First Time

I remember the very first time I felt fat. I was about 14 years old and a friend was spending the night. We were lying on the living room floor and she said "Look at my stomach, when I lie down it's concave." So I tried it, and my stomach was not concave. It wasn't convex, it was just sort of the same. My friend laughed and kept poking at her concave stomach. Until that point I'd never really even thought about my body. I was always super skinny, not least of all because I played soccer in a very competitive league and was very athletic and muscular. It wasn't until I stopped playing soccer at 13 (due to circumstances beyond my control that are not important here) and started developing that I started to think of my body and how it looked, especially compared to other girls. By the time I was 16 I had grown up and out. I had enormous breasts that I hated, and I had no idea how to wear a proper bra. And while in hindsight I can see that I was still relatively thin, I felt like a beast, especially compared to the smaller, petite girls. I grew tall, I developed a large figure (big boned, I guess you'd call it, although I hate that term,) and I had all this fat I'd never had before. Sometimes it feels like I've ever fully recovered from puberty, and I think that has played a small part in my inability to accept my body, no matter what its shape. I'm 35 years old, and have pretty much hated my body since the age of 14.