Nasty Shit People Have Said to Me | Body Parts
Part I of IV
It’s funny how some of the things said to us — in malice, or in passing — tend to stay with us, collected in this sort of everlasting arsenal of darkness, second-guessing, and insecurity. I believe that over time, we integrate all these separate things said by separate people into one inner voice: the inner critic — or, as I like to call it, the inner demonic presence that sabotages all things good and makes you feel like shit. This voice can be very loud, and very dangerous — especially if it’s not mitigated and put in its rightful place.
Recently, I was told something quite offensive and for the first time, I was able to accept it with distance. I realized that it was “their shit, not my shit.” It was more about the person who was saying it to me, and their insecurities, rather than about me and the aspect of me they were commenting on. Still, you can be aware the fire isn’t meant for you, but that doesn’t stop you from getting burned by the flames.
The experience of processing this insulting statement got me thinking — what can I do with this negative statement that was thrown at me and just left there to fester? I decided, rather than continuing to collect and process these random weaponized phrases all on my own — I would put them out into the light of day, and let them go. So, I’m taking stock; making an “insult inventory,” if you will.
Some of these are childish comments that managed to stick with me over the years, or just really impacted me at the time. Some are nasty, some are just plain weird things that made me uncomfortable AF. Others are deeper wounds, said by people I cared about or were otherwise close to me. What I’m doing here in making this inventory, is creating a collage of myself as it’s been reflected to me by a select group of people: the ill-wishers, the haters, or the ignorant ones who just didn’t realize they were saying something hurtful. I understand this does give them some form of power and significance, but I believe proper acnowledgement is needed for transformation to take place.
I’m writing this not so that I can dwell on the past, but rather so that I can release it.
These negative, weaponized words have become my anchors, my weak points, my soft spots. And it’s time for me to sail on and leave them where they belong, in the depth of the ocean. So I release them, and I release the people who stumbled across my life path, choosing (usually for reasons unknown to me) to offload these statements and direct them towards me, in effect making them into proverbial ‘verbal postcards’ for which I could forever remember them by. Well, there are some postcards we just don’t wish to hang on our fridge.
Consider this piece a big “X” across these postcards, along with the words “addressee not found; please return to sender.”
Note: I also won’t be attributing these lovely citations to the names of the people they came from — simply because they don’t deserve that kind of power. The purpose here is for all these thoughtless, ignorant, and hurtful comments to die in this piece, not to keep feeding them in moments of insecurity or questioning self-worth.
So, here’s a compilation of nasty shit people have said to or about me — on the topic of my body.
“You have Dumbo ears! Hey, Dumbo! Dumbo!” — Random kid who sat somewhere near me on the school bus every day in grade school.
Once this kid realized how much it affected me to hear this, he pressed on even more. This was the way I was greeted and called to every day for the remainder of the school year. I blindly took his words at face value and allowed them to foster an insecurity about ever wearing my hair up in a ponytail (which I simply just didn’t do, until high school) or even tucking my hair behind my ears. In high school, I still believed the story he had told me: that I had oversize, floppy ears that were super unsightly — there was just a really hot summer and I stopped giving a fuck. Strangely enough, at that point I never heard anything about my ears — even though I was totally on guard and expecting to.
By the way, while Dumbo was super insecure about his big, floppy ears at first — they ended up turning into his greatest attribute: they made it possible for him to fly. And either way, isn’t he fucking cute?
“You have elf ears!” — Honestly, I don’t even remember who the fuck said this to me, but I presume it was in high school once I let my ears finally see the light of day again.
I’m not really sure why people decided to press on with this ear thing. Also, they should probably have gotten their stories straight — clearly Dumbo and elves have totally two different “ear-aesthetics.” (I should know, there was a time I considered myself an expert in this matter.) And it’s funny how me opening with two comments about my ears being allegedly ‘misshapen’ is already making me feel insecure that I’m creating an image in your head of some weird floppy-eared monster-like caricature when in reality, I’m just a normal fucking person, full of imperfections and flaws — strangely enough, the matter of my ears not being one of them.
