I’m not really sure how to start a post like this.  I had ideas of funny pictures I could add, or something absolutely hilarious to say, but as my wife scolded me for trying to make a joke out of something that really wasn’t, I realized that I was doing it again.

I was trying to laugh about something that hurts… only to try and make it less painful.  I’ve been doing it my whole life, and it works… temporarily… but it never really fixes anything.

It’s funny how you remember pain… and the exact moment it starts.  I’m not talking about physical pain… but emotional.

Sometime I wonder, if I wasn’t so laid back and easy-going, where all of the remarks and jokes would have taken me.  Maybe somewhere I could never come back from?  Luckily I don’t think about that sort of thing, although I understand how some could.

Like I said, I can easily remember the start of everything.  It happened the same year that I moved to a new school… a new high school… a new grade…. ninth.

As a freshmen in high school there are alot of tough things to go through… but to have to deal with those new things along with meeting everyone here for the first time in my life… it was most especially difficult.

I remember sitting in Algebra 1… second row from the chalkboard, second seat back.  It’s almost as if it were yesterday.  A girl sitting in front of me leans over to her friend and whispers (rather loudly), “He stinks.”  It was like a punch in the gut… all of the breath inside me had escaped, and I couldn’t get it back, no matter how hard I tried.

I took showers… I wore deodorant… I wore cologne… I brushed my teeth.  Apparently this didn’t help.  I became self conscious for the first time in my life.

Up until this day I wore what I wanted… I fixed my hair how I had always done… since Kindergarten.  But after the comment she made… my eyes opened up to the real world… the harsh world, and I began to think what I was wasn’t good enough.

I got a new hairstyle, new clothes, and began to act differently… all just to fit in.  My parents told me if I wanted to continue to get these new clothes… I would have to buy them myself.  So I did.

As time went on… I became more and more picky about my hair and my clothes… I was turning into those kids that I never really hung out with before.

My parents started to tease me all the time… my family too.  They would tell me I was gay because of my OCD with my hair… my need for my clothes to be perfect.  Years passed… all the while… never going more than a week without hearing jokes from my own family that I was gay… that I acted girly.  Hearing my sister call me zit face all the time.  It hurt… it really did.  To know that someone who loved me so much would treat me this way… would make fun of me.

The kids in school no longer made fun of me… but now my parents were.  Would it never end?  No!

Since high school… I guess I’m still picky about my hair and my clothes… I still have bad acne problems.  I’ve tried everything  under the sun to get rid of it… but no luck.  I’ll be 25 years old this year and I still feel like I’ve got the skin of a 16 year old.  I’ve given up on hope that it will ever change.

Since getting married… it seems I’ve gained some weight… about 40 lbs.  So on top of still being picked on about my hair… or my clothes from my parents… they now constantly point out how fat I am.  You’ve all seen pictures of me I’m sure… and if you haven’t… there are some somewhere on the internet.  I’m not a big guy… but that still doesn’t stop them from the jokes.  It still doesn’t stop me from hurting everytime I hear someone tell me that it looks like I’ve gained some weight… or poking fun about it.

I wish they would just stop!  I know they love me… I know they would never want anything bad to happen to me.  But they hurt me everytime that I hear them making fun.  Will it ever end… I don’t know.  Should I just get over it… maybe.

But it’s hard to just ignore it and keep going.  It hard to get over something that hurts so much.

I guess it would have been easier to just post a funny picture to make you all laugh… to make me laugh… but I didn’t.  You all now know me.  Not the person on the outside… but the one on the inside.