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This is the money Marge. Reblog for good fortune

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Yung Waitloz (2012 me’s rapper name)

(If you’d like to read this off my wix blog here’s the link: https://erikatriesall.wixsite.com/tlhodia)

If you get triggered by topics concerning body image and weight loss then proceed with caution or don’t proceed at all.

I probably discuss way too much personal stuff online, but hey, who doesn’t appreciate a little oversharing every once in a while?

I have never been skinny or slim, let’s start there. Sure, I was a tiny baby, but that was about it. I have always been bigger than a lot of my classmates and even now I’m in no way built like a Victoria’s Secret model. Also, keep in mind that I’ve never been clinically obese or severely overweight. Got it? Cool.

Enter My Mom. She has been on my case to lose weight for as long as I remember. I admit, there were times when I was particularly chonky, but that’s beside the point. I remember being 8-9 years old when she spent over 15 minutes ridiculing and calling me out on how my spandex gym tights made noises as my thighs rubbed together during our uphill walk around the residential estate. She was also and still is, fond of pinching my “love-handles” (in quotes because if I remember “You can’t even call them love handles because you have nobody loving you.”),  with her long-ass, sharp nails whenever they appeared over the waistband of my pants.

(I’m not bitter or anything)

Essentially, 8-year-old me was told to lose weight enough times to try. I ate the food they gave me, and only what they gave me, and went on walks occasionally with My Mom (which I despised because I really didn’t leave the comfort of my room to be berated by my birth giver). I even started taking netball more seriously and started athletics training. What I also started doing was paying close attention to the bodies of girls around me and playing spot the difference. Not too long afterwards I learned to hate clothes shopping and hide in group photos. When I look through photo albums and my parent’s phone galleries now, it’s plain to see that I was an Olympic grade camera dodger.

Fast forward a few years. Now I’m 11-12 years old. I’ve grown taller and older, so my weight distribution has changed, but I’m still not skinny. My Mom is still on me to lose weight, even more so now that I’m older and maturing into “womanhood” because apparently, it is a crime to wear pants only a few sizes smaller than your mother of similar body structure and lesser height. Now that I’m older and more educated, I’ve realized that even though I was playing a sport and jogging and going for aerobics with my mom occasionally, I won’t get skinny unless I change my diet. In fact, there was a time when some government nurses came to do regional health checks at school and some data included body weight (there was a crowd around me when it was my turn to hop on the scale. The boys laughed, I went to the bathroom and cried. But it’s all good). The nurses then asked me questions about stuff like the bread we had at home, if I ate junk food or added sugar, stuff like that. That’s when it clicked. It clicked real hard.

A typical school lunch packed by My Mom comprised a hotdog/ham sandwich/homemade burger, a packet of chips/crisps and a juice box or Tropica when she was feeling generous. Which is what my brothers and a lot of my friends were packing to school with no problems: but I’m not built like those people so I can’t eat like them, right? The lunch had to go. And go it did. And so did pretty much all my other regular meals.

If My Mom was distracted with getting ready for work, I’d ditch breakfast and lie about it, then hop onto the school bus. Getting rid of the stuff in my lunchbox wasn’t too difficult to do because I had friends who were happy to help. This meant that for the first 12 hours of the day all I had was a juice box or nothing at all. It worked. My Mom noticed and complimented my improved physique along with a handful of relatives. But was I skinny? Not even.

Then came the Google searches. “How to lose weight quickly” “How to get skinny” “How to get a thigh gap” “How to lose thigh fat fast” Just to name a few.

That’s when I discovered the infamous pro-anorexia community. Or should I say that’s when they found me? I’m not too sure.

Over the school holidays, I started with the so-called “K-pop” diets and did YouTube workouts every night with more consistency than my prayer life. Two boiled eggs for breakfast, some milk for lunch (which was disastrous because apparently, I’m lactose intolerant), and for dinner… water, with or without lemon or tea. It really depended on the day. Not that hard to get away with, really. When the fat girl says they’re not hungry, who are you to force them?

But I couldn’t lose weight fast enough. Sure, slowly killing myself was working, but was I skinny? Nah.

