Throughout my childhood I kept a diary. Each year I would have a new one to document my day to day life - what I did at school, which friends I played with afterwards, what was number 1 on Top of the Pops that week. Normal stuff. However I also kept a second diary, a secret diary - one with blank pages so my entries weren't confined to a small box. It had a padlock and I would find different places to hide the key. It only came out once in a while when I needed to get something off my chest. Every entry I wrote, I titled it 'Personal Feelings'. I remember one sentence rather clearly '...I don't know if it's just puppy fat or if it's because I'm a fat, disgusting pig'.
At the age of eleven or twelve years old I was convinced I was fat - or to be more specific I thought my stomach was fat. As part of my school uniform in Primary School I wore this ugly, baggy blue jumper and I used to press it against my stomach if I stood in front of my teacher. I didn’t want her to think I was fat. Sometimes in the shower I would pull at the flesh on my stomach, slap it, crying, wishing it would disappear. And yet he most disturbing thing about this memory is that I look at photographs of myself and I am a beanpole - where on earth did I see this 'fat' come from.
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