quit being a quitter

Spent the weekend camping in the redwoods and exploring the foggy coastline.

Left: August 2012 - 109lbs Right: April 2016 - 126lbs

On the left, I was barely eating, always crying and getting headaches, and forever trying to see how much smaller I could look the next day. I was uneducated on what “healthy” meant for my body.

On the right, I’m learning what it means to love my body as my home. I feed it what it needs to thrive (lots of ice cream), and I’m teaching it how to do anything and everything I possibly can.

if you tell someone you don’t want to be touched somewhere (or any other kind of sexual act) and they still keep trying to or even do it, they don’t care about you: run.

if you can only hold their attention by talking about sexual stuff, they don’t care about you

if they act annoyed/angry/distant/ignore you when you deny them sex, they don’t care about you: run.

Who alway got in trouble? Me.

They would call my mother and she always came in and lectures my teachers and threatened to sue for making her miss work and treating me poorly.

She always taught my brothers to respect women. The only fights my brothers ever got in was defending women from someone else.

So naturally, I end up in the principal’s office, refusing to apologize. 

“He shouldn’t have put his hands on me and I wouldn’t have hit him!” That’s the only thing I was saying.

These people had the unfortunate luck of catching my dad at home, instead of my mom. So he comes fucking sauntering in there, like he’s Clint fucking Eastwood in some western movie and looks at me. 

“Melissa, did you punch him?” 

“Yes.” I said. 

“Why?” 

“Because he snapped my bra strap.” 

And he turns his squinty eyed glare to the principal and says, “You’re telling me my daughter is in trouble because that squirrely looking kid put his hands on her and she chose to defend herself? That’s what you are saying to me.” 

“Well, sir-” The man kind of stuttered because my dad is kind of intimidating in the quiet sort of way that kind of whispers in the back of your mind that this person could be dangerous. “Melissa did make it physical.” 

“No. That kid put his hands on my daughter. Are you saying my daughter cannot defend herself when some boy decides to put hands on her? Is that what you are teaching my girl?”