So, I turned to “thinspo” and “pretty girl diet” challenges and "pro-ana" coaches to guide me. (If you're somebody who thinks it's okay to coax children into dangerous eating disorders and potentially death, you deserve a chair. But make it electric. Periodt.) My stomach was flattening, and my pants came on a lot easier, but the truth was I was utterly miserable. Getting skinny was all I thought about. And I’m not talking about Victoria’s Secret model skinny, I got to a point where I was jealous of the science lab skeleton, no jokes. Food wasn’t food anymore; it was just numbers and macros. I was always dizzy and cranky and my hair was falling out and even though I had done it for long enough to overcome the hunger pangs, there was a new pain, one that manifested in my chest and couldn’t be treated with sleep or Panado. I was the only one on holiday for three months, so nobody noticed.

I was twelve when I first tried to off myself with prescription drugs. All because I couldn’t be skinny and in my head that meant I couldn’t be pretty, or loved, or befriended. I woke up after a 8-hour “nap” to find that nothing had changed.

Why am I exposing myself by telling this story?

If you’re a parent or sibling or anyone who cares for a child who you think needs to lose weight for whatever reason (hopefully for health-related reasons, not purely aesthetics), please do not leave them to their own devices. They will search for authoritative guidance elsewhere, and the wrong people may find them. People who prescribe oxygen as a meal plan and perpetuate the notion that if you can pinch at your flesh, then you are ugly and will remain ugly until you are feather-light. Despite being one of the smartest kids in my grade, I still fell for it. (Update: I’m still not skinny. I probably only fucked up my metabolism and lost hair. -100/10, would not recommend to my worst enemy.)

Good news is at some point I got sick and tired of feeling the way I did. My suicide attempt failed miserably but instead of trying again, I uninstalled all my calorie counter and fitness apps, tossed all my magazines in the trash and talked to my mom and made it a point to talk to friends more, especially those who understood in some way or another. The Body Positivity movement was rising, and that helped a lot. Big ups to all the lovely people on YouTube who post videos on #recovery.

But experiences like this don’t just go away. You don’t forget and move on. I still have relapses, I still feel insurmountable guilt after eating, I still feel like I would rather eat baked rat than gain weight, I still go through binge-restrict cycles. All stemming from events that happened over 8 years ago.

My Mom had some level of good intention, I won't disregard that. People on her side of the family suffer from chronic illnesses that can all be prevented if not managed better through proper diet and exercise and she doesn't want her kids developing high blood pressure at age 13. Fine, I get it. But damn.

If you can avoid doing this to yourself or someone impressionable in your life, please do. Model healthy behaviours for your kids to adopt and talk health; not snatched waistlines, not thigh gaps nor scale readings. Teach your kids not to base the entirety of their worth on their appearance. And do not, under any circumstances, body shame them.

Please?

Once again, a lot of what is here is based on personal experience and opinion (‘coz it’s my blog, duh’). If you have separate ideas or any disagreements, bring them up in the comments or email me. I love a good debate.

Also, if you currently relate to anything mentioned in this post, take this as your sign to get better. Trust me, you're worth it.

xoxo

Erika

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Bigfoot in Bots

(If you’d like to read this off my wix blog here’s the link:https://erikatriesall.wixsite.com/tlhodia)

I remember a friend advising me to get my prom shoes from Options and thinking, “yeah sure, let me just saw my toes off real quick,” because there is no way I could fit in anything there otherwise.

Hi, I’m Erika. And as you may have guessed by now, I have large feet.

No, I do not wear size 13 Nikes (men’s size 13 Nikes) but by comparison to most people in my country, at a size 9.5/10 UK, I’m substantially above average. Retailers and boutiques here stock shoe sizes from 1 to either 6 or 7 and the larger the size, the harder it is to find it. An 8 in the women’s section is a rarity and a 9 that isn’t sneakers or granny shoes? Get down on your knees and sing hallelujah because that’s a miracle. Size 10 is unheard of. It doesn’t help that there are no specialist stores for women’s shoes here either.

Although it’s easier to shop for shoes if you’re a guy (because the assumption is that because you are a man, you have larger feet than the average woman), if you are a male with a foot above size 9, welcome to the struggle circle, take a seat, because you too, will find it hard to find sizes here. My dad, who’s around size 11, like me, finds it easier to shop abroad. Unfortunately, my parents do not believe in shopping for clothing and accessories online.

