It was difficult for me to make friends as a child. Others could walk up to someone and ask, “what’s your favorite color?” or “what’s your favorite animal?” and they would galavant around the playground, holding hands or skipping rope or drawing smiley faces with chalk on the black top.  It wasn’t so easy for me. I remember my first day of preschool, there were two girls playing with Barbies. I asked to join in and they just stared at me so intensely it stung. I was nothing to them, I was 5 years old and they were too and they were something to each other and I was nothing to them. The rejection hardened like cement in my lungs.

Photo courtesy of Audrey Leib

In elementary school, I didn’t mesh with anyone. I wasn’t nearly as strange then as I am now, but my peers would just call me names and put fake love letters in my locker. The first love letter I got, it was genuine, I think. The boy who shoved it in my locker, when someone pressed if it was him, said something like “Ew, gross, not the fat girl.”  I was never called Audrey in the hall, only “weirdo” or “creep.” But during lunch, it was “fatty” and “pig.”  I would throw away most of the lunches my mom or grandma would pack for me because I couldn’t stand being stared at as I ate. I would chug the homemade chocolate milk out of its old red thermos, take a couple bites of my turkey sandwich, and then throw it all away.  I don’t remember much of middle school, but I do remember the reaction the sweetest girl in my grade had when I told her I was being called fat. She said she didn’t understand; that I was beautiful, that she’d kill to have my curves. But it was 2015 and the idea of someone being over 120 pounds being worthy of love was not a commonly held opinion.

Photo courtesy of Audrey Leib

In high school, I realized I couldn’t be my authentic self if I wanted to be liked. What was the point of being myself if I was alone? I started to listen to pop music, started to watch Friends, slathered my face in yellow foundation from the drug store and used way-too-dark contours and applied three too many coats of mascara that would just rub off after the first period.  I straightened my hair instead of letting it wave from my scalp. I ditched my Legend of Zelda Majora’s Mask backpack for a blank Jansport one. I tried, desperately tried, to be someone people would like. To have mass appeal. And it worked for a little while. I got a 19 year-old boyfriend at 15, was generally accepted, and was being called by my first name instead of “weirdo.” But, just as life was treating me fairly, my boyfriend and I broke up. And I started to receive private messages on GroupMe from his friends, telling me to slit my wrists and to kill myself. 

My sophomore year, I diluted myself even more extremely this time. I became “just a girl” in the most literal sense. I had no hobbies. I was nothing more than a fly on the wall. I calculated every interaction I had with someone else, concocting a personality fit for whoever I was speaking to. I was never going to be good enough for anyone in that school.  I rejected myself, my whole being, and I left the person I was in the dust. I threw up everything I ate and drank too much coffee so I would be too distracted by my racing heartbeat to be hungry. I wouldn’t eat lunch, at most getting a snack from the vending machine. I dropped 25 pounds in two months. My family congratulated me. People at school and on the street were nicer to me. I felt like shit, sure, but I was being treated as a human at least. My name was finally Audrey and not weirdo or creep or fatty. 

When March 2020 rolled around, I was thrown for a loop. The pandemic left me alone, in my bedroom. I only had myself and my dog. I only had the skin behind the makeup, the body underneath the clothes. The human. I started to eat again during that time. I started to cook and bake again. I found myself spending hours playing video games I hadn’t touched in years. I felt comfortable. When classes were back on though, I was back to being fat, with the added moniker of “fag” and “carpet muncher” thrown in. It wasn’t fair. I had to reject my reflection to not be rejected by the masses? I had to disguise myself to be tolerable? I had to put on makeup and throw up everything and drink too much coffee and starve myself just to be recognized as human? It was bullshit. So I rejected the theory that I couldn’t be myself. Sure, I was alone, I was in and out of psychiatric hospitals that year, but I was me. My mom taught me at a young age to be myself, and at my wise age of 18, I finally realized she was right. 

Photo courtesy of Audrey Leib

Since leaving Ohio, I’ve found friends who were not my friends, lovers who were not in love with me, family who found more joy in drugs than my company, that beer can’t solve my problems, and that sometimes people suck. But in all of that, I found hope. I found love and friendship. I’ve found care .  I found rejection in the mirror and I accepted it. I am not what has been taken from me, I am what has been reinstated. I am what has been thrown against the wall and stuck. I know not to run from myself now. I know that I wasn’t deserving of any of the bullying and the name calling and harassment I received. I know that I’m still the kind little girl who just wanted to play Barbies. I know I’m still the lonely girl who wondered why people didn’t like her. I know I’m still the sad girl who couldn’t figure out why people hated her.I’m still the loving, passionate, creative, kind person I’ve always been, but more authentic. I know that someday, just like those who called me names, I’ll be dead and my bones will carry my memories. My bones will be made up of kindness and love, but I don’t think their bones can say the same.