Category Archives: bullying

The Body Divide + The Song In My Heart

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I’ve never met Steven. But he sent me an email last month with all the enthusiasm you can contain in a brief but encouraged message and asked if he might write something on the subject of body image. And so, he sent me this. It is the sort of thing we must never forget – no matter our size. He calls himself The Roving Gypsy and blogs at Life Moves On.

I’m that guy. The somewhere-around-three-hundred-pounds guy. The guy who, save for a small portion of my early childhood, has never been thin. That guy who has never worn a size smaller than large since my younger youth.

Thrust into the world of school yard bullies unprepared for the torment of first grade through twelfth. Not ready for the stares of my peers as they whispered words of discust to their thin friends a little too loudly.

First grade, day number one. I walked into a place called Hell.

It’s been seventeen years that first unsolicited remark about my size. From peers and teachers alike.

I used to believe I was the victim of an all too wrong body. I believed that what I looked like determined my worth. And I was worthless. Any advance by girl – who now I see, probably was interested – was seen as a way to hurt me.

Because that’s what all did. They hurt the fat people.

It’s been seventeen years, one failed relationship, and one current relationship since then. This isn’t the story of a boy who learned to hate. Not the people around him. Not himself.

It’s the story of a man who learned that love couldn’t see fat, thin, freckled, black, or white. Couldn’t see the differences in differing bodies.

Looking in, both relationships were with women who were thin. Looking in, you’d say she felt sorry for him. Looking into each others eyes they knew, what he looked like compared to her, or she to him had no meaning.

Body image wasn’t the key factor. It was that my heart sang when in the presence of the other and theirs while in mine.

It wasn’t what we looked like – our body image. It was our heart image.

This divide we have over bodies. I thought a lot about it in my years as the fat kid. During the few moments of rational thought I could find.

I came to one conclusion. This divide is the result of an abnormal society. A diseased society. What else, to me at least, can it be? When it’s a scandal that either woman could have fallen for a guy of my size? But when a girl starves herself trying to reach an ‘ideal’ image, or a boy overdoses on steroids to maintain a muscular facade. That’s normal?

I wish I could see them; tell them what I found. This beauty in heart image.

Live to love. Love to live.

By the way, every month I send out a short + sweet newsletter brimming with cool finds related to the monthly theme. It'd be stellar if you subscribed. If it's not worthy, it doesn't go in the newsletter. That. Simple.

To Whoever Keyed My Sister’s Car

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I’m sure you’re not reading this, because that would imply we know each other. And if, on the off chance we do, and I discover who you might be, I’ll be sure to have a frank conversation with you about using your words.

Battles have begun on this blog. I have laid down enough literature on heartbreak and relationships to stir up trouble offline.

I’ve been cryptic more than once, sure that the person in question could decide for themselves if I was talking about them. I like to think of myself as a real Tay Swift wannabe, on occasion.

So if Taylor’s car got keyed, surely she’d write a song about it.

That’s sort of how I feel about this whole situation.

And I never meant to turn you into a blog post. No I never intended to turn this story into a lesson, but man I am in need of a good lesson these days.

To be honest, after I told a co-worker, the first words out of his mouth were, “Did you blog about it?”

Well, no.

Well, not yet.

Here’s what I know about you: nothing.

I don’t know if you were angry with her, if you met her once or didn’t even remember her name. I don’t know if you just really, really have a passionate dislike for people who drive Honda Civics.

All I know is that you carved a four-letter word and the word “you” into that midnight blue paint and it cannot be undone.

I have thought about all the times I turned to words to pummel injustices, perceived and actual. I have thought about the mistakes in judgment I’ve made, turning this blog into a stage to try to get friends to admit they’d done something wrong.

For years, I felt guilty about my words.

And then you happened.

Listen, I know she’s kind of black and white like that.

Level with me. She’s got wicked good fashion sense, hair so bouncy and voluminous it was born for a salon commercial, and a wild, bold heart. I know she doesn’t walk on eggshells. She’s not that kind of girl.

Clearly, neither are you.

People either love her dearly or want to destroy her. I think we know which side you’re on.

But don’t you think I’ve ever gotten mad at her? Don’t you think she’s ever screwed up for someone else?

I hope you didn’t think she was perfect. That’s a terrible burden to place on somebody.

Really, it doesn’t matter what you think, though. What matters is that you’ve done something unfixable.

Do me a favor. Picture this world:

You pull up for a job interview with F— You scrawled across the hood of your car.

Do you think you’re getting the job?

That’s what I thought.

Imagine if we took our tweets and taped them to our backs like Kick Me signs. All the drunk text messages you ever sent hovered above your head like those thought bubbles in old-school phone commercials.

That’s what I imagine it feels like to walk outside on a Sunday morning, collapse to the pavement, and wonder how you’re going to pretend it never happened.

