Diamonds 'n' Pearls: Naomi is a Fat Slag….

Yeh, that was written about me. In the girls toilets at school when I was 15 years old. At 15 years old I was condemned a ‘fat slag’. At that time the most disturbing of that statement was being called fat. I don’t know why, truth is I’ve been called names due to my body, size, shape and weight all my life. I should have been used to it by that time, actually I was used to it, used to it in the sense I was so emotionally messed up over the constant taunts over my body that I just couldn’t see what the real me looked like.

I’d always been a ‘bigger’ child/teen etc, fat though? Looking back, I wouldn’t have said so. I was a very active kid when I was younger, always running about in the street on summer days playing hide and seek, football and rounders on the local grass patch, zooming around on my roller blades which I absolutely adored to pretend I was Ariel from the Little Mermaid on, was I conscious of my weight at that time? Yeh, by that age, when the rest of the kids were more worried about what Top Trumps card they were going to swap I was already upset about my body. I remember ‘friends’ as young as junior school age telling me they didn’t want to play with me and measuring their waists with their hands, as my waist was slightly bigger I was shunned and told they didn't want to play with me because I was fat.

Then came secondary school, I was bullied by a girl and her friends because some stupid lad got upset because after he'd tried to hit on me I’d told him I didn’t fancy him so he went and made up some rubbish lies and told them to this group of year 10’s (I was year 7 at the time) just to get me into trouble with them , oh and boy did it!

I was followed one lunch time, called ‘fat bitch’, ‘fat slag’, ‘ugly fatty’ all the way from the school gates to the local newsagents where we all bought sweets. The main bully then ordered a load of her friends to hold my hands back whilst she punched me and tipped a fizzy drink all down my back and over my head and continued to taunt me with insults whilst everyone else just stood back and let it happen. I’ll never forget that day, it was a few days before the end of the summer term, we were all meant to be going to a local theme park the next day to celebrate getting to the six weeks holidays. I ran home that lunch time, hid in my garden shed and sobbed my heart out, too terrified to go back. I remember the next morning pretending to be sick and begging my mom not to send me to school, she couldn’t understand, I’d been so excited about that trip for months. I never went.

September came and the year 10 gang that had bullied me were now year 11 and had no intention of letting me get on with school life without getting another round of abuse. I remember standing outside a classroom one day waiting to go into an art lesson. Whilst I was waiting a class were coming out of the same room, fear kicked in. The class was full of my bullies. As they walked out, one of them saw me and the main bully of the group turned on me, made it look like she was about to walk past me but as I thought I was being left alone, thought I was safe and unnoticed, she turned around and punched me so hard in the face it broke a tooth. No one said anything, blood started dripping from my mouth, I was trying my best to hold back the tears, trying to not show them that inside I was a mess. As they walked away the taunts, oh the taunts and the names ‘you fucking fat ugly bitch’, ‘no one will ever shag a fat whale like you’, ‘go and fucking kill yourself fatty’. I tried that, ran home that lunch time, took nine paracetemol thinking it would end it all, I’d not be that fat bitch taking up all those deserving, beautiful peoples space any longer, me with my whale like proportions, in my gross body that no one would ever want. I ended up that day laying on my bathroom floor, woozy, sick and crying, pretending again to my mom that I’d just eaten something that didn’t agree with me, disappointed that I was still alive, still around to face another day of torment.

They left school, I carried on, still more torments, more being told how worthless and disgusting I was because of my size. Unfortunately the torments never stopped, I left school, went to college, went to start my first job, went to start university, went on to other jobs and so on and so life went on. I realised the taunts went on too. I got larger, boys hit on me as a joke, or a bet. Men shouted insults at me in bars ‘what the fuck is that cow wearing? Is that supposed to be a belt or a lassoo’ one evening when I was wearing a beautiful white gypsy skirt, feeling pretty until those much more deserving of airspace people reminded me of my worth, again, thanks guys.

