Slim or fat, people will always whisper about your weight

All my childhood, I was always the skinny kid. The one who stood out because she looked awkward in school clothes, church clothes, without clothes…you get the picture.

And it didn’t help that I was a girl. Who wants a bony, awkward looking girl anyway? “Gain some weight, they would say in that awful, appalling tone.

I hated every little bit of it. Being tall and skinny and the teasing that accompanied it. Ooh did it hurt! In an argument, most people would hit below the belt by mentioning how skinny I was, a comment that would immediately shut me up. Why you ask?

Well, it was the way they said it, as if being skinny was some kind of disease I had to get rid of.

“Don’t you eat?” “Why are you so skinny?” “Your younger sister is even bigger than you!” Indeed what the heck was wrong with me? I ate everything my younger sister ate, even more, yet I didn’t gain an ounce of weight. Being a teenager was the worst stage.

Growing up in a society where people like me are considered to be somehow less African, what’s a skinny little ‘thing’ to do?

The worst days were when we would have relatives over and the skinny song would be on replay from morning to evening.

“Don’t you eat” “Why are you so skinny?” “Don’t you eat” “Why are you so skinny” on and on and on and on. It never stopped.

And when I got older and felt it was about time to end the nonsense of being made to feel as if something was wrong with me, I occasionally had to bite my tongue every time an older relative decided my weight was their business.

Come to think of it now, maybe I should have told them to shove it, and ‘accidently’ poured chai on them.

Flash forward a couple of years later, and I am not as skinny as I once was. I will tell you what, just like people on the plus side are scared brainless of a weighing machine, so was I.

What was the point of stepping on one when all I would get was the disappointment of not weighing more? I know; you can roll your eyes if you find this cynical, but a ‘weight issue’ is a ‘weight issue’!

I stepped on that thing a couple of days ago and it read 64. Sixty four! Was the darn thing broken? I got off, and hopped on it again and still there was that huge number which seemed to get bigger...64!

What I have learnt in this born skinny and getting fat business (again, you can roll those eyes) is that tongues will always wag whether you weigh 45 or if that arrow shoots up to 90.

The same lot who used to tell me I am too skinny are the first to mention how “fat” I am now. And again, it’s in the way they say it, the lilt in their words changes, and you would think they are talking about some kind of lethal communicable disease. Talk about damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

This makes you want to have some morbid thoughts about choking the very air out of them until the final words you hear from them is “Alright (cough, cough) it’s none of my business (cough, cough) how much you weigh.”

What I regret is the fact that someone had the power to ruin my day by reminding me every single day of how skinny I was.

I hate that I allowed all that hogwash get to me. But it did, and all I know now is that I should have loved myself, bones and all, and cared less what others thought.