At the age of 13 a stranger in a beauty store asked me if I was pregnant. When I was a little girl I was teased and bullied because I never had a flat tummy like the rest of the kids. At the age of 18 I was injecting myself with medication that would allow losing weight easier, through a strict diet and 300 calories a day and today at the age of 21 I sit in my room and tell you my story.
Born 6 December 1995, I had not one idea of what world I was coming into. I had no idea of what my life was going to be like. I did not know my life would involve an obsession and challenges with weight. I did not know that I would encounter depression, anxiety, suicidal thoughts, bullying and a part time horrific relationship with my mother. All because of one thing. One stupid thing. weight. I grew up in Dainfern estate, Fourways, Johannesburg. An area filled with money, materialistic things, designer branDs, clothes, wealth, snobs and dysfunctional families who pretend to be functional. My family could afford to go on nice holidays, wear nice clothes, fit in with the trends, send my brothers and I to good schools, live in big houses and pretend to by functional. The reason I say pretend is because my parents never had a good relationship, at least for as long as I can remember. They fought and fought. I will never forget the one night sitting at the dinner table eating spaghetti bolognaise mom had made. Mom wasn’t eating – she was in the bedroom, Nick and I were full and didn’t eat the rest. Dad lost his temper with (I do not really think he was angry with us – I feel that were other things on his mind). Anyways, he put on a show, threw down kitchen doors and flung the kitchen into a mess. Mom packed her car as well and Nick and I; we went to stay the night at my aunt’s. I have two brothers, Robert and Nicholas, 27 and 23. I have a
mother, a father – who are now divorced, I live with my father in a rented house and my mother has just bought a new one bedroom flat – her own home for the first time in 8 years. Money is an issue; materialistic things and trends don’t matter much anymore. I guess its safe to say shit happened. From a very young age weight has always been an issue in my life. I describe it as a thing that has hovered over me, made me cry, and put me down. BUT it is also a done the opposite. It has made me smile, laugh, motivated me, lifted me up, built my confidence and made me believe that anything is possible. I often think of weight as a human being who has the power to shove, torture, twist and pull in any direction, and what I find the scariest is its ability to control us yet our ability to control it. At the age of 9, Grade 3 to be exact, I was already seeing therapies for bullying, about my weight. I had written a letter the one day to two of my guys mates Josh and Chuckchuk telling them that I was going to jump off of my balcony because I wanted to kill myself. I had ripped the letter up after showing them and threw it I the bin at school. Later that day they had approached my mom and showed her the torn up letter. I decided to leave Dainfern at the end of grade 4. I had gone to give Clifton Nottingham road a trial run, as my brother Nick was there. I told my mom that the hardest part about Clifton had to leave.
Grade 7 ended and high school came, still five hours away from home I wanted to venture on to St Anne’s College in Hilton. At this stage my parents were separated and then went through their divorce when I was in grade 9, 2010. In grade 10 I had eaten myself into a ball. I was only 15 years old, living with my dad – who was in a depressed state himself. My mom was living in a room in my godmother’s house, and had met a boyfriend, Gareth. At my grade 10 balls that year, October if I remember correctly, I was weighing 97.3 kg - a number I will never forget. At the time, my relationship with my mother was going downhill, I pushed her away in 2011 when she was involved in another relationship. We fought verbally and physically. We screamed at one another to the point where I wasn’t even sure there was any coming back from our situation. Majority if not all of our arguments have been about weigh. There have been countless times where she has tried to help me, advise me and support me yet I often took it as an attack and felt that I wasn’t good enough; that I wasn’t the daughter she had hoped for. To give you some context of my moms history with weight
and why she has always tried to help me is mainly because she does not want me to go through what she went through. HOWEVER, I ALWAYS TOOK IT AS A PERSONAL ATTACK THAT I WASN’T GOOD ENOUGH AND THAT SHE WAS CALLING ME FAT. IT IS ONLY NOW THAT I AM older do I really understand her intentions. My mom was always overweight and teased as a young girl; she became boarder line anorexic at the age of 15 and extremely anorexic at age 21. By age 23 she was obese and had a compulsive eating disorder, where she would binge eat continuously. Today she is slim, yet not psychologically healed with her relationship with food. She never will be and nor will I. It is only as I have grown up have I started to see all the reasons why my mom was trying to help me. I guess that is a lesson I have learnt and tried to understand. I feel that my mom has always wanted me to me thin and for 3 main reasons: 1. Because she wasn’t as a little girl 2. To protect me from being bullied 3. She knows what it is like
When I began my time at Rhodes University in 2014 I was around 89kg. I then went on the HCG diet. Some people, actually friends thought I was cheating my way to being skinny because the diet contained of a daily injection of HCG, a hormone that opens fat cells and releases fat. It sounds like a dream come true but NO I worked hard; I had to cook my food for the week on a Sunday in my wardens flat. I had to weigh my food for each meal. I had to give up drinking; I sacrificed a lot, especially as a first year student. It took a lot of will power concentra-
tion and dedication. Yet, jealous people still felt the need to comment. I lost 23kg on that diet and losing the weight made me happier. Finally, for myelf. I felt more accepted, I felt beautiful, I got my first boyfriend and I became very confident. Since then I have put on about 7 kg, this I am not happy about. I want to get back to my ideal weight, but I must do it for me and not for others. Enjoy life, listen to your body and believe you are beautiful. If you want to change your body, do it for you and not for anyone else.
"We're always too skinny, or too fat. Too tall, or too short. We are shaming ourselves, and it sucks." – Emma Stone