Anyway, once I hit university and in an ultimate “fuck it” move, I lopped off all my hair and went super short, leaving my ears totally exposed and just out there in the world. Dumbo? Elf? I don’t give a fuck anymore; and I haven’t heard a peep about my ears since — probably because they’re actually quite normal, after all.
“God, your neck is so thin.” — The mom of a friend of mine; they lived in the same apartment we did in Nepean, so we were also ‘neighbours.’ I was about 10 years old, and I rememeber sitting atop a hill in the grass as she kind of really creepishly just stared at my neck for an overly uncomfortable amount of time, repeating that sentence over and over again.
“Aw, you have a little tummy! Look at that tummy! I love your tummy!” [tone: patronizing and infantilizing AF] — An ex-boyfriend, who loved to say this at the most inappropriate moments and enjoyed making me squirm with discomfort when he would run his hand over my tummy and talk ‘to’ it like there was a baby in there. Dude, lay off my fucking tummy. Note: This was also repeated in the form of a classic ‘neg’ by some other dude who was trying to fuck me — he thought pointing out that I had a little extra fat on my tummy WHILE I WAS SITTING would be a good way to go.
“Your eyes are so big.” — An adult, who was staring very deep into my eyes for an extremely awkward length of time while I, a child, had no idea how to respond to this weird ‘observation.’ I don’t know, is this a compliment? Are you trying to hint that I may be some sort of alien? It’s very meta to be in a conversational exchange with someone who is looking into your eyes (because that’s what’s socially acceptable when talking to someone) but also commenting on them at the same time, in this weird trance state. It’s kind of like when someone tells you not to imagine a pink elephant, and then you do, and then in your thoughts, you become aware of how you’re thinking.
“You look great.” — Said while staring intently at my stomach, legs, and hips, by a gym-obsessed ex-boyfriend (who was made entirely of muscle thanks to a diet chock full of steroids and denial). On the surface-level, this may sound like a compliment, but allow me to provide you with some context here. We met at the gym (obviously, given the keywords ‘muscle,’ ‘steroids,’ and ‘gym-obsessed.’) Although we were involved, he always told me two things: one, he would never “fall in love” with me. Two, I was fat and needed to “work on some things.” Yes, he did call me fat — and he used the term loosely and freely on a very regular basis. He activated my obsession with going to the gym every fucking night, and a super restrictive eating disorder, probably body dysmorphia, and who knows what else. I was always ‘fat’ to him. Anytime he touched me, it wasn’t out of love or care or gentleness, it was on a search for places that needed ‘work.’
One day, I had severe food poisoning and projectile vomited for an entire 10 hours. I couldn’t eat for at least 48 hours. I lost a lot of weight because of that two-day stint, and I was already borderline underweight — at 5 foot 9, weighing under 120 pounds. You could see my ribcage through my skin on the regular; this day, I was particularly pale and sickly looking given the fact I hadn’t been able to keep anything down for days. But, I still went to the gym, which is where he saw me and finally paid me “the ultimate compliment.” It was then that I realized the only time I’ll ever be ‘acceptable’ in his eyes is after a serious case of food poisoning, not eating, and puking up bile for hours. Not exactly romantic, realistic, or healthy is it?
“You know, when I first met you and we started seeing each other, I wasn’t sure about you. I wasn’t sure about… your hips. They’re so wide; I didn’t think I would… like them, I was afraid of them. I didn’t think I could handle them.” — An ex-boyfriend, trying to “get me back,” also after I had confessed to him that I had issues with accepting my body and was hyper-critical of pretty much all of it.
