I’m the problem, it’s me.

When you don’t look like society’s standard of beauty you grow up being ridiculed because you’re “too fat” or whatever attribute they deemed ugly, it would get pointed out. At one point in my life I weighed 150lbs, and I remember feeling too fat, too ugly, too little. Mom and sister both were skinny, I was the only fat one. Dad was fat as were a lot of the men in my life, but for some reason they’re not held to the same standards. I felt inadequate. They couldn’t relate. It didn’t help that everyone around me would make the same idiotic comments: “Carolyn, you’re fat, that’s not healthy for you. Maybe you should lose it.” Well gee Aunt Tina, I did not know that fact, thanks for letting me know! My parents were no better, and I get that the comments from certain people were coming from a place of love, and care. But at the same time, when they’re 1. Unsolicited and 2. Given without any solution, the comments are useless. I own a mirror, I know I’m fat and I know it’s not healthy. None offered to join me in a gym, none cooked healthier foods for me (when I was a minor and not in charge of my own meals of course). I always figured there’d be a time where I’d go to the gym and I’d lose the weight. Only problem is that I always postponed that. For whatever reason, I’d always find an excuse. Not one of my greatest moments. Looking back when I was “fat”, I was quite literally a few pounds away from a healthy weight. I’ve been suggested Herbalife, I’ve been criticized for how much butter I put on a toast… think of criticism, I’ve probably gotten it.

I’m the problem, it’s me
Taylor Swift

Since I have memory I have always wanted to be skinny. Even when I was 150lbs. Whenever I look, at the rare pictures that exist, I could have lost a few pounds, was I as fat as I thought? No, absolutely not. I have always felt I needed to lose the weight to feel good with myself. Until I lost it I wouldn’t feel good. I didn’t like feeling inadequate, ugly, fat, or that I was taking up too much space. At several points in my life I have joined gyms. I would go, highly pumped… for a whole month, and because I wouldn’t see results in that short time, I would get discouraged and I stopped going. I was expecting results in a month for something that had been years in the making. None of the people that would critique me ever joined me. All encouraged me from afar, no one put their money where their mouth was. I’m not proud of the times I quit, but it is what it is.

I’m not proud I quit, but it is what it is.

*Circa 2008. What the fuck am I wearing?* 😭 I was living in a tropical island, it was hot. Why am I wearing and ugly ass shirt and an ugly ass jacket? Don’t get me started on those baggy jeans… Oh and you can’t see the hair, but that’s another hot mess.

I always had this idea that fat = ugly and I felt bad about myself, I just wanted to hide. I hated cameras! There’s evidence of those times, but not a lot (hence the really bad cropped pictures I am showing here), I really lost a lot of memories because I didn’t like capturing my fatness, I didn’t want to be reminded at the time. That’s how bad I felt about myself. And it’s sad, no one should be made to feel like that. I look at pictures of my friends in high school and I’m not in a lot of them, I would take them but I’d never be in them. And the ones that do exist I look fucking terrible. For fuck’s sake, I would dress so bad. But that only speaks to the level of confidence I had at the time, which was essentially none. Oh and on top of it I’m tall for a woman, so not only was I fat, I was very tall, everything about me was very difficult to hide. It pains me to look back at those pictures, not because I was fat, but because I see that insecure little girl that never felt pretty enough because she was fat. I also missed out on so many things. I didn’t do a lot of things, I didn’t take enough pictures, I would wear the most hideous things ever, again, it’s very sad I lost so much because of that.

Sometimes I feel like everybody is a sexy baby
And I’m a monster on the hill
Too big to hang out
Slowly lurching toward your favorite city
Taylor Swift

Circa 2010. This wasn’t any better. Two shirts, a longer one hiding my arms, and then one on top? Why did I think this was okay?! Here the hair is more noticeable…

My confidence had always been close to zero, fat people can’t be pretty can they? So why would I feel any confidence? There’s not much representation of fat people in the media, no one looked like me. Insecurities built up, for me this translated into baggy clothes, long sleeves, layers of clothes all in order to hide the fat. Of course, I was not hiding anything, I was just looking fucking terrible in the process. I mean, that’s all looking at it retroactively, I am pretty sure at the time I thought I looked great. Well, never hot, I had never found myself looking hot, there are always Jennifer Annistons walking around, I could never measure… Even though I loved it, part of the reason I cut off my hair into a pixie cut (inspired from Ginnifer Goodwin), was because I would not know how to handle my long hair. I never felt I could do or wear “girly” stuff because I was fat, you’ll see that I looked like a tomboy for a hot second there, that’s all I felt comfortable in.

