I didn't need to be told that :(

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I was just in the utility room, searching for a container of ramen noodles to eat. I decided on some turkey bites instead. As I was bending over the bag rummaging around, my mother came out to get something from the fridge and made a noise of surprise; I knew she hadn't expected to find me there. "Oh!" she exclaimed, and I was vaguely amused, as I usually am when I accidentally startle her. Then she said, "Your big butt startled me! I didn't know what it was!"

Then my mood instantly deflated. I feigned a small laugh and came back to my room and now even though I'm still hungry I have no appetite. -_-

...

I know she meant nothing cruel by it. In fact I think this is the first time I've ever heard her mention that part of my anatomy. But it's the one (though certainly not the only) part of my anatomy that has caused me the most shame most of my life, and this is just another confirmation that it's definitely not in my head.

It might go way back to when I was a kid and was standing in the kitchen in my bathing suit and my older brother exclaimed, "Stop sticking your butt out like that!" I hadn't been sticking my butt out at all, I was just standing normally.

I stopped wearing bathing suits very, very long ago. -_- In fact I don't even get fully wet in front of others, do not ever want to show off my figure (even if I could tolerate form-fitting clothes nowadays).

In elementary school they taught us about scoliosis and called in a professional who examined all our spines. Even way back then, I felt there was something wrong with mine; I had learned about swayback, or "(hyper)lordosis," I can no longer remember how since I was so very young, but I asked the examiner about it. Did I have lordosis? She gave me a rather critical look and said my spine was fine, no abnormal curvatures of any sort, and I was sent on my way.

To this day I still believe she was wrong. Even before I was overweight, my posture was mocked. I looked up "lordosis" on Google a while back and it looks like my spine. Don't know why they missed it.

Then the shame was bolstered in junior high when one of the bullies fluttered his fingers and pranced around with his behind sticking out, telling me that was how I walked, like I had a stick up my butt.

Later on we were both in a sort of school-sponsored, experimental support group, and he turned out to be a quite friendly person when we were on good terms, so bygones were bygones, though the comment stuck with me all these years.

Then as a young adult I went on a family trip down south, and on a farm I bent to pet some pygmy goats, at the unfortunate moment that someone decided to take a picture of me. (I avoid cameras like the plague.) Of course, I was captured from the rear, bending over. In the photo I could not BELIEVE just how HUGE my butt was! I mean, I knew it was big, but in a photographic image, removed from just looking in the mirror, it didn't even seem real, didn't even look like me. I had the same experience when we had a wildlife cam on our porch and it would occasionally capture me as I went out to feed the birds. I was so horrified by my appearance in those images--my pasty high-foreheaded grouchy face, but especially my enormous behind--that I separated them from the rest of the images and hid them away in a subfolder where nobody would ever see them. (The only reason I kept them at all was my OCD with saving pictures.)

I know I'm ugly and fat but to see it in pictures puts it in a whole new, and highly unpleasant, light. Is that how other people really see me? I have to make myself not think of this else I'd never be able to leave the house.

Then on the forum I used to hang out on before this, there was a thread where some users were attempting to provide encouragement to women who feel their behinds are too big, and they even posted pictures of women with large behinds to prove they could be attractive. What do you know? They were CURVY but they weren't HUGE like mine is. Just disgustingly, abnormally huge. And nowadays the potbelly and thunder thighs and giant hips that go along with it don't help me any.

So the thread that was meant to provide encouragement just made me feel worse. When guys talk about liking a woman with a big butt, they have no idea what "big" even means. Only some sort of radical fat fetishist might like anything about me physically (and even if he did, everything ELSE about me would turn him off--like my unpleasant face, or my horrible personality, or my asexuality). -_-

As I grew up I put on weight, then my thyroid gave out, and I put on even more weight, and now here I am with not only my natural swayback but an even more enormous behind. And now even my own mother has commented on it. It was just in passing, and she's never been the most tactful or empathic person in the world so this should be expected (I know that if I were to try to politely tell her how hurt I was by her comment, she would get huffy and insist I'm trying to make her feel bad, or she would say I'm trying to start an argument, or she would deny ever having said it, etc....this is why I don't discuss my feelings with her, it only makes things worse ), but...well, it hurt. A lot.

