I am the fat girl. I have large thighs and calves, my stomach protrudes and sometimes I have a double chin, but hey, that’s just me.

Ever since I could remember, my mom was constantly teaching me to hide my body in larger clothes to the point that when I started to dress myself, I did the same thing. I thought that because I was bigger than all of my friends that I had to hide what I looked like. I thought I had to hide my body because I wasn’t small enough.

Within every crowd, I always looked for the girl bigger than me so I didn’t have to feel as shitty about myself, but, when I did that I was just as bad as every other person who looked at me with disgust for the extra fat on my body. Don't get me wrong, I played sports like everyone else and did everything that other kids did but I always felt like an outcast. I always felt like people wondered what the fat girl was doing on the athletic field. I always felt like people looked at me with confusion and a little bit of disgust when I went shopping with my friends and watched enviously as they picked out clothes I knew I would never be able to fit into. I always felt like people judged what foods I ate, what I drank and whether or not it was 'healthy.'

One of my darkest secrets is that I went to a fat camp to try and become the skinny girl I thought everyone wanted me to be, but it never worked. It was my fault because I didn’t try hard enough, but I was also just 10 years old. A 10 year old should worry about skinned knees and ripped shirts, not the number that shows up on a scale or the amount of calories in a french fry. Fast forward to my sophomore year when I tried the paleo diet for a brief interlude but it made me nauseous all the time because I felt like I was barely eating anything. Sure, I lost weight but I was weak, tired and cranky constantly.

And now, here I am. I’m almost 19 and I still struggle with my weight and it’s most likely going to be a life long struggle. Still, I try to eat as well as I can (more like I try to eat when I can) and exercise when I feel like it, but there are times when I go out and public and feel eyes on me because I’m the fat girl in my friend group. I always have been. I’m so terrified by the way I look and if I gained weight that going to the doctor scares me because I don't want to see the number on the scale. By now, you're probably reading this and thinking 'well it's your fault' and you wouldn't be wrong. I mean, yeah, it is my fault but it’s also in my biology (I'm not blaming it all on biology though), losing weight is extremely difficult for me and I’ve struggled with it my entire life. If you've had success in losing weight then I applaud you and encourage you to do what makes you feel good, not what others think you should do. I, on the other hand, have not been so persistent in my own goals.

It wasn’t until recently that I told my mother that I felt like she never let me love the skin I was in. Telling her that to was hard because I didn’t want her to feel like she failed me, because she didn’t. My mom just didn’t teach me how to love myself but it’s something that I’m learning to do more and more everyday and it’s freakin' hard. It’s hard because I feel ignored by guys. It’s hard because there was always some part of me that felt that I got casted in male roles because I was bigger. It’s hard because when I look around me all I see are skinny people and I desperately wish I was them because some (NOT ALL) didn’t have to work for it. It's hard because many clothing companies don't want to design for overweight people. It’s hard because I watch as slightly overweight people in the spotlight are shamed for their extra poundage. It’s hard because there are days where I don’t think I deserve my own self-love because I’m unable to follow through with the types of changes I want to make in my own body. It's hard because some days I wish I could be someone else.

I didn’t write this for people to comment “Oh, but you’re not fat!! You’re beautiful the way you are" or give me diet tips that I know I'll just roll my eyes at and think about for the next three years. I wrote this because I wake up everyday afraid of taking up too much space and being bullied about my weight again. I wrote this because I’m sure that there are a million other people that feel the same way. I am fat and it is something I want to change but it’s not easy. I guess, for now, I’ll just have to learn how to love myself first.