Circa 2017. I doubt I ever wore this dress outside without a jacket or a cardigan. I hated those arms.

There’s not a lot of fat people portrayed in the media, though we are seeing more each day, but not when I was a kid. Those that were, were just made fun of. Being fat is funny (sarcasm). The fat character was always the comic relief. They were never the love interest, they were the funny-reliable-relatable best friend. I never felt identified with any character on TV, the were not a lot of fat people, much less fat women. There’s this moment that replays in my mind every once in a while, I was in elementary school and girls are forced to wear skirts (even though pants cover up much better), very little schools allowed us to use pants, but even then, sometimes we couldn’t afford both the skirt and pants, so skirt it was… anyway, there was this kid I had a crush with, and I guess he knew, not sure, so I’m walking upstairs and if you were standing below them, you could see up all of our skirts, he’s standing below and looked up and said “eww”. It’s almost 20 years later and I still remember, that clearly scarred me. Outside of school I’d never wear a skirt, if I did certainly not one short enough that you could see my thighs (there were some rare occasions but just know I was very uncomfortable). I would never wear sleeveless shirts, or dresses, my bathing suits consisted of shorts and a shirt, I encountered many instances of going to a pool and having anxiety because it stated that bathing suits were required. I would always be wondering if I’d be allowed in or if in this instance I’d be kicked out. Wearing shirts with sleeves allowed me to hide my chubby arms, but who was I really fooling? You can still see it, you just can’t see the skin, my mind lied to me that this was better. First time I wore a sleeveless dress, that was just right above my knee was 2017/2018. I was 24 years old, this means I had basically spent most —if not all— of those 24 years, hiding my body. It also didn’t help that I was raised in a pretty strict-Christian household, it was nowhere near as strict as what my parents encountered when they were growing up, but strict. In the church, there seems to be this idea that to appear Christian, you have to look bland, I’d call it ugly, but I don’t know what they would call it. If I had a penny for the amount of people I saw looking the ugliest a person can look… I’d be rich. And this is not talking at all about their physical appearance, this is talking about their dress choices. I get that there’s modesty involved with being Christian but you can be modest and still look good, something the people I encountered growing up did not know, or chose to ignore, I’m not sure. What I am sure about is that I inherited insecurities from the adults around me, not necessarily on purpose but it’s what happens with people, we project our insecurities onto others. “Cross your legs, ladies do not sit like that” or “lower your skirt! There’s people around!” or my very favorite, the chaos whenever your bra strap slipped over, as if people didn’t know women wore bras…. And don’t get me wrong, we don’t want people looking up our clothes and we want to be modest but at the same time there shouldn’t be the taboo there is.

Circa 2018, Blue Lagoon. This is the only image I have of me ever wearing a bathing suit without any shorts. I did not want that documented.

Summer of 2018 I took an impromptu trip to Iceland, when I went to the Blue Lagoon I had a one piece bathing suit, one of the first times I had ever worn one. With a short pant of course, you can’t be showing thighs, fat thighs are ugly and no one wants to see that… my friend and I had to use bathrooms far from each other and she had my shorts in her bag, I can’t recall why. So when I’m putting my bathing suit on, I found I didn’t have the shorts with me, so I had to put my metaphorical big girl pants on and walk out wearing only the one piece bathing suit. By the time I found my friend, I had lost the shame and I decided to just not wear the shorts. I was still nervous when I went in and out of the water, but I did it. That was the first time I’ve ever worn a bathing suit without any cover up. It wouldn’t repeat itself until this year, but instead of a one piece, I wore a two piece, high waist bottoms, sure, but still. After a lifetime of feeling ashamed, in 2022, I finally felt comfortable in my own body. But I’ll get to that later. The summer of 2018 was important in my growth, it was the first time I had worn a sleeveless dress and a one-piece bathing suit without shorts. I would go to wear more dresses, makeup, especially a matte-red that everyone compliments on me. It also didn’t help that the world closed in 2020, I gained weight, lost the weight. I don’t like to think I’m the person that looks from validation from other people, but I am, though now that I know, I’m aiming to validate myself. I don’t need someone to find me pretty to feel pretty. That summer was also the first time that I liked someone and I wasn’t concerned about whether or not they wouldn’t like me because of my body. I was slowly shedding the insecurities.

