I can't even count the amount of times someone has told me that they're jealous of how skinny I am. They wish they could have my long, model-esque legs, my cute child-like wrists, my somehow attractive visible bones under my skin. Things society has deemed the ideal. Things so many people strive for, but things I've spent my life trying to escape. While there are so many girls out there who wish they could be a perfect size 2, I would give anything to be anything but skinny.

I'm not afraid to admit my weight. I average out at around 113 pounds most days. Now, that isn't bad for someone who is petite, but being 5'8", this puts me well within the range of being underweight. It would take a 10-20 pound gain for me to reach the bottom of the average weight window for my height. A weight gain that, no matter how hard I try, just won't happen.

I'm not naturally skinny. I don't have a high metabolism or a body type that ranges on the thin side. No, my kind of skinny comes from the fact that I'm on a whole cocktail of medications, and it just so happens that prescription medications come with side effects, including weight loss. Before evening out where I am now, my medications took about 20 pounds off of me, and where other people see beauty, I see only negativity.

First we have Onfi, with a side effect of "loss of appetite." The same goes for Trokendi and Clonazepam. That's how it starts. You notice your eating patterns change. Before my medications changed, I ate three meals a day like most people, but now I never know when I'll be hungry. On most days I eat a tiny breakfast before school, a snack in the late afternoon, a fairly large dinner, and then a late night snack before bed. Less food than before, and much more irregular. And that's hardly a set schedule.

Then there's the medicines that tell you outright that there will be weight loss like Trokendi. You start taking it and the weight just falls off. People don't realize what is happening, because you don't want to advertise the fact that you take all kinds of medicine for a sickness you don't really talk about much. Sometimes your teachers make offhand comments about how you should eat more. Kids at school whisper about how you're anorexic because you don't eat lunch with them, but really it's just because you're never hungry at lunchtime. Even after all that, though, they call you beautiful.

My skinny isn't beautiful. My skinny is sick. My skinny is a side effect of the medications I take for a disease I'll have for my entire life. This isn't a look I asked for or worked for, but something forced upon me. So please, don't tell me that you're jealous of my body, because you don't want this. People don't always choose the way they look, no matter how pretty you may think they are. There's more below the surface than you can possibly understand.