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Our mission: to love ourselves, every last inch! To support others, help build positive self esteem! This is The Body Peace Revolution!

This is a place of encouragement, a place to talk about body image, a place for feeling beautiful. No matter what you look like, what color, what gender, what size or however many "flaws", healthy, not healthy, working on it, we are all human, we all deserve to be happy, we all deserve to love ourselves. With this blog you will see all kinds of REAL bodies, REAL people, REAL stories.

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***TRIGGER WARNING - SELF HARM, SELF HATE***

People don’t realize the effect they have on their peers. Whether it is in a school setting or on the street. I’ve been bullied most of my life due to weight issues and you know what? The effects of said bullying don’t go away.  It’s been about thirteen years since the first comment that was said about my weight. I still remember the class room, what grade I was in, how old I was and who said it. That’s how significant hurtful words are.  And as time progressed, incidents such as that occurred more frequently. It got to a point where I couldn’t even walk through the halls or go into a class room without someone saying something cruel or degrading.  And I went to catholic school then! So much for loving thy neighbor right?  I spent most of my young academic career in the nurse’s office, curled up on a cot and quietly cry to myself. Fifth grade was the first time I began to entertain suicidal thoughts. What would happen if I just walked out in to traffic. What if I stayed under water just a little longer until I couldn’t breathe?  At one point I had a well thought out plan of drinking bleach. It was so bad that I didn’t care how painful it would be, I just wanted it to end, and death seemed like the only option. I didn’t attempt it, I couldn’t even get out of bed. I spent the greater part of fifth grade incapacitated, in my bed in a daze. I cried so much I didn’t have tears left. I didn’t eat. I slept for days at a time. My parents had to force feed me toast with jelly because I didn’t want to eat anything. I think I missed 60 days of school that year. And while I was absent, a girl who was in my class started a rumor that I was “crazy” and that’s why I didn’t come to school. I think someone caught wind that I was seeing a psychiatrist and that’s what set her off. I was put on Prozac at age ten. I started dabbling in self mutilation as a result of bullying and distress in 6th grade, but it didn’t become a significant problem until 8th grade. I can remember sitting in science class, poking and scratching myself with one of those metal compass things you use to draw circles. That was the first time I had ever intentionally hurt myself. I didn’t really start doing it again until one incident in 8th grade when I was hiding behind the stage in the auditorium, and I was scraping my arm raw with a compact mirror. I also used to scratch myself with safety pins on the bus.

                After being pulled out of New York and moving to florida with my family, everything started to turn to shit. I was hospitalized my first semester of high school for threatening to kill myself and divulging my use of self injury as a coping skill. I was put on a 72 hour old in an adolescent psych ward. After I was released, I chopped all my hair off, got my nose pierced and didn’t give a fuck what anyone said, or so I thought. The ridicule started again and I fell right back into a hole.  I starting cutting myself daily on my legs, so no one could see. But it finally got to a point further down the road, that I didn’t care if people saw. I was that apathetic and indifferent. I went to school with cuts on my arm, but only hid it when I carved words or sayings. I can remember showing a girl in the drama room where I carved “FAT” and “UGLY”  into my arm. My anxiety level was off the chart, and again, I was always in the nurse’s office. I began to miss school again, and the people who cared began to worry where I was. I would miss school for a week at a time, and come back as if nothing happened. I finally accepted that there were people who wanted to be my friends and I stopped pushing them away. Things got better, and I started to ignore being made fun of.  I stopped cutting for a year and a half and graduated high school.

                But at that year and a half mark, I got set off again. People were saying things right in front of me about how fat I was and that I was a “fat fuck”. This wasn’t even in school, this was in public. I can remember people making fun of me in the car at stop lights, in grocery stores, at restaurants. I couldn’t escape it. So I resorted to staying home most of the time and reading. But all that alone time proved to be dangerous, because one night, I was thinking too much and I slipped up and made the first cut in a long time. One became two, became three until I had 15. I periodically would stop for a few months at a time but it always came back to me and the razorblade. Even now, I go to bars with friends, and I hear people laughing at me, I hear the “fat ass” remarks all the time.

I don’t know where I’m going with this, but I hope it makes at least one of you understand, bullying is not okay. It hurts, and it will always hurt. Whether it be for weight, looks, orientation or whatever the case may be. I just want you all to feel beautiful, because you are. I want to feel beautiful, because deep down I know I am. I just need to accept it. Don’t let anyone make you feel inferior.  Embrace who you are. Because YOU are enough.

Always,

Alaina

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