One morning in high school, I was running late and I didn’t have time to straighten my hair like I did every other morning. When I got to homeroom, a girl I didn’t really know asked if I let my hair dry naturally that day, and I said yes. She said, simply, “It looks really nice like that." 

For some reason, that comment meant everything to me, and after that day I started wearing my hair curly and crushing on that random girl in homeroom.

In middle school, I received a dreaded 3 way phone call from my friends, and they lectured me about all of the things I needed to change about myself to be less annoying. I hung up, determined to change the way I talked, dressed, and interacted with others. 

I realized a couple of years later that I didn’t need to change myself, I needed new friends. While I have since grown up and embraced my flaws, I still think to this day about the things that made me “annoying” and sometimes wonder if I had changed them, if I would have had a different life…

My mother said to me, “You’ll never get a boyfriend if you don’t lose weight.”

I was 12 years old, 120 pounds and 5'2.

While our relationship has become exponentially better, I still cringe every time I think about it. And I still have issues with food and weight.

Hearing my older sister refer to my younger brother as being “so stable,” and having a “good head on his shoulders” really stuck with me. Mostly because I’ve never heard her say the same for me–the artist in the family without sustainable income. It made me feel misunderstood and sad. 

My mom complained about how “fat” she was and related that to so many insecure moments in her life when I was a teenager. It made me afraid that the same thing would happen to me and I would be just as unhappy if I ended up in her shoes in that way. 

So when one day she mentioned my butt looked bigger, it really stuck with me, tipped me over the edge so to speak. 

I still get scared of those kinds of observations now.