Survivors Guilt

I recently read an article(1) about a kid who wanted to get his hair cut the same way as his best friends. He said he couldn't wait to go to school because his teacher wouldn't be able to tell them apart with the same haircut, they'd look the same! Sound logic,  in my opinion. His mother (and many others) found it adorable. And the best part? The little boy is white, and his best friend is black. And he's sure that his teacher won't be able to tell them apart. The only difference he sees between he and his best friend, is a haircut.   Let me repeat that: The ONLY difference he sees between he and his best friend, is a haircut. He doesn't see black and white. He doesn't see race. Because race is learned. Racism is taught. No baby is born separating themselves from others because of the color of their skin. In light of recent events (presidential election, and increasing number of hate crimes encouraged by said election), I've been thinking a lot about this lately (among other hate crimes, not just race related). I remember the first time I really even noticed someone's race and realized that they were different from me, and sometimes treated differently because of it. I was 11, turning 12. Obama was running for his first term. My mom and stepdad and grandparents were watching the campaigns carefully. It could go either way. Would we have our first female president, or our first black president? I remember my mom talking to me about both of the candidates. Paraphrasing her sentiments: Hilary was a lying, deceitful woman, and was not fit to be president (although I, not fully understanding feminism at the time, but with a burning desire to be a future president, wanted nothing more than for "A girl like me" to be elected) Barack was a black man who started at the bottom and worked hard to get to where he was. A strong, fit candidate. My mom had explained a lot to me about why it had been so hard for him to get here (again, paraphrasing her sentiments). People of color were treated differently. Lived in bad neighborhoods, and their kids didn't go to good schools like I did. While my 11 year old brain tried to comprehend this, he was elected. 8 years later, and I've seen a lot of hate, and racism, but I've always tried to stay unbiased. People are people. Regardless of gender, skin color, religion, or sexual orientation. I've done my best to learn how to be a good ally, and a good person in general. Now that I'm older, I see that I was lucky to have grown up so unbiased, around people who were also unbiased. I saw the prejudices and injustices of the world and my heart broke. At 20 years old, I am proud to be a black lives matter believing, lgbt rights fighting, protesting, feminist, activist, with a lot of friends and support from around the world. I'm proud to know that I'll be able to raise a tiny version of my fiance and I, in a loving home, where they can bring friends to feel safe from whatever hardships their life throws at them. I can only hope that my home is a loving and safe one, where everyone feels welcome to be themselves, and escape the horror that I can only expect to come in the next couple of years. I can only hope that I'll be blessed with a child who comes home from school and wants to get the same haircut as their best friend, to confuse their teacher, because they see no difference between them apart from a haircut. (1) https://www.google.com/amp/mashable.com/2017/03/03/boys-get-same-haircut-to-confuse-teacher.amp

1. We eat ALL of our leftovers. Or someone else does. I realized this when I didnt like a burrito I bought and I offered it to my friend, who said, “Just throw it out.” I stared at him kind of dumbfounded for a moment and then said “That’s a waste of food.” “Well it’s just food,” was his reply. Growing up, if we didn’t like something, we offered it to everyone else. And if no one wanted it, we gave it to dad when he got home because he’d eat anything. Because wasting food was NOT an option. 2. I've only been on two vacations. Ever. I have a friend who's been on like 4 REAL vacations since I met him. A year ago. He went boating all the time this past summer. His parents went "camping" every week. In a camper. My family spent three months "camping" once. That was just my parents way of not letting us get discouraged because we were homeless. 3. We dont buy brand name anything. I'm always surprised when I go to someones house and they have like... quilted northern toilet paper. Or Florida orange juice. We had brand name toilet paper. The brand name was Wal-Mart. 4. C l o t h i n g Okay. So heres the thing. I have this friend (bless his heart) who goes thrift shopping because he thinks it's fun. And you know I can totally agree to that. But maybe I just enjoy shopping. We bought clothes from thrift stores bc it was all we could afford. And sometimes not even that. Hand me downs were everything and if you were the oldest... well that sucks. New shoes once a year, at most. Sometimes every other year. Backpacks? You use that shit til it wears out. 5. We love our parents. Through thick and thin. These kids who get mad at their parents until they buy them a new (insert item here). Dont even get me started. Mama kept a roof over our head and food in our cupboards. For the most part. And I love her for that. I will always fucking respect my mother. No matter what our relationship goes through.