Maybe you were drunk. I don’t know. It’s not really my forgiveness you need.

I’m just letting you know, personally, that there are some things money can’t buy. And dignity, well, it’s one of them.

Sincerely,
A Totally Un-Cool, Overly-Protective Older Sister

PS. Please don’t key my car?

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My Promise To You: On Bullies, Breathing & Being Fifteen

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I used to have almost a thousand hormonal and emotional preteen girls following my missteps. And I did nothing about it.

I regret that—not because it would’ve made me pretend to feel less messy emotions or be more self-aware, but because I never tried to reach out to those hundreds of girls. I never bothered to learn their names or memorize the way they parted their hair or the bangles that always clanked when they ran their fingers through it in mock exasperation.

And isn’t that the way we learn? By asking the questions we have and hoping someone else throws back an answer that’s easier to swallow? Isn’t that the reason we read a stranger’s words and call them understanding?

I was fifteen. I had a quote Xanga.

Quotes From The Heart, it was called. And it’s still floating around the ether, if ever you need to know what my fifteen year old self had to say about feeling out of place and less than loveable.

I wrote about heartbreaks that weren’t yet real, boys who thought I was invisible, girls whose favorite pastime was passing notes in American Government with words like queer hitched to my name.

And wouldn’t it be nice to punch her in the face and pretend it wasn’t me?

I sat for hours trying to decipher that one. And six years later, I can tell you it’s a funny thing to say. It’s a funny thing to think you can deck someone in the nose and they won’t know it was you. It just doesn’t work.

I think I would’ve asked those eight hundred or so girls what they thought about bullying. And boys. And beginning to dread gym class because you weren’t so good at the mile run or the shuttle run or anything that required putting one step in front of the other.

I would have asked them what they clung to in my own missteps or what they hoped when they logged on and saw that I had updated since last they checked. I would have learned their worlds, one at a time, and tried to answer the questions they had the courage to ask.

I hope you know you can do that with me. You can send me an email or a text message or a tweet. You can expect an answer that doesn’t put a label on what you’re feeling or try to tell you it’s nothing, really, to be fifteen and terrified of the girl sitting next to you, stewing with anger because you exist.

Because you dared to breathe next to her. I hope you’re not holding your breath. I hope you’re feeling the burden lift. If not, begin today.

I’ve been in the business of laying strips of my heart onto html-coded web pages for far too long to stop now. If you are just finding me, I am here. Here. Ready for you.

By the way, every month I send out a short + sweet newsletter brimming with cool finds related to the monthly theme. It'd be stellar if you subscribed. If it's not worthy, it doesn't go in the newsletter. That. Simple.

For The Swing Set Souls

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If you shoved me in the DeLorean and Scrooge’d me into my ten-year-old self, I’m not so sure my side of the playground would be buzzing with activity.

Or swimming with sticky fingers from flavor ice pops. Crackling with sneakers scrubbing pavement.

I’m not so sure you’d run up to me with a jump rope and ask if I could hold one end.

“Please, oh please,” you wouldn’t have said. “We absolutely need your help. Come with me.”

More likely, you’d find me scraping my shoes against a pile of woodchips as I swung back and forth, back and forth, so close to those smiling faces and churning backward all the same.

That go-to interview question pops into my head: “What’s your biggest weakness.”

“Well, sir, you see it’s, um, kind of a funny story. Have you been to Home Depot lately?”

“What?”

“Home Depot, sir. You know those swing sets with striped overhangs and monkey bars? I’m kind of like a swing.”

“You are,” he might say.

Because I am sure that if it were a woman, she would already be pulling her wallet out of her purse and unfolding a photo gallery longer than my forearm. Pictures of her own children pushing each other at the neighborhood playground in her hands.

“A swing,” I’d say. “Yes. I’ve been waiting for too long now like one of those rusty swings cracking and weathered, hoping the store employee might brush his forehead with his orange apron pocket and drag me inside. Out of somebody else’s rainstorm. Away from the back of the pile. Into somebody’s backyard.”

He might not follow, but maybe he will. Maybe he had some swing days of his own, back on the playground, hands tucked inside overall pockets.

I am sort of hoping his childhood years weren’t categorized by foursquare games and knockout championships and getting presidential on the mile run in gym class. I am sort of hoping he got an X for that portion.

Because just like I learned to lace up my sneakers and round a 400-meter track four times, I am ready to stop sitting and pausing and shuffling and waiting and hoping and praying some swing set lover comes over to sit on me. Learning how to take Rooted In Place less metaphorically.

I hope the rest of you Swing Set Souls are, too.

By the way, every month I send out a short + sweet newsletter brimming with cool finds related to the monthly theme. It'd be stellar if you subscribed. If it's not worthy, it doesn't go in the newsletter. That. Simple.