I Didn’t Want to be Prettier
Examining why I had weight loss surgery.
When I was a little girl — starting when I was maybe eight or nine years old — I would occasionally get this feeling. It’s hard describe. Sort of a squeezing in my chest, a twist in my guts. It felt gross.
And for some reason, I associated it with puberty.
This was what it felt like to be grown up, I decided. And I didn’t want anything to do with it.
I didn’t start my period until the summer I was fifteen, and I think that it’s possible that I held it off by sheer will power. I didn’t want my period. I didn’t want boobs. I didn’t want anything to do with not being a kid. At all.
Looking back, I can see that the physical feeling I equated with growing up was a direct response to what was happening to my body at the time.
