Starting in elementary school, I was picked on for being smart, nerdy, skinny and ugly. I was pushed down and threatened and felt totally helpless. In middle school, things worsened as my group of girl friends and I exchanged hateful insults and ganged up on one another, choosing a new victim each week it seemed. […]
I had to choose between four awkward photos. This particular school photo was from the sixth grade. During one of those awkward years I had gone back to school shopping and chose some colorful underwear with very large red strawberries printed in the fabric. As I was changing in the gym locker room I drew […]
I was always awkward growing up. My family was Baptist and had so many beliefs concerning the outward appearance that they placed on us. We were not allowed to wear pants, only skirts and dresses and culottes, we couldn’t wear makeup- I couldn’t even get my ears pierced! To top that off, I was never […]
For the most part, I was a happy kid. But we moved constantly, and by the time I was 18 I’d gone to 9 different schools. I was forever the new girl. Sometimes it was easy to make new friends, but other times it was brutal. I was bullied by girls, boys, even teachers sometimes. […]
I was born with short hair. In first grade, before my dad took me to school, he took me to get haircut, even thought my hair was short enough. When I walked in the class, some boy shouted that I looked like a boy and the whole boys laughed. I started to cry. I often […]
I was born in Zagreb, Croatia, and Venice is not so far from here, only 5 hours bus ride, so I go there from time to time as a tourist to check some new interesting art exhibitions. Some things are the same- I was dealing with trichotillomania then and I still do now, fighting the […]
Growing up in the US had made me a bigger girl. I was at my highest weight ever and although I wasn’t overweight and my doctors often reassured that I was the picture of health, I was absolutely miserable. My weight, I felt, defined me much more than my personality or my intelligence, and it […]
As a teenager in high school we deal with the constant battle of fitting in. We’ve all seen it in movies and shows how the pretty popular girls have it made. There’s a certain image we have to portray to be liked. Well that was very hard for me. I was the shy quiet girl […]