Dear girl who thinks she takes up too much space

I do not know your name and I do not know exactly what was said. But I know the arithmetic you are doing, because I did it too, and I would like to interrupt it if I can.

You are working out where to sit so that fewer people see you walk. You are deciding what to eat in front of others and what to eat later. You are choosing what to wear based on what will attract the least comment, which is a completely different question from what you like. You are learning to laugh first, so that the joke is yours and lands more softly.

That is a lot of work. I want you to notice that it is work, because nobody told me, and I did it for years thinking it was just what being me involved.

What is actually happening

Someone is being cruel to you, and they are calling it something else. Honesty, probably. Or concern. Or just a joke, and you should not be so sensitive.

It is not any of those things. Honesty does not require an audience. Concern does not repeat itself in front of other people. And a joke that only one person is enjoying is not a joke; it is something else wearing a joke’s clothes.

Their cruelty is information about them. It has never once been information about you.

Nobody has ever been humiliated into health, and nobody was ever mocked into becoming happy.

Things that are not true

That your life starts when your body changes.

That you have to earn things other girls simply get.

That being liked is something you must be grateful for rather than something you are entitled to.

That if you were just more disciplined you would be a different person, and that the person you would become would be more deserving than the one who exists now.

None of it. Not one.

On being told it is for your own good

Someone may have told you that the comments are meant to help. That if it stings, that is the point, and the sting is what will make you change.

It is not true, and you do not have to take my word for it — look at whether it is working. Has being made to feel terrible about your body ever, once, made you feel more like taking care of it? Or has it made you want to hide, eat somewhere nobody can see, and avoid the very places where being active happens?

You already know the answer. Shame makes people hide. That is the only thing it reliably does.

The thing about being funny first

A lot of us learn to make the joke before anyone else can. It works, in the short term — it takes the weapon out of their hands and gets a laugh, and being laughed with is so much better than being laughed at that it feels like winning.

I did it for years and I want to be honest about the cost, because nobody told me.

You end up agreeing with them out loud, repeatedly, in public. You provide the material. And after long enough you cannot always remember which parts you actually believe and which parts were a defence you built at fourteen and never took down.

Be funny. You may well be genuinely funny. Just try not to be funny about that.

What I wish I had done

Stayed in more photographs. I am serious about this one. There are years of my life I cannot look at because I removed myself from them in advance, and I cannot get them back.

Told an adult. Not to get anyone in trouble — just so that someone else knew, because carrying it alone is what let it grow. A parent, a guardian, a teacher, an aunt, anyone you trust. If the first person does not take it seriously, try a second. That is not being dramatic. That is a reasonable thing to do when something is hurting you every day.

And if any of this has got heavier than unhappiness — if it has moved into how you eat, or how you feel about being here — please tell an adult you trust and let them help you find someone qualified. That is not weakness. It is the same as showing someone a cut.

One more thing

You are not too much. You are not behind. You are not a rough draft of somebody better who will arrive later.

The room you are standing in is yours to stand in. You do not have to earn it, you do not have to apologise for it, and you do not have to wait.

It took me until my thirties to believe that. I am writing it down in the hope that it reaches you a great deal sooner.