why being plus size is important to me
- jessica still
- Jul 18, 2017
- 3 min read
I could write for a century about why being who i am is so important to me. I could give you lists and books, catalogues full of bullet point dots and sub-reasons - but, i'm not going to do that. I don't want to bore you all with wannabe inspirational nonsense. Although, sometimes that might happen anyway. instead, i'm going to start of with a story, like so many good things do.
When I was a little girl, a boy at my school laughed at me in the playground, and proceeded to call me fat in his native language. Boys suck, and luckily, I know that now, but I only wish I’d known that at the time too. I didn’t know what he said, so I laughed. It was only when his friend came and whispered in my ear, telling me what he had called me that I stopped, and, as any 7-year-old would, I cried.
I was 7 years old and I had already been labelled as different, because I was taller, and wider than most people. I carried that label with me for the rest of my school days. Even when I wasn’t big, I was convinced I was. For years, I hated myself, I hated my body and I treated it so unkindly, even though my bodies love for me never once wavered.
I was 10 when I first joined a gym, with my mum. We’d go on weekends and I would try so hard to look like everyone else, I would go to weight loss groups, walking groups, anything I could, but I could never the lose any weight, not because of what I ate, or my lifestyle, but because of the way I was made, it was who I was, in my DNA and I hated myself for it.
At 16 I stopped going out. I dropped my friends and lost my social life, eventually i had to leave school and for the next six months, i lived my life from the solitude of my house. (But that's a story for another day) It stemmed from a lifetime of self-hatred and I knew, somehow, I had to stop it. I’d lost all my confidence and the faith I used to have in myself had disappeared.
At 18 I started to take photos. I would take photos of my tummy, the stretchmarks on my thighs, or the skin on my arms. I hated doing this but it was something I kept up. Slowly, I transitioned to taking whole body photos, and last October I posted the first ever full length picture of myself online. And a new me was born.
I’m now at university, studying a subject I adore and slowly building myself up from the rubble I had created. I’m living, for the first time in years, I feel alive.
I built up a confidence within myself that had never existed before. I knew that this body was the only one I had and without it I wouldn’t be alive. The thigh’s I had hated for an eternity were the reason I could stand so tall; my arms were the reason I could hug so tightly and my chubby cheeks were the basis of the smile I loved so much. My body was me and I had treated it so horribly throughout the years I knew it had to change.
Being a plus size person is so important to me, it’s a part of me that I am slowly learning to love. It has carried me for nineteen years and finally, I believe I am happy with who I am. I know there are so many people out there who don’t feel the same, who claw at their skin and scream in to their pillows of a night and I only wish it to get better for them.
For me, it’s taken a long time to get to this point, and there are still days that I can’t look in the mirror, and there are nights where I cry because of who I am and I know I still have a long way to go but the important thing is, is that I am on my way, and I can feel it getting better, and slowly, I am loving myself.
And that is why being big is so important to me. Because, it has taken so long to love, but now I’m on my way, I feel so alive- and I feel ready to fall in love and to dance and laugh and live again.
Finally, I can live again.
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