The Chubby Girl

(Trigger warning: Body Dysmorphia)

When I was little, I was tall for my age group and often bigger than my peers. I had a tummy. Most of my growing up years I heard that I was in an “awkward-in-between phase” and that I would grow out of that tummy. Both of my parents struggled with their weight and many of their habits and insecurities, of course not deliberately, got passed down. Combine a 1990s culture of heroin chic models and a constant battle between sweets and self-loathing and you get a lot of body shame and a girl named Becci.

Over the years I’ve had successful periods of navigating diet and exercise and managing sugar and stress. And I’ve had times where the chocolate drawer was the only way I got calories or comfort. Recently, I’ve been more successful in navigating diet and exercise–not entirely on my own (those pesky Invisalign trays keep me from snacking or drinking beverages with calories, thank goodness). Most of what I’m doing, isn’t to look a certain way. It’s to feel a certain way. I get seasonal depression. Bad. I understand snowbirds better and better every year. I’m not sure at what point I will surrender to that. My efforts this year have been to build a foundation to help me through the winter so I don’t just white knuckle it.

The side effect of that is that I’m smaller than I used to be. The reactions to that are still startling to me. I’m still me. And it also makes me incredibly tender to bigger Becci who had the same naughty sense of humor, big heart, and joy-seeking nature. It’s easy to paint virtue on size when everything we’re bombarded with tells us that’s true. It’s not true. It’s garbage and I hate it. And even though the jeans I had in a drawer for several years fit again, I am still that chubby little girl inside.