Realization washed over me as I saw that it was actually Me! I was shocked that I actually looked that good as a young teen. I remember when that picture was taken.” I argued with her for a moment, then I picked up the picture and really looked it over. My mom glanced over at the picture and said “No, that’s you.
I was confused at first when I saw the picture and I told him that he was mistaken, that was a picture of my niece who happens to look a lot like me, only much prettier and thinner than I was at her age. My husband made a remark about how pretty I was when I was a teenager and it’s a shame he didn’t know me back then. My hair was fixed in a style that was popular back then and I was wearing make-up as I often did back then.
I was about fourteen years old in the picture and wearing a skirt suit, black hose, and pair of black flats. What was really an eye opener for me though was one year after I was married, I was at my mother’s home for thanksgiving and my husband noticed a picture of me sitting on the end table. I had very low self-esteem and yes I have attempted suicide more than once in my life. I graduated in 1996, Internet wasn’t a very popular or accessible thing yet, so we never had to deal with cyber bullying, and kids weren’t as cruel as they can be today, but they were still cruel enough to affect how I saw myself. I ended up skipping school a lot, smoking, and getting into fights when people would make fun or me or insult me in some way, it was my defense, my way of saying that I wasn’t going to put up with it anymore. We grouped together for acceptance and protection from the students that made our high school years miserable. This lead me to hang out with kids who were like me, kids who didn’t fit into any social group, the outcasts of the school. I was embarrassed and ashamed of how I looked and even though I tried to fix myself up, dress like the popular kids, and act “normal” I could never quite get it right. I have always been more on the heavy side, for years I thought that I was ugly and that was why I had no friends.
When someone suffers from any of these disorders or issues it affects their lives in a tremendous way that really can only truly be understood by those who have been there and gone through it, whether facing these struggles yourself, or having a close friend or family member who has struggled with them.Īs a young child and teen, I was bullied in school by other students because of my weight and because I was considered odd. The video very graphically displays the first few if not all of the issues that I mentioned above. Depression, suicide, cutting, eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia, bullying, and abuse of any form. There are so many young men and women who are affected by things in life that many people can’t understand or choose to ignore. I really love this song/video even though some of it is somewhat controversial and hard to watch, but the message that is conveys is powerful and inspirational that’s why I have chosen to use this video to help illustrate this blog post.