Baby Fat

I was always the fat kid. Wasn’t I? I thought I was. My whole life I thought I was the fat kid. Kids must have said things to me. Did an adult tell me I was fat? I must have believed I was fat. So I went and looked at some old photos of myself. I have to say I am shocked. Now I know I wasn’t an obese kid. Not like the kids today. In the 70’s most kids were SKINNY. I only knew one or two really fat kids. But now seeing the photos from my childhood I see, for the first time ever, something entirely different. I look really normal. Why I am seeing myself this way for the first time ever. I think I might cry. The little girl I see in my photos looks fine. No she isn’t rail thin…but she isn’t fat. I have looked at these photos hundreds of times and I have never seen them like this before.

This one is me and my cousin. I am wearing the rocking green jumper. We are the same age and the same height. She was the skinny one. I was the fat one. Or so I thought.


Here I am on Virginia beach. I am about 10 years old. I can see a thickness through my middle, my thighs are not skinny. My legs are still this shape. But that sweet little girl looks pretty average to me. Not a skinny minny but not the tub-o-lard I remember being.




Here I am in High School (in the yellow dress). I am standing next to my friend Lisa. I thought she was skinny (she was skinny). The dress did hide my lower body. I think my legs were bigger than hers-is that why I thought I was fat?


I’m not even sure how to handle this revelation. I hope it has something to do with really seeing myself for the first time in my life. I hope it is part of realizing that being fat isn’t who I am, it isn’t my destiny, it is under my control. Now I have to work on figuring out why for all these years I thought I was fat when I obviously wasn’t. Psychotherapy anyone.