2022, Puerto Rico. This woman is living her best life. You see that smile? I was also in Puerto Rico, my homeland, that I hadn’t seen in over two years. Wearing this two-piece bathing suit, short-less and very happy.

I was slowly shedding the insecurities.

Summer of 2022, I matched with a guy on a dating app, I wasn’t sure about him, too young, his profile pictures were terrible, but I decided to give it a shot. He was very attracted to me, and at any given point he’d let me know. This made me want to look pretty for him, I’d go on to dress up so he’d see how pretty I was. In doing so I started feeling myself. I started wearing things I would have never worn, I bought lingerie, leather skirts, bodysuits, I realized I had nice clothes, but there were even nicer things I could get. In my mind there was a line on what stuff fat people could and couldn’t use. Turns out it was a fucking lie. I found out I look smoking hot wearing a leather skirt, that it accentuated my fat? Yes, did I still wear it? Also yes. All of this was in part for him, that’s how it started but then somewhere along the way, it started being for myself and if he liked it was a huge plus. It felt very nice to be wanted. It took me a while to understand that it needed to be for me, rather than him, because it got to a point that I was looking for validation from him. He needed to tell me I looked hot, to feel hot. This was also the first time I looked at myself and thought I was hot, it was no longer a label exclusive for the Jennifer Anistons of the world. At the moment he withdrew his validation, I wavered, man did I waver… But then I found myself, I realized it had never been for him, it had been for me. His loss really. He met this very insecure woman and unknowingly allowed her to find herself and when he left, she was not the same person, again, his loss, who doesn’t want a woman that feels confidence in herself, her body whichever way it looks at any given point? I still want and like to be told I look good, who doesn’t? But I also don’t need it to feel myself or to wear something I like. I sent my aunt a picture and she replied with: “confidence looks good on you.” And that’s something I had never felt. I walked out in public wearing a leather bra, skirt, and a sheer top. I WOULD HAVE NEVER. But did I? You bet I did.

Carolyn, 2022, Toronto, Ontario. I am officially calling this the “Carolyn leather era” (sounds naughty in Spanish lol). See the difference? I am fucking feeling myself. I still feel a little conscious but fuck it.

Confidence looks good on you.
My aunt

Am I the problem? Abso-fucking-lutely not. The problem is society fucking up with anyone that’s not a size zero. This is not in any way of form criticism to size zeros, it’s to the people that tiered who deserves to be respected and who doesn’t. I deserve to feel happy wearing whatever I want to wear. I realized I gave people too much power, I get to decide how I feel about myself and no one gets to dictate what is good or bad for me. No one is walking in my shoes, I am, no one knows what I go through, what goes through my mind or what I am working towards.

2022. As I post this, I feel a little conscious about how you can see how my fat looks through this skirt, something I’ve spent years hiding. But I am deciding to concentrate on how fucking hot I look.

My goal with this post is to, hopefully, inspire you, if you’re anything like me, my best advice is to fuck all the people that have made you feel inadequate, wear whatever the fuck you want, if you love it, wear it. Wear it confidently, or fake it until you make it. Do all the things you want to do, don’t follow in my footsteps and don’t miss out on things, your family, friends and people that love you, will thank you. You will regret all those instances where you missed out. I know I do. But no more.

As always,

With love,

Carolyn

An open letter to the friend that broke my heart

I’ve held onto this for a few weeks now, debating whether it required a post for itself or not. I read it a few days ago and decided it did. So here it goes:

