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Body Image, Hormones, and Spinning Out of Control.

Stop staring at my chest! My face is up here.

By Denise WillisPublished 3 years ago 8 min read
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Body Image, Hormones, and Spinning Out of Control.
Photo by Szabolcs Toth on Unsplash

In the 9th grade I worked in the office at the school, and it was my job to go around and pick up all the slips in each classroom that showed who was absent. There was one class in particular that I hated going into, because every time I opened the door the guys in the back row would hoot and holler and call me "sex". My face would grow warm and turn red, and I would practically crush my hand in the door trying to scoot away as quickly as possible. In other rooms, guys would whistle or make rude comments about me.

I was 5' 7" and weighed 110 lbs., was 15 years old, and looked like I was 18. Unfortunately for me, I had matured at twelve, and had looked this way for a long time. I couldn't help that I matured early, and my mother didn't seem to understand what I was going through. To make it worse, my sister, who was two-and-a-half years older than me, developed late and was rather flat chested, 5' 10", and built like a boy, which didn't make for a great relationship between the two of us.

One evening, when I was in the dining room sewing, the phone rang and it was my sister's boyfriend, Butch. I happened to answer the phone and told him to hold on, I would go get her, but he told me to wait, he didn't want to talk to her, he wanted to know if I would go out with him. I must have called him everything but a white man, and then I hung up on him. My sister was standing in the doorway listening, her hand on her hip, and she turned and walked away after I hung up. She knew it was him, and from the conversation she knew what had gone on, but in spite of the fact I turned him down and hung up on him, she still hated me for it. I loved my big sister and always wanted her and I to be close, but because of a stupid twist of nature, because I had to be built the way I was, and she had to look like a boy, that was never going to happen for us.

I found my body was my worst enemy, and mostly because I didn't have a strong roll model, and raging hormones. My sister was jealous of me because all the guys wanted to go out with me and ignored her, and my mother didn't want to talk about it, so I had nobody to turn to. I had dropped out of school in the 9th grade, so no school counselor, and when I met Roger, I came up with my own plan for a bright future. I decided that if I could make him love me, then he would marry me and take me back to Michigan with him when he got out of the army. I did anything and everything he wanted, including having sex. But, it didn't make him love me. All it got me was a baby when I was barely nineteen years old.

By Igordoon Primus on Unsplash

Now, I had my aging parents to think about, and an infant son with no father. My sister was embarrassed because I was a single mother, so she moved out and in with her girlfriend from beauty college.

As time marched on, I discovered men liked to talk to my chest much more than they liked talking to my face. I wasn't beautiful, but I wasn't so ugly their eyes had to keep shifting to my breasts, either. Men were one of two ways with me, either totally possessive if we were in a relationship, or completely clingy if we weren't, neither of which behavior appealed to me.

I have been married a total of five times, well, actually four, but I married one guy twice. He brought me a salad to the divorce hearing, and then it was late so we rented a room for the night, and then we remembered why we had been together for those three years. So, we gave it another try. Seems so silly now, but we thought at the time that maybe we hadn't given it enough time. We were wrong.

In all five marriages, my husbands had one thing in common. Lust for my body. Once the lust wore off and I stopped putting my paycheck in their account, or maybe decided to stop working over the summer, they started looking around for something "better". I believe my second husband put it well, when I told him I wanted another child so our first child wouldn't grow up an only child, and he turned his sharp blue eyes on me and glared. There was a disturbing silence between us, and then he looked at the floor and back up at me, and told me right to my face that he only married me because he knew I would always work. Wow, that took the smile right off my face. I was expecting something grand, like, I was the greatest mom in the world or how I always knew just what he was thinking. But, I would always work? What a jerk!

By Karsten Winegeart on Unsplash

I have come to the conclusion, that none of my husbands loved me, they were attracted to my body, lusting after me like teenage boys, like the boys who were yelling from the back of the room in high school, and when the fun was over, when there was a baby on the way, or the money from the job ended, or it just plain got old, they were ready to move on, and began to treat me like I was the cook, housekeeper, or just someone who was hanging around. So, I would be the one to make the decision and leave.

I don't blame everything on the men. A lot of it was because of the way I behaved, the way I came on to them and used the "blessings" God had given me to get what I thought I wanted. But in reality, I didn't want any of that. All I really wanted was somebody to hold me on a cold night, have dinner ready when I got home late from work, and to listen to me when I had been through a bad day. I wanted to be able to tell my best friend, my husband, my worst fears without being afraid of being laughed at or scorned. I wanted to be able to support his dreams, and have him support mine. I don't see where any of those things have anything to do with the size of your bra. By the time I was a full grown woman, somehow to me it all had to do with the size of your bra, and your waist and hips. I spent all my spare time exercising, walking, swimming, and stressing about how I looked. I bleached my hair until it looked like straw. I bought one of those Mark Eden breast exercisers to help firm up my breasts after my second son was born, but all it did was make my feet get bigger. Seriously, my feet got bigger and I didn't understand how that could happen. I was a hot mess.

My sister had since gotten married and had a daughter and a son. She and her husband had a house and were living the normal American life, but my life continued to spiral out of control. All my husbands cheated on me and lied to me. None of them, with the exception of the last one, bought me a wedding ring. Instead, they told me to go dig around in my jewelry box and find a ring to use, and then they bought themselves one. You would think I would have seen all the red flags, but I continued to convince myself they loved me and make excuses for their shortcomings.

My body began to change after I had my gallbladder removed. I came down with severe shingles which moved into my face and gave me ramsay hunt, which meant half my face looked different than the other half because it had been paralyzed. My spine got sick with severe disc degeneration, so now I was only 5'5" and getting shorter every year. My teeth began to go bad and so my face was sinking, and all my looks began to go south in the course of two years. It was rather a shock to my system, but the true awakening came when I had my total hysterectomy and had my ovaries removed as well. Suddenly, there were no more raging hormones, and I could finally think about something besides men and sex. I enjoyed learning again, and found myself stopping online and reading interesting articles rather than pouring over the newest weight loss products or face creams. It no longer bothered me that I wasn't pretty, but what bothered me was the way I had acted throughout my grown life, and I began to make apologies to people I had hurt over the years, including my sister, even though to this day she still resents me, but she is beginning to loosen up.

I can now see my relationships for what they were, and I am saddened that I never found the man that could truly love me, but at least I have learned to love myself. Somebody said not too long ago, that God had to break them so they would know why they were truly here and who they truly were, and now I know what they meant.

I hope anyone fighting with run away hormones or thinking that the only thing that matters are looks takes a minute to do some internal inspection and figure out what really matters. It isn't what you look like on the outside, but who you are inside.

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About the Creator

Denise Willis

I love art as much as writing, and when the world feels dark, I get out my paper and colored pencils and draw while listening to music. When my husband and I were going through a divorce, journaling is what got me through that..

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