I've thought I was fat since I can remember thinking. I thought that G## put the right head on the wrong body. At this point in time I'm led to believe that I thought this way because of my mom's constant self hate and cautionary tales, claiming that if I ate too much if get fat, like her. I was in 4th grade when I remember her saying this. She never said a word of this to my brother and sister, who were naturally skinny. It's only now that I look back at pictures of my self and realize how normal I was. Sure I wasn't stick-thin, but I was normal, not even chubby. I was led to believe that because when I smiled and my cheeks puffed up, that I was fat. To this day I hate smiling, because I believe it makes me look fat. I also think that my insecurities were grown by my best friend (from kindergarten to 6th grade) who constantly compared herself to others and said she wasn't skinny enough, in order to gain my sympathies and praise. She didn't realize that by calling herself overweight I was led to believe that I was too. I had friends who constantly supported being weird and unique, yet told me I couldn't wear certain clothing, because otherwise I would get picked on. (I never was). To this day I can't trust a single compliment anyone says because of my friends at that time, who constantly told me I was inferior, that it wasn't ok for me to do things. One time my friend made me so upset I left her house and walked home, and tried to apologize. She then proceeded to reveal she'd only said it so I'd come over and help her clean up. When 6th grade came around everyone started acting worse. People were blaming each other for copying their style, when they just wore converse and skinny jeans. Everyone was so judgmental, hateful and spiteful. I ditched my friends slowly that year, and then abruptly when I exploded my Instagram feed with photos of me cutting my wrists with safety scissors, in a desperate attempt to get people to understand how much they were hurting me. I never really wanted to hurt myself, it was just the only way I knew how to explain the severity of the emotions I was feeling. To this day, I still can't even consider suicide as an option. I'm too smart to think that, and dying terrifies me to my core. My mom found out, and put me in therapy. I got out quickly because the therapist determined I was just doing it for attention. She was right of course, but I was still depressed. I became really good at hiding it. Fake over confidence, and bragging about my few good traits were the only way I got through these last years. The worst part is, now I'm actually overweight. Now I'm actually fat. I cry about every other night if I don't distract myself from the fact. I can't bring myself to starve myself, and my extreme lack of confidence in my abilities to diet has caused me to not even try. I want to, but fail every time. I can't seem to resist the junk food when literally all of my skinny friends eat it around me. I can't tell anyone about my depression either, because as I was growing up, I developed a tendency to get a huge panic attack even when I'm in the slightest bit of trouble. Confrontation scares me to my core. The reason is, is that when I was very young and got into a little trouble, my mom would yell at me in a booming, terrifying voice until I would start crying, and then keep yelling. At one point my 4 year old brother was making noise like a silly little kid, and my mom kept yelling at him until he cried. We were trying to watch tv and she demanded him to stop crying and shut up. Me and my sister were frozen, terrified of her releasing her rage onto us. I remember her yelling at him and turning up the volume to the fullest notch to try and drown out his screams, while continuing to yell at him, before spanking him and dragging him to his room. This was one of many horrifying experiences I had as a child. Today, my mom is getting divorced. When the divorce was first happening she was constantly drunk, and endangered our lives by driving us to events drunk. We eventually yelled at her and called our dad to come drive us. Since then she says she's stopped drinking, but I've found bottles of vodka and beer in her bathroom. She also constantly disses our dad, who's done nothing but be kind, even to her. She's constantly making him out to be the bad guy, when in reality, she's just making herself seem worse. She still makes my sister cry. She still makes us cry. My sister admitted to me that she feel like she can't talk to mom or she'll yell at her. She cries to me, saying mom makes her feel bad about her body, even though she's nearly underweight. In elementary school I was so proud that the doctor told me I was a normal weight for my height, I told all my friends. Out of their own insecurities they bragged to me about being underweight, and my self confidence dropped to a low again. The worst part was I could always see through the bulls*** my mom fed me. When she said things like, "your body doesn't matter, it's your personality" or that "being a little overweight is okay too" or "being that skinny is bad anyways" I only heard sour grapes and a hypocrite. I knew that my mom was feeding herself this information to try and help herself, and try to engrain these ideas into me young, but I was too intelligent to believe them. I go through waves of depression. For about two weeks I'm normal, and then for 1-2 weeks I'm terribly depressed. I can't tell anyone or my body goes into extreme flight mode, and I try very hard to divert the conversation, and not give anyone a chance to scrutinize me. The hardest part is my brain knows that my father, my friends, and my siblings will support me, but every instinct in my body tells me that this is a secret I can never tell anyone. I get awful panic attacks just trying to tell someone, and I get hysterical. I can't help it, it's just the way I was conditioned to be. #depression