There’s also this one — it’s not a quote, it’s just a look — but it says more than half the quotes I’ve put up here so far:
An ex-boyfriend of mine took me for pizza to meet his buddies once. He wanted to “show me off.” He thought the great way to do that would be to tell one of them that I was actually a call girl, and that I would “go with him” somewhere if he wanted. Before I even had a chance to react, the friend looked me up and down (well, just my body — he didn’t dare look into my eyes I suppose, either that or my face or identity just weren’t important) and nodded “yes.” I corrected him, he laughed it off in this weird, stiff, sexually repressed kind of way— but I’ll never forget the disgusting look on his face when he was “sizing me up” and doing a cost-benefit analysis in light of the potential transaction, and the disgusting way my ex made me feel with that joke.
“Are you ever planning on growing your hair out? You should. You look like a man with it short like this.” — Basically half the men who have ever tried to get with me. Literally, half think this approach will work. I mean, if you want to fuck a dude, then by all means, but…
See: pic of me above for reference. Also see: neg (PUA term).
Related to the above, but so much more precise:
“I couldn’t fuck you again because when I had you from behind, it felt like I was fucking a boy because of your shaved sides. And once I made that mental connection, I just couldn’t do it anymore.” — This is even more hilarious, because this was said from a guy who couldn’t last longer than 3 seconds, ever, and always either prefaced or followed it up with, “omg, I just couldn’t control myself, you’re so sexy.”
The following two are just subtle actions that speak on a metaphorical level:
An ex of mine used to get into a trance rubbing this small beauty mark I have on my left arm, just while we’d be sitting watching a show or chilling. It would make me feel so fucking uncomfortable, and he would just rub it repeatedly, in a tiny circular motion, until eventually it would feel raw and I would just jump up and tell him to fucking stop. Not only was it annoying AF, but it communicated something much bigger: “I like you, a lot. Enough to date you and be intimate with you. But I’m going to find one imperfection and focus all of my attention on it in random moments and make you super aware of its existence, and make you super uncomfortable about it.” Yeah, thanks. I’ll pass on that cake.
Once, I was standing with two guys who also happened to be cousins. I had a crush on one of them, the other had a crush on me but I wasn’t into it. I was wearing a sleeveless jumper. I was talking, and I don’t remember about what — but at some point in the conversation, I notice the object of my affection slowly raising his arm towards me. I stop talking, all 6 of our eyes follow his hand as it slowly keeps moving towards me. He puts out his thumb and index finger, and with them, he pinches a 0.5 cm-wide piece of skin that was admittedly not super toned, directly above my chest — right where the top of my jumper met my armpit. I think no matter how fit you are, you’ll always have a piece of skin there that can be pinched. Either way, here’s what it said, at least to me: “I get that you’re talking, but I’m not really listening to what you’re saying. Instead, I’d rather point out that you have a piece of flab at your armpit and while doing so, completely stop all flow of conversation and also draw attention to this part of you to anyone else who is in the general vicinity.” He thought it was funny. My opinion differed. The third guy felt awkward AF.
My first boyfriend was a really hard one to get rid of once we broke up. The process involved multiple police reports, dramatic public exchanges, him parking his car and camping outside my house for hours on end, him egging my house, him following me, death threats, and threats of suicide (if I didn’t take him back). When all those things didn’t work, he somehow gained access to a close friend of mine’s campus email address, and wrote an email addressed to me. In the email, he mentioned that I had a Goldschlager ass and that it was full of cellulite, that nobody would want to touch me with a 10-foot pole, that I’m a degenerate who does drugs all the time and is hopped up on ecstasy, and some other lovely things. While in retrospect, I can put all this in its rightful place and it all seems ridiculous — when you’re in the middle of it, it’s really hard not to be hurt and start googling wtf Goldschlager even is.
Disclaimer: this is not a comprehensive list — by any means — it’s just the things that have really stuck.
So, care to entertain why I might have body issues and be hyper-critical of the skin I’m in? How strange, I mean, that idea must have come out of absolutely nowhere! Certainly not from a conglomeration of people who viewed me as a sexual object my whole sexual life (and even before that) and talked about me while looking at me as though I was made up of only car parts.
Thank you to all the lovely people who contributed to this post — thanks to you, this post is possible.
Oh, and fuck you. In the nicest way possible, of course. Bye.