When I was twelve years old, my grandpa (moms dad) passed away. It wasn't unexpected –he'd fought a long battle with cancer and other health issues. Everything –the way I saw it– started getting bad after that. Sure, there were problems before... But I guess I just didn't let myself see them until then. Maybe my younger self didn't need to see the bad things... Maybe she wouldn't have handled them well. Whatever the reason, up until he passed I I knew things weren't perfect, but I was a happy, optimistic child. Shortly after he passed, my family was separated. My parents stayed in the Seattle area, where we'd been living, and the rest of us –me, my two younger sisters, my younger brother, and my newly widowed grandmother– moved halfway across the country to a tiny town in Kansas that is literally not even on the map. I was quickly outcast by my peers at my new school. It wasn't hard to see why. The school was K-12 and had a grand total of about 150 students. In the entire school. Everyone had known each other forever, as had their parents, grandparents, etc. I had moved too much to grow up with any lasting friends. They had grown up on farms: herding cattle and riding horses together. I had been grown up saying "Mommy says not to talk to strangers" and staying safely in my fence, or neighborhood. Their entire town (all 4 miles of it) was their play yard, and they were free to roam. I had the playground in whichever apartment complex, or a one block radius to play in, if I was lucky. They were country kids through and through. I was immediately labeled a city slicker. I made things worse by insisting that I wasn't because I'd ridden horses once or twice. I was twelve. I didn't know any better. Have you ever seen the movie Mean Girls? My new school, or at least my 7th grade class, was a lot like that. Three very popular, very pretty girls that everyone worshipped. Now we get to the first major moral of this little look into my life: These three girls were the meanest girls l have ever met. And I remember all their names, first, middle, and last, and what they looked like. This was almost eight years ago. They have haunted my nightmares for the last eight years. For the sake of not exposing three girls who could very well have made drastic improvements to their attitudes since then, I'll call them Jen, Dana, and Callie. Jen was the Regina George of my class. Beautiful. Popular. The head b*tch. Everyone wanted to be her, or to be with her. Dana was Gretchen Weiner. Knew everyone's secrets. Had a very wealthy, very well known father (not the inventor of toaster strudel, though). Really hot (for a twelve year old). Callie was the Karen Smith. Maybe not the brightest, but very pretty. She was a follower. Up until that year I'd had other things to worry about than being pretty. Pretty wasn't even a thing I thought about in relation to people my age. Grown up ladies were pretty. Little girls were just... Little girls. Playmates. That was before puberty smacked me in the face. Right before we moved to Kansas, my boobs grew basically three cup sizes overnight. A slight exaggeration, but I really did go from flat to a C cup very quickly. I was suddenly in a woman's body, and I still thought like a little girl. I weight 140lbs and at LEAST 10 of it was boobs. I remember the first time I was called fat like a slap in the face. The first time I looked around me and realized that these girls... These twelve and thirteen year old girls... Well, they just hadn't developed as quickly as me. They still had flat everything, and I was nothing but curves. Looking back at it, I can see clear as day that I just hit that stage of puberty before they did; that I was beautiful, and curvy, and what older people –older me– would consider "hot" and desirable. Although I lacked a definitive sense of hygiene... I had the "right" body, just at the wrong time. So when they called me fat. When they called me cow, and lard, and told me I took up too much space. Well, I believed them. 7th grade was, hands down, the hardest year of my life, socially. I had no real friends. I hated my body. I hated myself. And even if I hadn't, everyone else hated me enough to make up for it. 7th grade was the first time anyone ever told me to kill my self, which is my next major point: I remember the curve of Jen's lip when she told me to, direct quote, "walk [my] fat a** off a cliff. The world would be better off without [me]." I remember vividly the sound of laughter