Bullying

Baby Beluga

~ gypsy116toast2001 ~ Leave a comment

I went to the zoo the other day, which by the way, is massive in terms of my healing. But anyway, I went to the zoo and I’m pretty sure that someone, a fellow zoo visitor, referred to me as a whale.

I posted this on Facebook awhile back…

This came up in both my memories and my sister’s. We talked about it, you know, haha weren’t we cute. Then she said something that surprised me. She said that my arms look so skinny that I look so small.
I am 15 here and 132lbs. How do I know that? The 132lbs part? Because I thought I was so fucking fat. Honestly, I can tell you how much I weigh in damn near any picture of me. I’m more likely to know my weight than my age. I have never been comfortable in my skin unless I weighed between 110 and 122(preferably not over 118).
I am currently obese. There are no pictures of me because I can not stand to look at myself. Not only am I overweight but I have severe diastasis recti, my abdominal muscles are separated, deformed and I look very pregnant. I have an understanding of why my body is the way it is currently. The diastasis recti was caused by a lack of energy, my body is unable to convert food into energy in the way that a body is meant to combined with a C-section that caused the muscle to be unable to move and kept them in their separated position. My body overcompensated to get my son here healthily. I am incredibly grateful for this.
Many people who suffer from mold illness gain a lot of weight and are unable to shed it. I forget the technicalities of what is happening in the body (though I can find articles that explain it). Mycotoxins store themselves in fatty tissue and the body basically convinces itself that it is starving to death in order to gain fat and prevent the mycotoxins from storing in the brain causing brain damage (this is why liposuction is a legit detox treatment for some people with mold illness). I am also grateful for this as well. There is no good reason that I was able to get my son here healthily or that I am even still alive except that my body is amazing and it did what it needed to in order to protect me and Eli. Miraculous. Yet, knowing this I still cannot stand to look at myself and going in public is hard. I’m filled with shame.
I am 15 in this picture and about to start dating the boy, who became the man, who is now my ex husband. The boy who referred to my stomach as squishy…pudgey.
I am 15 here and I’ve already lived through years of my mother hovering over me while I ate, making comments about how I didn’t want to end up fat like her.
I am 15 here and about a year away from anorexia and decades of disordered eating.
I am 15 here and 132lbs
I am 15 and my worth was not, is not, will never be determined by my weight or body shape…
But I didn’t know that.
We need to do better.

I absolutely believe that… That my worth, your worth, anybody’s worth, is not determined by the shape or size or anything else having to do with our bodies. And… I so badly do not want to be bothered by that comment… The one in which I was compared to a whale. I mean, the comment really is not a reflection of me but of the commenter. It says nothing of my character but a lot about his.

I want the comment to roll off of me like water, having no affect. I want it to be a non issue, unimportant but…It did affect me. It hurt. And honestly, I spent a good deal of time berating myself for that fact.

How dare I be concerned about something so insignificant when there are real problems to worry about? Things that affect everyone, not just myself. Most notably, in my mind at the moment, the environment… climate change… Mama Earth. I should be using my energy to figure out ways that I can change… That I can help (I’ve been using more sustainable/non toxic products more and more but that’s not enough!), not worrying over an insignificant… unimportant comment about my weight.

The more I thought about it though, the more I realized that it is important. It’s like I said in my Facebook post… We need to do better. It is important that we, all of us humans, grow up knowing our worth. Not just intellectually but in our bodies. It’s important that we know it to and through our bones. That it resonates in our thoughts and feelings, minds and hearts. That we are at home, at peace with ourselves. People who feel good, do good.

Conversely, people who feel bad are more likely to do bad or at least become complacent, not believing that they are significant enough to make a difference. Or like Mr Judgemental Commenter, to spread more of the same… Not seeing others as human, as deserving… seeing others as separate.

We’re not… separate… Not really. We are in this thing, this life together and just like we do all need to do better in the ways in which we treat our planet, we also need to do better in the ways we treat each other and ourselves. I’m not sure the two are mutually exclusive. I think they may actually be the same thing.

Judgment Day

~ gypsy116toast2001 ~ Leave a comment

I feel…. Fuck, I don’t know what I feel but it isn’t good.

I spent the day at my sister’s. A cousin of mine was going to be there with her children. The youngest two are near my son’s age. The older being six months older than my son and the younger a year and a half younger. The kids went downstairs to play, my son included, while the adults stayed upstairs. From the sound of things the other kids behavior wasn’t the kindest. They were hitting my son with balls, he did not like it.

My child prefers the company of adults and older children. This, I’m sure is at least in part due to it being what he’s used to. He was born right before the world shut down. He didn’t have any exposure to anyone outside of my family (me, his dad, my parents, sister and nieces) for about the first year and a half of his life. After that, his exposure has been limited. Illness doesn’t lend itself well to a lot of socialization.

His encounters with children his age have been few and he’s mostly either ignored the other children in favor of the adults in the situation or stayed mute while following the other child and letting them give him instruction.

I know that this is in part because I haven’t provided him with many opportunities to engage with children his age. I also know that it’s in part autism.

I wasn’t ever truly bullied at school growing up. I mostly stayed out of way, hidden. There were a couple of incidences with girls who were in my friend group (aka the other friends of my only actual friend) where they weren’t very nice but mostly behind my back. They just didn’t like me. I was weird. This was echoed in the time spent with my mom’s side of the family. I was quiet. I was awkward. I was the weird cousin and I wasn’t treated too kindly.

I’ve read enough experiences of other autistic people to know that this is how childhood goes for many of us. We’re treated unkindly at best, severely bullied at worst. It doesn’t matter what we do, mask, hide or actually be ourselves, other children see us as different… Not the same…weird.

This is the part where I don’t know how I feel, or I’m feeling a confusing mixed up jumble of things. If I had provided my son with more opportunities to socialize with children his age, would he be less awkward with them now? Would I even want him to be? I don’t want him to be anything other than his weird and wonderful self but… I also don’t want him to suffer unduly.

I don’t know. Discovering that I am autistic has helped me to realize many, many things about myself and my life. One of the most important being that a lot of the things that I like most about myself are because I’m autistic. I’ve spent so much time mutilating my sense of self, attempting to cut those parts of myself off in order to make myself more palatable to others. There’s nothing wrong with the way I was to begin with and I wish I had known that. There’s nothing wrong with my son. I wonder if the problem lies more in the way other children are socialized than the way my son has been…My son was anxious but he made his best attempt to join in and he got the weird kid treatment. Maybe we all need to look at the judgements we’re making and try our best not pass them down to our kids and talk to them about the unfair judgements being made around them in our society.