Tetra, I could just copy and post your entry and it would be me exactly. I seem to recall I was a size 14 - which TODAY is a plus-size model! AARRGH It just goes to show you that negative body image isn't a new concept. I was tall, and I do have a large frame. I wasn't a teeny little cheerleader. But I could swim a mile non-stop, bike thirty miles, walk two miles to and from school carrying books. I was trim and tight - just not teensy - but you looked at the SKINNY and probably less healthy "popular" girls and thought that was is what I am supposed to look like..not realizing that your frame and height made that impossible and that you were great the way you were!
ANother irony is that I have run into so many guys from high school who tell me years later that I WAS HOT..they wanted to ask me out, but I was too smart, too this too that....double AARGH.
A few years back I ran into a high school friend who is now a professional photographer. He had kept every set of negatives he ever shot and he reprinted and sent me copies of some he had taken of me in Grade 13 (when Ontario still had that grade). I WAS TINY! Okay not tiny, but trim and HEALTHY. As of my TOPS weighin on Thursday I am exactly 100 pounds heavier, and I have been 35 pounds heavier than this! My goal weight is 170-175 . To know then what I know now..may have made a difference. A little more self-acceptance, more of the nutrition knowledge we have today.
BUT it is never too late. I have to love myself as I am, if I am going to love myself enough today to take charge of my health again and make the changes I need to make. Maybe I should change those I's to We's