GEEK. FAT. NERD. RETARD. WIMP. USELESS.
She was called all these awful names, and more, starting only at the young age of 8 years old. She was strong, she attempted to ignore it. She kept telling herself that famous quote, “Stick and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” But of course – they did.
As she grew older, it only worsened. She was isolated, ostracized by them, and she felt completely lifeless. By the age of 13, she had fallen into a false mind-set, which the tormentors at school had created for her, thinking no one would ever fall in love with her – that she would be lonely forever, because no person ever treated her differently. She tried to empty herself, so that she could feel nothing when the monsters tormented her. She was an outcast.
As if her home life was any better. An oft-drunken abusive father, who returned home from the pub at two o’clock each morning. As he arrived home, she cried in bed from listening to her mother’s screams from downstairs, due to his continued abuse. Her mother, a woman sprinkled with bruises and cuts, caused by her wretched husband. A woman who, when her daughter confessed her on-going tormented life, looked in her eyes and told her to ignore it and grow up. This girl’s family was broken – dangling on thin threads, ready to snap.
By the age of 16, she weighed only 36 kilograms, from the starvation she forced herself to endure. She was punishing herself. She had been pulled into the trap where she believed she was no longer even worthy of food. She now believed the bullies at school. She believed she was fat. She believed she was a retard. And she believed she wasn’t worthy of love or life. It even says so, judging by the scars on her forearms and thighs, where she engraved onto her skin the words “fat,” “stupid,” and the most wretched of them all: “love.” She used a razor, punishing herself for who she thought she was. With one clean stroke of the razor across her skin, the red blood began to...