Every day I looked in the mirror and I hated what I saw, I had boyfriends but I never really ever believed them when they told me I was pretty, how could I when so many other people told me how disgusting I was? I made relationships implode, self-destruct because I’d twist words, throw compliments back in faces, accuse them of not really fancying me. Those voices from school, from my past in the back of my head reaffirming that what I was saying was right and the man in front of me was wrong.

The torture of years and years and years all built up, I was at breaking point, every diet I tried never worked or it did for a week or two and I would allow myself to feel worthy with every pound I lost but then beat myself up again with every pound I put back on. They were right, all those people from the past, Naomi Griffiths is just a big, fat, worthless slag.

I remember being at my all-time lowest point, I found pictures of some slim girl, half naked on an ex-boyfriends phone, I tortured myself with those pictures, it was my fault he had them, my fault he’d sought out a slimmer, more beautiful model than I was. We argued, terribly, I walked away, walked away and hated myself. Got home, tried to purge myself of everything I’d eaten that day, that week, ever, anything just to make the pain go away, anything to make me that beautiful, slim creature that deserved worth. I wretched until my stomach was dry, nothing but salty tears and bile were present, I got myself into bed, my head full of a million different taunts, how everything was all my fault, everything was my disgusting fat bodies fault, if only I’d been one of those beautiful slim creatures everything would be perfect. I went to sleep hoping I wouldn’t wake up.

I woke up the next day and felt empty, I was sick, sick of everything. More than anything I was sick of being me in this body that I had been forced to hate that had bought me so much sadness. I searched the internet for some kind of solace and after hours and hours of searching I found it. I found blogs and 'BBW’s' and my head span with images of these fat women looking happy and sticking their fingers up to their tormentors. I immersed myself with them, wanted to be part of them.

That day changed my life, I began to tell myself good things, began to look in the mirror and tell myself all the things I liked about myself, tell myself that I was beautiful, I posted pictures of myself on forums and blogs and all sorts and relished in the comments. People thought I was pretty, they didn’t think I was worthless, they didn’t insult me, they loved how I looked. From that day I walked a bit lighter, not because I was physically lighter but because my demons had finally started lifting. The demons born from years and years worth of torture and harassment and abuse, all that because I was a little bit larger than anybody else? A life nearly lost because I didn’t wear a size 10 pair of jeans, because I had hips, boobs, a bum, chubby thighs, a life nearly gone because I didn’t fit the societies ideal of ‘beautiful’. The ideal that all those bullies held so dearly that they felt the need to push it on me and hurt me because of it.

Now, you’re all thinking, Naomi, why are you talking about this, why are you telling us this? I’m telling you because it’s that time of year, where we punish ourselves because the media has yet again regurgitated all of their best January headlines of self loathing, of body shaming, of what beauty should look like, I’m telling you because you need to know that they’re doing it to make money out of you, they don't really care. They're telling you to wreck your innocent children's thoughts at an early enough age so they start buying into this ‘ideal’ and allowing themselves to feel worthless and bullied so young, to destroy you and your self worth, they are our modern day bullies and I’m sick of bullies, sick of years of bullies that never end. Whatever route you decide to take to start loving yourself, maybe the odd selfie on instagram or snap of you looking amazing in a new favourite dress on Facebook, I want you all to hold your heads up high and be confident and beautiful and amazing because you are all so worthy and amazing and deserving. I’m telling you because I don’t want anybody else to waste another day worrying that they are only beautiful when they are that slim creature. Fat shaming and all the years of verbal, physical and mental abuse about my weight has never led to me getting any slimmer, in fact, it only ever contributed to me gaining weight, the bullies and body police need to stop, NO ONE EVER LOST WEIGHT BY BEING BULLIED OR SHAMED OVER IT, you hear that?! The sooner you realise you are worthy now, no matter what your size you will feel amazing and confidence seriously changes you, so remember, you are worthy now, you are beautiful now and you are deserving now!