I don't have ANYTHING going for me, lookswise, or personalitywise, or talentwise, or...ANYTHING. I know that, I'm the first to admit it.

But when other people, especially those closest to me, feel the need to point it out like I didn't already know...it just drives the fact home even more that I have nothing going for me, nothing to offer the world, and everyone knows it.

All these thoughts tonight, just because I have a huge behind. It's not like it's my fault, but it sure feels like it is. Why must people point out such things? Even jokingly or in passing? I already know I'm fat and unattractive and boring and talentless and all those other wonderful things. I already know all too well that I have no worth in the world. I hardly need to be told; after all, I've been being told this my entire life. When others aren't telling me, I'm telling myself. Endlessly. Life won't ever let me forget I have no place in it.

It maybe wouldn't hurt so much if I had at least ONE good thing going for me.

...

Apologies for my stupid whine , and if this is in the wrong subforum. I try not to post too much lest I wear out my welcome, as I do everywhere else I go.

...

I feel dumb now that I've vented this and fear I might regret posting it. I will probably just chicken out of returning to this thread as usual; sorry. At least few people will probably even read it.

I’m sorry that you are feeling bad.
People are ridiculously stupid and thoughtless sometimes. I know how bad it feels when you get called something bad. A year ago I was taking to my aunt on skype, that had not seen me since I was around 22 or so, and the aunt says to my mother "she looks nice (me) but she gained weight...yes duuuh I did. Last time she saw me was when I was f*****g 22 years old and suffering from eating disorder and she knew that. The stupidity of people can be mind blowing. And my aunt is fat, and then she says that to me, she managed to make me feel so bad. I cannot let go of the bad things that I get told, they always stay with me. I’m working on not letting peoples crap bring me done, that’s the only thing you can do.

Thank you for the reply, despite my avoidance I'm glad that someone responded. (I would have felt quite discouraged to have received no response at all...which is usually what happens when I post online. )

It hurts to be told something insensitive, but it hurts so much more when not only is it someone closer to you (as in your case, your aunt), but when they also know the issue in question is a sensitive one (in your case, having been going through an eating disorder...what a dreadfully insensitive thing for her to have said). My mother often fails to pick up on the things that really get to me (things that to my parents are very small are to me very big), so I'm at least pretty sure she meant nothing by it, but...still. Sometimes a small thing feels like a mountain.

I hate how the negative things people say tend to stick with me so much more and so much longer than the good things. Perhaps because the good things are so rare, but still, they should matter more.

I'm sorry that you went through something similar. Words should be used for better things than to tear people down.

Have you been screened for depression? You seem to have a painful fixation with your physical self, that isn't healthy.

I know the frustrations of weight management and thyroid issues, but a big booty isn't always a bad thing.

I do hope you feel better.

You're welcome




I can 100 % relate to this, it is so hard to put emotions that you feel so strongly in to perspective. When I feel so bad because of something someone says something stupid/thoughtless to me I feel like sinking through the ground, it takes everything from me for a moment, when I was younger for a lot longer.

The logical part of my brain stops working; I am so overwhelmed by the negative emotions. My coping mechanism is now to fight the emotions, breath and try to use logic, and logic tells me that I should be happy and grateful that I'm not such a thoughtless/stupid person that goes around hurting people and that just because someone says something out loud about me, it doesn’t make it true. It's an opinion, not the truth, so I should not take it as the truth.

Also to learn to accept positive things that people say, I used to be so bad of that I could not accept if people said anything positive about me, I was certain that they were making fun of me (They were not, I was just so anchored in the belief that I was such a failure in everything, that I could not believe anything else). No I try hard to see worth in myself, I don't want to be like before, so I made a decision to not let people put me down. Why should mine or any other person’s worth be decided by stupid opinions from thoughtless people?




Thank you and I agree with you completely.