Chapter 1
Asking my parents to help me get rid of the monsters under my bed was never hard. It never made me feel weak—it made me feel safe. So why is it so hard to ask for help now that the monsters are in my head?
Growing up my brother and sisters were all smaller than me, they got my moms genes, slim frames and fast metabolisms. I unfortunately got my dads genes. As a kid I wasn’t fat at all, I just wasn’t as skinny as my siblings, and my sister Leah who is 3 years older than me, never failed to remind me that I was different. I wasn’t flat like them. I wasn’t boney. I had ‘‘fat’’ all over my body. People would point it out sometimes, never in a mean way, just stating the obvious ‘‘Hailey is the only one with a healthy body’’, ‘‘You’re not fat, you’re just not skinny’’ It still hurt. Because it meant that all the names my sister called me by, and all the words she used to describe me, were true.
You could probably imagine how that led me to develop body dysmorphia as a child. I believed I was fat even when everyone else told me I wasn’t. My mom reassured me every time I’d cry to her. My oldest sister told me that Leah was just joking. But that didn’t make me see myself any different from
her words. I started doing sports so I could be flat or just not gain anymore weight, I never saw food as the enemy I always thought exercising was enough.
I got my period at 12 and obviously my body started changing I started gaining weight everywhere, the comments on the fact I was getting bigger were basically a good morning from Leah and my mom, I also got them occasionally from my sister Blake whenever I saw her, at that time her and myolder brother Mike lived almost an hour away from us so they would come by almost three times a week sometimes less depending on their college workload. Blake would come the most whenever Emma visited, at that time Emma was studying in Toronto, and she’s the oldest so when she visited everyone wanted to come over and see her.
Emma has always been the second mom to everyone, even to Blake and Mike and she’s only two years older than them. Whenever our mom was busy, Emma was the one to remind all of us to finish our homework, do our chores, and to shower before going to bed. Shes ten years older than me, and I used to be her baby before she moved to Toronto. I used to tell her everything and she would always validate my feelings especially when I got into a fight with Leah or Peyton my little sister, she’s five years younger than me and she’s the baby of the family so everyone always takes her side saying stuff like ‘‘she’s just a kid’’ or that I ‘‘should be the bigger person’’ even when she’d clearly be in the wrong. But Emma never did that, she heard my side and made me feel like someone was listening to me.