all around me as my eyes filled with hot, stinging tears. And I remember being escorted to the principals office for 'disrupting the class'. I remember begging them not to call my grandma. I remember every detail of that day in perfect clarity. Luckily, I didn't take what she said too seriously. At least, not seriously enough to obey. I made it through 7th grade. BUT I have struggled with anorexia, bulimia, and EDNOS in different stages and different periods for almost eight years. At twelve years old, I was a healthy weight for my body type, lineage, and stage of puberty. Eating disorders have entirely changed that. Eating disorders have very nearly ruined my life. My third, and main point: The facts? I am 19 1/2 years old. I am now, as of my last weigh in, 211lbs (DDD breasts, mind you –took them a while to stop growing) I am 5'3" tall. I have not grown in height in 5 1/2 years. My weight fluctuates anywhere from 2-20 pounds in either direction during any given 2 week period and I CAN NOT keep weight off, no matter how hard I try the "healthy way" I have not forced myself to throw up in almost 6 months and that is my biggest eating disorder related victory in almost 8 years. I am constantly at war with myself and they tell me this mindset will never go away. They tell me that the inner battle between eating and life, or starvation and death will always rage on. I am not even 1/4 of the way through my life expectancy (81.3 years for women in the United States) and I am stuck with this. For more than 75% of my life I will deal with this mindset. With the knowledge that I have LITERALLY destroyed my body. The knowledge that the "healthy way" of losing weight never works for me. The knowledge that starvation kept me thin... The knowledge that water on an empty stomach feels just as satisfying as on my skin on a hot day. Never wanting to be hungry, but terrified to be full... I tried reaching out. I told people every time I lost weight. I told people I was sick. That my stomach always hurt. That I never had an appetite. In my own broken, twisted, messed up way, I tried to tell them that I was d y i n g and needed help. My friends congratulated me. Called me an inspiration. I went to the doctor and they ran dozens of tests but no one ever asked... "Are you eating?" And maybe that's stupid but if they'd asked I could have come clean. I tried to speak without being asked but this voice in my head screamed, "NO! If you tell them, they'll make us eat and then *gasp* then we will get FAT!!" Fat was the stuff of my nightmares. Fat was the adjective that kept me up at night when it should have been the pillowy noun that cushioned my body as I dreamed of regular things like kittens, and boys. It's been almost eight years, and I still cringe inside when my boyfriend L O V I N G L Y squeezes my love handles. It's been almost eight years and I still choose nuts over chocolate most days, and when I don't, that voice in my head screams. It's been almost eight years and I'm just learning not to correlate "beautiful" with "thin". It's been almost eight years and they say I'll probably go through another sixty three like this. Friends. My beautiful, wonderful, perfect people. Don't let that voice win. Don't listen when she tells you that fat is synonymous with ugly. Yes. I am fat. I am also sexy. Beautiful. Stunning. Cute. Soft. I am funny. I am smart. I am successful. I am me. Boys and girls alike. Whether you are tall and thin, or short and fat, or somewhere in between, or some kind of combination. You are wonderful. If you're struggling please talk to someone. Don't let that voice hold you captive. Get yourself out. If you don't have someone to talk to, find someone. Talk to me. Talk to a doctor. And if you can't convince yourself to talk to a person yet, then talk to your dog. Your cat. Your Guinea pig. Get yourself comfortable with the idea of getting it out. With saying it out loud. Find help. If you, or someone you know is struggling, there are so many resources. Www.nationaleatingdisorders.org Www.eatingdisorderhope.com If you're still here, I'm proud of you. I love you. Stay strong. -Ash

Okay, so I was definitely like "my first blog post on this blog CANT be some really heavy, personal story. That's not classy" But I'm not actually sure that I give a fuck. So my first actual post is coming soon. And I really hope I don't get s ton of hate Because really I'm just trying to make whatever little difference I can. Love you all❤️❤️