Sonder: Youth Mental Health Stories of Struggle & Strength | Page 73

My oldest friend
Cora Galpern
Kate told me I ate too much ice cream. Kate was my preschool
teacher. I was 3. My friends told me I asked for food too much. My
friends were not really my friends. I was 7. Mom told me that my
family was “big-boned” when I complained about being fat. Mom
was wrong. I was 10.
Marla told me I was a fat ass pregnant donkey. Marla was right.
I was 12.
For as long as I can remember, from the time I was 3 to the time
I was 12, food and my weight seemed to be at the heart of all my
problems. I recall thinking I couldn’t be normal because I was
fat and my constant dream to look like one of my stick figure
prepubescent friends. Later I would realize that these people
were not really my friends. Later I would decide that people
seeing my disgusting body was my punishment for being fat.
Every morning when I woke up, I would promise myself I would
eat less. It never worked. Until it did.
My so called best friend was depressed and cutting herself. My pants
were starting to feel snug. It was 6th grade. I didn’t really have any
friends and the drama I was sucked into that year was unlike anything
I’d ever experienced. Lots of the kids in the class really didn’t like me
and it wasn’t until later that I realized my best friend sat back watching
the whole thing happen and said nothing. I had no friends, hated my
body, and was depressed. I turned to cutting, and while I wasn’t ever
suicidal, I cut quite a bit for a couple weeks. Luckily for me, the cutting
seemed to be a phase, and one that I grew out of very quickly. I decided
this was not a good outlet for me, told my parents, and got “help.”
That’s when the therapy started to amp up. I’d seen 1 therapist before
but she didn’t do much. If anything, she’d worsened my problems.
Frantic, my parents took me to a therapist at my pediatrician’s office
immediately when I told them I had cut, and I distinctly remember
what she told me after I voiced to her my struggles with depression
and my body. “What? I’d KILL for your body.” If there was something
worse she could have said, I have yet to think of it, and after that
decided I was done with therapists; they only made things worse.
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