I, Am Erica

Growing up, I was made fun of A LOT.  Whether it was for being super skinny or having a big forehead.  I mean I get it. People have their own opinion of what beauty is.  YES. I was really skinny that it was scary. YES. I had and STILL HAVE a big forehead.  Make fun of me all you want. It won’t stop me from accomplishing my goals and being myself.  I used to be very insecure with myself all up until I got to college. So by this time, I had already developed a defense mechanism that would shadow my insecurities.  I would make fun of people and say mean things to them because that’s what they were doing to me.  Most of my friends were guys and so they would say whatever they wanted to me because they saw me as “one of the boys”.  But they didn’t know that one the inside I would be hurt at what they all were laughing at. There would be times where I would come home and just cry because I hated the way I was being treated and I hated myself.  I didn’t have “the looks”, I didn’t have “the body”. I was flat and I played and was actually GOOD at sports.  These things didn’t work in my favor when growing up.  I got JUDGED.  I remember being the last one picked to play basketball.  I remember fighting GUYS when I played basketball.  I remember the guys thinking it’d be funny to roll a basketball underneath me as I went up for a lay-up and I landed and fractured my elbow. These were the people who made my life a living hell.  I even think I wrote a letter saying I wanted to run away. Or even to leave the earth because life sounds so much better in Heaven.  

I hated myself.

But as I got older I learned how to mask my pain and just crack jokes on everyone like how the guys did.  Yeah I adopted female characteristics but I wouldn’t show my emotions or let anyone see me cry because I thought that it was showing my weakness.  Yeah people still made fun of me in high school but when I talked crap to them they learned to just stay away. Yeah people said I was a bitch half the time, but I was just standing my ground.  Yeah, I was a bitch, Yeah I was an asshole…but I learned that if you wanted respect, you couldn’t just let people get away with anything.  So that was my mentality all through high school.  I’m not saying I was just this super evil person.  I was nice to people when they were nice to me and most of the things I would say would be sarcastic and jokingly.  It’s actually pretty hard for me to be mean.  

College was a whole different scene. People were actually nice, there was the occasional jerk here are there but a lot of people were actually mature.  College opened my eyes to seeing that not everybody was a jerk.  I knew the whole thing with the guys and their “game” because hello, I have always been “one of the boys” BUT I finally found a group of girls that was just like me.  They didn’t back down to no one, they played sports and they were just fun girls. I finally felt like I belonged somewhere.  But my defense mechanism has lived on through it all. 

I have been trying to work on it and I’m not saying it’s easy but it’s do-able and I am sorry to a llllllll of those who I may have hurt in the past but as you can see, I had a lot of uhhhh…..issues. BUT: I am now a junior in college and after all this time I can truly say that I love myself and I am so happy to be the person I am.  Everything that has happened in the past is now GONE.  I have let it go.  All the boys I went to junior high with, the guys in high school that would make fun of me…..all of them see how I have blossomed.  But no, I am the same girl with the skinny arms, skinny legs, the one you called stick, the one you called five head, the one you called ugly.  I AM STILL THAT GIRL. I have learned and grown up and I am proud to say that  

                                                I AM ERICA.