What My Body Was Made to Carry Before I Was Ready

Nobody talks about the trauma you face growing up fat.

I actually really hate thinking about my childhood. It’s only as of recently did I feel the need to talk about my childhood because maybe my story can help others. The unnecessary trauma I endured all because I was fat truly haunts me. 

There was a book called ‘The Care & Keeping of You: The Body Book for Girls’ and I remember reading that book at an early age and realizing that I never had the luxury of growing into my body gently.

I was pushed into an awareness of it before I was ready, before I even understood what it meant.

Growing up as a fat black girl, I was told in different ways that I “looked grown.” And like so many fat girls that label followed me everywhere. It changed how people saw me. It changed how they treated me. It changed what some felt entitled to.

But I was still a child.

And instead of being protected, I became a target.

When Your Body Becomes a Target

I was bullied and I was bullied badly, from kids cutting my hair, to picking at my clothes, to the eventual sexual assaults… It wasn’t just the words, but it was the actions that stayed with me.

Kids would put their hands on me, while crossing boundaries I didn’t understand how to fully defend yet. They would rip at my clothes, try to expose me, laugh while I tried to hold myself together. Moments like that don’t just pass, they imprint.

They teach you something, even when you don’t have the words for it.

It taught me that my body wasn’t safe.
That it could be touched, exposed, laughed at.
That it wasn’t mine in the way it should’ve been.

And when experiences like that happen young, they don’t just disappear.

There were things I experienced that no child should have to carry.

Things that made me feel sexualized before I even understood my own body. Things that made me feel like my body was something for other people…something to be looked at, judged, used, or controlled.

And I didn’t choose that. It was chosen for me.

But I carried it anyway.

Learning to Hate My Body

After a while, it stopped feeling like something that was happening to me and it started feeling like something that was because of me.

Because of how I looked.
Because of my body.
Because I “looked grown.”

So I turned that pain inward. I started to hate my body and the eating disorder appeared, my lack of self care appeared. I did everything to make myself disappear to feel better about myself but it didn’t work.

I hated how it looked.
I hated how it was seen.
I hated how it made me feel exposed, even when I was fully clothed.

Because when your body becomes the reason people harm you, it’s easy to believe it’s the problem.

What I Know Now

I know now that none of what happened to me was my fault. 

Not the bullying.
Not the assault.
Not the way people projected their thoughts, their desires, or their ignorance onto me.

My body was not “too grown.” I was not asking for anything.

I was a child in a body that other people refused to respect.

Beginning to Unlearn

One thing I’m learning is unlearning that kind of shame doesn’t happen overnight. I’ve been in therapy for months…years.. And I’m still struggling, I’m still upset, and I’m still angry. And that’s okay.

I am having to learn to see my body differently, everyday.
The way I’m learning, is that my body deserves protection, not punishment.
In this learning I’m slowly, carefully, coming back to myself. AND I’m learning who I was before, the world told me something was wrong with me.

Because my body was never the problem. The people were the problem.

And It was the way people chose to treat it.

Reclaiming My Body, My Voice

For a long time, my body felt like something that didn’t belong to me.

But I’m starting to take that back.

Piece by piece.
Word by word.

This is part of that process.

Speaking about what I went through.
Naming what was done.
Refusing to carry the shame that was never mine.

Because I deserved to be protected.

And I still deserve to feel safe in my own body.

I say all of  this to say, I’m still healing.

There are days when the memories feel close, when the weight of everything I carried as a child shows up in ways I’m still learning to understand. But I’m no longer blaming myself for what was done to me.

I’m no longer seeing my body as the reason I was hurt.

I’m learning to meet myself with softness instead of shame. To remind myself that I was always worthy of protection, care, and love, even when I didn’t receive it.

And maybe that’s what healing looks like for me right now.

Not having all the answers.
Not being fully “over it.”

But choosing, every day, to come back to myself anyway.

The beautiful fat black girl I’ve always been.

- With love K 🩷