hostess that if she threw a pool party I would NOT attend. Ever since that day in the open air pool I stayed away from situations like that. If you don‘t want to feel awful avoid the situations that make you feel awful. I even dodged swimming-class in 11th grade and instead joined another classe’s sports class. But there I stood. Hating everyone, hating myself, for making me feel so helpless, so jealous of the girls downstairs whose laughter reached me even in the bathroom. It was after about 10 Minutes that I heard them ask where I was. But still I couldn’t stop crying, looking at my red, tear-swollen face in the mirror, looked at my body wrapped in a tight-shirts, looked at my belly, my fat arms and couldn’t stop seeing the beautiful girls in their bikinis downstairs in front of my eyes. I hated them for that. I hated the hostess for tricking me in joining her party. (And on top oft hat I couldn’t go back home since the area where I lived was evacuated that afternoon due to a apparent-bomb excavation next to my house .... WHAT are the odds?)
It was then that I heard the hostess call my name. I quickly dried my face, powdered on some makeup and went downstairs, telling her I just had a belly ache. I’m sure she knew it wasn’t true, but she didn’t say anything. I hurt inside. Oh how I hurt. The thin and womanly girls enjoyed themselves in the water ... and me, feeling like the token fat friend, sat on a chair with a beer. That surely would have been a photo that would become big online on pages like 9gag. Haha, it‘s funny cause she‘s fat.
But if there is something bigger than the pain in that moment ... it’s my constant lust for food. We had a barbecue. And even with my cheeks still red from the tears I could not stop myself from shoveling the steak and salad down my throat.
After that I started looking for swimming pools, open only to fat people. And I even found one with an XXL hour once a week ... but I never went.
It was summer 2009 that I went swimming again. My parents took me on a trip to Italy. Okay so I didn’t swim in our camping ground’s beautiful pool with the most beautiful view over Florence, I also didn’t swim in the Lugurian Sea when we stopped there for a swim ... but then, when we went to Venice and had our tent only a few steps from the Adriantic Sea ... I just couldn’t stay out of the water anymore.
It felt amazing. Swimming in the warm Ocean was like a relieve. It‘s been 10 years. And I love the water ... I love it dearly. if I had a pool for myself I’d go swimming every day. It was such an amazing experience. Yet I was always conscious of the people around me. I tried to get out of the water to my seat as quickly as possible to cover my body. On the second day I told my Dad how I feel. That I feel uncomfortable but that I just love swimming so much. He just sighed, looked at me and said. „Don’t worry about that Anna .... with all those ladies on the beach, nobody will be looking at you anyway.“
Yeah well ... thank you Dad ... here come the next 10 years of me avoiding water like hell.
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