Christine Schoenwald

My swimsuit phobia started in middle school — that breeding ground of body shame and fear. One minute I’m a kid excitedly putting on my pink two-piece and running into the ocean, the next, I’m avoiding any place where people are known to live in their swimsuits and I might be forced to wear one.

We all want someone who will appreciate our curves, voluptuousness, strength, and beauty without fetishizing us. I’m fat, I’m fabulous, but I’m not your fetish.

I’m in an ongoing threesome with fear and anxiety.

I still went to the painful place of being fat-shamed and decided that was why he had refused to kiss me. The pain never fully went away.

I’m riding my bike around a local community center on a Sunday morning.

As a fat person, the thought that I’m already taking up too much space and that it would be selfish to ask for more is always in the back of my mind.

“You’re fat and ugly,” I’d hear, or, “Look at your stomach, it’s disgusting!” This wasn’t a neighborhood bully taunting me on my way to school — this is what I said to myself all day long, well into adulthood.

One of the reasons that narcissists are so troubling is their lack of compassion and awareness regarding how their behavior affects other people.