The LC on the DL

What about us skinny people?

There have been a lot of comments flying around about the No, I’m Just Fat post over the last several weeks. Everyone is happy for the overweight who aren’t folding into the peer pressure and are showing they are happy and have self esteem. Don’t get me wrong, I marked it as good too. I was applauding the post. My problem? I am not fat, I am skinny. So what? So, I am sick of people telling me that I make them sick.

I like the weight that I am (121 lbs and 5′5′) but it hurts my self-esteem to like it. Why? Because some people feel the need to comment that they feel that I am too skinny. And someone somewhere comments almost on a daily basis. I am actually perfectly healthy and in my ideal weight range, thanks anyway. So I hear how what I eat makes people mad… I am a crazy healthy eater… I prefer veggies over all else and people accuse me of “dieting” when I eat what I want. This comment on my eating habits is meant to be derogatory and is meant to put me down. I am called anorexic, “Nichole Ricci”, told I can’t go outside when it is windy because I might blow away, asked if I shop in the children’s department… etc.

I don’t tell people who are overweight that they make me sick, so why would they say that to me?

It killed my self-esteem so badly listening to this garbage my whole life that for a while I became anorexic thanks to poor body image and the depression it put me in. I responded to the depression by not eating… not because I thought I was fat, but because I was sad all the time.

I shouldn’t be afraid to be proud of my figure because I will get rude comments and sneers, but sometimes I am. I notice these from perfect strangers… in fact, they have come right up to me and told me to eat something.

So there, I am skinny and I am just as irritated.

End rant.

Comment posted by Karyn
at 1/1/0001 12:00:00 AM

I don’t tell people who are overweight that they make me sick, so why would they say that to me?

I have this happen all of the time also….I would never be so rude. People need to mind their own business once in a while, maybe they can’t think of anything else to say….we are all built differently (it would be a very dull world if we were all shaped the same).

Comment posted by Angelchrys
at 1/1/0001 12:00:00 AM

Aww…that’s not cool. It’s hard that a lot of the focus we have nowadays are on how people are “too fat” or “too skinny” and we ignore the fact that no matter what side of the scale a person is on, comments like the ones you experience are not right. The weight shouldn’t matter! The person should!

And now let’s all hold hands and sing kumbayah.

Lots of people have them. Some people outgrow them long before adulthood, some hang on to them. There are some that are only realized well into our adult lives due to emotional distress or actual incidents. I have several fairly common childhood fears.

One of my own fears from my youth was that I was horribly afraid there was something under my bed. If I awoke from a nightmare I would lie in bed and scream for my parents rather than get up and run to their room. I was afraid that when I swung my legs over the side of the bed, something terrible would grab a hold of my ankles as my feet hit the floor. I hoped that my screaming would deter it from coming to get me since help would be arriving soon in the form of my rudely awakened and sleep deprived father.

In an attempt to prevent under the bed monster infestations I would store so many things under the bed that I hoped there wouldn’t be room for any baddies. I couldn’t be certain that that prevented them, however. If I needed something that was under my bed, I would wait til it was daylight because I didn’t want to risk sticking my hand or arm under there after dark.

I really wasn’t too fond of the closet either and to this day will not go to bed with the door to the closet open. For some reason it just freaks me out to have that door open. It’s like the closet is an unknown portal to the world of unfriendly creatures. If some uglies are coming through this mystery portal after I have gone to sleep I don’t want to be able to open my eyes and see it without effort. I agree that it is completely irrational and now-a-days I don’t believe in the possibilities of the afore mentioned mystery portal, but old habits die hard.

Ferris wheels. Combined, two very bad words. I just don’t like them. I had a nightmare about them as a kid where I was on one and it rolled right off its arms and I was taken along for the ride. All I can recall from that dream is groaning metal, screaming and fear. I won’t get on one for anything. Nope. Next ride.

Escalators sucking me up in their treads, slipping and falling through the stairs on open staircases, elevator doors closing and crushing me to death… These are all things I think about when approaching those circumstances. I am not panic filled or frozen in terror, just more imaging the worst possible case that could occur. I have some normal “fears” too such as looking like an idiot in front of my peers at work and being afraid that I will forget what I am going to say before a presentation.

Do you have any fears, irrational or not? What are they?