As fate would have it, I met this boy at a random party, to be honest we didn’t talk then. But by chance, we were in the same class and it was an instant click, we had a similar sense of humor. From talking before and after class, our relationship developed into sitting together. I had a new friend, yay! Then, we had conversations through Snapchat and eventually texted. A lot. Look, I talk a lot so that’s normal for me, but it’s rare to find someone that will let me talk and not mind. I told him to let me know if he minded because I am not the best reader of people and he seemed to be fine with it. For a little bit, I thought he liked me because he would say funky things. We started hanging out, at my place, out somewhere. I even got a gift from him out of the blue, the randomest thing ever. Though my favorite memory was one day where I was struggling and he stepped out of the gym and stopped by my place with ice cream. Pistachio, because out of the times we had gone out, he had observed that’s what I had gotten (ask me which flavors he got, idk!). The thing to know about me is that I treat everyone the same. Whether I like them or not, whether you’re my friend or not. At one point I’m with my best friend on the phone, talking about how it looked like we were dating, but I didn’t know if we were, my friend agreed. But I wasn’t sure what to do. He brought up the conversation once, we agreed we weren’t, I explained that I never treated him special, he brought things he minded and even dropped the “it’s not you, it’s me” (which ended up being b.s… I should have listened to FRIENDS, “if they tell you it’s them, it’s really you) and that was the end of it… or so I thought. Things were ok for like three days. He started pushing me away, stopped sitting with me. Since it was unexpected, it hurt like hell. I waited for him to clarify, about two days after, I texted him, he called me and it turned out I had said a joke, which he thought I meant. Another thing to know about me is that I’m sarcastic 99% of the time. But he didn’t buy it and asked for space. While I tried my best to keep my distance, it goes against my nature so it wasn’t perfect. So that was my best, even if it wasn’t the best by him. We were even scheduled to travel together so whatever was going on, needed to be solved by then, which is part of the reason for me to try to keep in touch and try to help fix whatever was going on. Days and weeks went by and we were not talking. I kind of confronted him through an app, not my finest moment but I hadn’t seen him so it was the only way I could do it. What I was told was that we were talking too much, that he was uncomfortable and that I was too energetic and kept reminding him he wasn’t in a good place. Long story short, he thought the trip would help him clear his mind. Short after I got a text that said that he wasn’t making it. To some extent I tried to talk him into going. Though it wasn’t long until I realized how he had made his mind up about me. There was nothing I could say that would make him change his mind. He was done with me, done with me without giving me the benefit of the doubt, without letting me explain. I didn’t know what was going on!

While he explained why he decided not to be my friend anymore, it still didn’t make sense. I did interpret that from our previous conversation, I guess he expected me to treat him different, which I didn’t because I never treated him differently. He told me how suffocated I made him feel and a lot of things along that line. I wanted to take the high road so I told him I wished him farewell, that I hoped he would fulfill his dreams because in spite of everything, I thought he was a good person. Why? I don’t know. He was horrible to me. Though I think I was horrible to him, in his story. And that’s how I got a friend and lost a friend in the course of two months. The aftermath was the worst: crying at home, and being a hermit for a week, I had anxiety attacks, I couldn’t breathe and honestly I couldn’t deal with anything. I blamed myself, even though I had taken responsibility for what was my fault, even if he didn’t see it.

If you’re reading this, I even had your Christmas gift picked out, I freaked out for months because I wasn’t sure what to get you. It was a set of loose tea and a really nice steeper. You would have loved it. I am mad at you. It took me a week and then some to feel better. I cried on the way to a friend’s house, who would subsequently take me to the airport, because it wasn’t supposed to happen that way, because it was supposed to be the two of us. I semi hoped to see you at the gate, to enjoy the trip even if it wasn’t with me. I even felt guilty, because you were excited and I felt like I took that from you. It was never my intention to be the villain in your story, on the contrary, I always try to make people feel better. It might take a little bit more for me to be over it. But you know what? I learned from this. To some extent, I’m glad it played out that way. Maybe the briefness was supposed to teach me (and maybe you) a lesson. Don’t use this bad situation as an excuse to not put yourself out there. You were working on being more open, so do it. Our friendship didn’t work out, but another one will. Fly, fly, fly.

I do wished we could have talked about it, truly talked about it. I would have gone to the ends of the world for you, but that’s just who I am. It’s hard to understand my personality, I know, but know that I never lied. I tried to be as honest with you as I could possibly be. From this, you should learn to know yourself a little bit better, know what things you’re ok with and what you’re not. It’s a shame I didn’t because I was 50% ready to end the friendship with you a month before you did, but I gave you the benefit of the doubt, joke’s on me. I’m still mad and hurt as hell with you. Because I believe I deserved better. I’m a good, kind person and I don’t think I deserved this. But oh well, live and learn. I thought I could leave the door open for us to be friends again at some point down the road. But I don’t know… In this aftermath I don’t know if I could. But to be honest, I’ll say I can’t and will probably do it. But who knows?

Carolyn

P.S. You said I made you laugh. A few times you said that… who lets go of someone that makes them laugh? It baffles me.