Haunting Names

For as long as I can remember, I've been the fat girl. The mean girl. The tomboy, the lesbian, the ugly one. The robot. My father has a saying "if you earn the title, you're going to get called the name". I don't know exactly what I did to earn all these, yet here they are. Most didn't come around until junior high, when everyone is insecure and takes their pain out on the other kids. The fat girl name has been around forever, though.

I cannot personally remember the first time I was called fat, but I've been told the story so many times I feel as if I can. The first time was when I was born, by my mother. I was a full term baby, 7 lbs. 9 1/2 oz. Yet I was placed in the NICU due to an emergency C-section. My mother always remarked on what a fat baby I was. When you place a full-term baby next to the pre-mature ones, the ones fighting every moment of every day to survive, of course they're going to look fat.

The only time I can remember when I wasn't fat was when I was dying. A part of my body, my pancreas, stopped working and my body couldn't do anything about it. I turned ghost white, my skin was stretched across the skeleton I had become. Looking back at those pictures, of the time when I was skinny, makes me somewhat angry. I was dying inside, and nobody told me. Not until I passed out at a girl scout outing at breakfast, my bowl of cheerios saving my face from colliding with the wood table. My best friend sitting beside me, only 6 years old, freaking out because I was laying in my breakfast. Not moving, not doing anything to help myself. May 16, 2003 was the last day I was skinny, the last day I was dying. I was diagnosed and starting getting healthy again.

After that day, the day my body almost gave out, I have never been skinny. I can remember at almost every doctor's appointment being told that while the average child needed 30-45 minutes of exercise a day, I needed more like 45-60 minutes. I remember my mother telling me to not eat so much, for I'd need to take more meds if I did. I remember her commenting on my sisters when they lost weight, yet never me. I remember not being able to fit in my older sister's hand-me-downs anymore, the clothes started going from my oldest sister to me, then to my other sister. I remember getting clothes from my brother and my cousin, because they were more comfortable than my sister's stuff.

I have struggled with this name for years, really since I was six. And I will always struggle with it. It's just another thing I have to deal with.