I don’t blame these stores, because it’s a thing of supply and demand. If a lot of the population has tiny feet, then why waste cash on stocking large sizes? It’s all about money, and if everyone else is satisfied and buying, then they don’t really need mine. So, as you’d expect, I own a lot of sneakers from the men’s section or unisex, and all my nice-fitting girly shoes are likely imported (which I don't own a lot of because I need to be present at all times to try the shoes on and uh, trips are expensive.).  When I walk into a shoe store, I don’t browse until I ask a clerk what their maximum size in stock is. And that’s when I’m shopping in a place like South Africa because I’ve given up on shoe shopping in Botswana. I just don’t want to waste anybody’s time.

Shoe shopping used to be an absolute nightmare for me and even though there have been improvements in the local market, and I’ve gotten better at it with age, it’s still a frustrating experience. I kid you not; I used to shed tears while shopping as a nana. In my young girl’s brain, being told “oh, we don’t have your size” was on the list of the top 5 worst types of rejection. A lot of store clerks were nice enough to check in the back for a shoe I really liked but some would widen their eyes do the loud “*gasp* So big?! Ah! Men’s section is that side”.

That hurt like a bitch.

About two years ago we had a family trip to Kenya (which is where my dad is from, btw) and my dad had promised me I could get my prom heels in advance from there as well as other stuff because his sisters had larger feet than me growing up and they managed to get shoes with little difficulty. So our assumption was that Kenyan women have larger feet on average than those in Botswana. Yeah no, I still struggled. 4 whole shopping malls in one day and nothing. At my grown age, by mall number 3 I was blinking back tears and I just wanted to go back to the hotel and not waste any more of everyone's time. I felt played and betrayed.

My feet were one of my first insecurities and they’ve been a struggle to keep up with all my life. I just remember going from having normal feet for my age, to fitting very snug in my mom’s high heel shoes to only wearing men’s sneakers. In what felt like a minute.

And as a growing kid I probably pinched a lot on my parent's wallets because I'd outgrow a new pair of shoes in like three months. Oops.

I also remember getting teased quite a bit in primary school too, especially by boys. “Bigfoot” was iconic, I sort of fit all the criteria by being large footed and hairy “like a Sasquatch”. It didn’t help that at over 5"2 I was taller and bigger than a lot of my classmates. At the time it’d get to me so much because my feet were a new development that kept developing and as a kid, the last thing I wanted was to be registered as an anomaly or a freak. Unlike body hair or acne, there’s nothing you can really do about your height or the size of your feet and that fact devastated me. I don’t think any young girl wants to hear their crush referring to them as a gorilla. Just rip out my self-esteem and toss it in the trash on the way out, why don’t you?

Looking back, I think I intimidated a lot of boys in my classes, especially those who believed that there’s a direct correlation between shoe and penis size. (*puts foot next to mine*, “Bro if you were a dude you’d be packing!”… thanks, I guess?) They were probably mad that I was showing more “masculine” physical traits than them- but to be honest they were all little bitches. And that’s on fragile masculinity. jkjkjk... or am I?

Now I’m older and a lot more mature, so I’ve learned to accept my “Sasquatch” feet. I've also learned that they aren’t abnormal at all and in a lot of other countries I’d be able to go shoe shopping freely. As a matter of fact, as a species our feet are growing bigger with each decade on average. Unlike your weight or your haircut, you can’t change your bone structure to give you smaller feet.

Go ahead, tell those nanas that they’re just mad that you’d be packing shmeat if you were a guy. Flex on the girls who think shopping for shoes in the children's section at 16 is a personality trait. Wear those boots; trust me, you don’t look like a clown. Embrace the big feet. Take care of them. Sure, you slap the road when you walk but hey, you get places faster so that’s dope. Your feet don't define your femininity, no matter how many people will try to make you think so.

What’s your odd experience with shoe shopping/ big feet? We’d love to hear. Like, comment and follow for more stuff like this

xoxo

Erika

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“The Grey Mood

Emptiness, that's what it is. Nothingness.

You can't shake it. It shrouds you in its darkness and smothers you until you're just barely breathing. It comes and goes in waves. No warnings, no time to brace for impact. And just when you think it's gone, it pounces on you and engulfs you all over again. It's always two steps behind, dragging behind you like a train of a dress. Lurking. Waiting.”

-an excerpt from “The Yellow Mood”