I pulled out a shirt that I bought a month ago from my wardrobe. I fell in love with it the moment I saw it. It’s a black tank top with a purple, orange, yellow, and blue watercolor design on the front. It’s a band merch shirt from one of my newly-discovered favorite bands. I didn’t even try it on when I bought it. I figured a large would fit me pretty well.

I was wrong. It fits, but it hugs me in all the wrong places and extenuates everything I want to cover.

Once a fat kid, always a fat kid.

I can pin the exact moment in my life where I became a fat kid. I was seven and we had just moved about an hour away from where I had lived my whole life. I had no friends and no one to hang out with. My relationship with the television and Doritos grew as my time outside and playing with other kids shrunk.

By the time I hit my sophomore year of high school, I weighed 163 pounds. That’s about thirty pounds over a healthy weight for my height. I had always known that I was overweight, but I didn’t do anything about it.

Until I broke down crying in an Old Navy dressing room because the only size shorts that fit me were a size 16. I was sixteen and wearing a size 16.

I had enough.

Through both healthy and unhealthy circumstances, I was down to 125 pounds on the first day of my junior year. I was wearing a size 6 and felt better about how I looked.

But I still had that belly fat. You know what I’m talking about. Commonly referred to as a muffin top. No matter what I did, it wouldn’t go away.

I still saw myself as the fat girl.

My friends told me they were worried because I looked like I was starting to get too thin, but I couldn’t see it. All I saw were my gross belly folds and my thick thighs.

Ultimately, I gave up. By the end of my senior year, I was back up to 138 pounds. I didn’t feel too terrible, considering I ate my weight in chips and salsa every week, but it still felt like a punch in the face.

I worked out every day that summer. I watched what I ate. I did everything right. And yet, by the end of the summer, I was still 138 pounds.

I was devastated.

My first year of college was a blow, too. When I got home after my May term class, I weighed 155 pounds. I was almost back to my starting weight.

I cried myself to sleep for the rest of the week. I looked up how to lose weight fast every night before bed. I got myself a gym membership and spent hours there almost every day. I limited myself to 1200 calories a day. I even had to help my parents move houses, carrying heavy boxes for a week straight.

My first week back to college, I got a sinus infection and had to go to Urgent Care. I weighed 159 pounds. There’s a sting of tears coming to my eyes as a type this thinking about it.

What most people don’t understand is that it doesn’t matter how many times you tell someone “oh, you aren’t fat” or “you look so thin.” If someone doesn’t like the way they look, they can’t easily let it go.

I’ll always see myself as ugly because I am overweight.

My weight has been such a self-conscious part of my personality.

I’m afraid to jump on my friend’s backs for pictures.

I want to be in the back of group pictures so I don’t have to squat and show off my stomach rolls, and so someone will be in front covering my body.

I don’t like going out with my friends because I know that people are judging me on how fat I am.

I’m the girl who ruins pictures because I take up too much space in them.

I hate wearing mandatory shirts for sorority events because it isn’t tailored to hide my fat.

I hate ordering food at a restaurant because I don’t want to seem like the unhealthy fat girl if I don’t order a salad, nor do I want to seem like the self-conscious fat girl who’s kidding herself by ordering a salad.

I hate thinking that I can’t wear trendy clothes because they don’t look good on fat girls.

I hate my body.

I know I’m using fat as a derogatory term, which I don’t mean to do. The word fat is just an adjective. But when I talk about myself, I can’t help put a negative connotation to it.

The body postivity movement is a growing part of our society today, and I’m all for it. You're self-worth should not be judged by how you look on the outside. You should be happy to be in your own body and feel comfortable about who you are.

I just wish I could practice what I preach.