“Life is Short. Buy The Bikini.”

“I had gone throughout my adolescence awkward and bare chested.”

“It wasn’t until Terrance Dakota from my eleventh grade year pointed out how desirable long legs were… ‘Damn Terrin, you got some legs on you!’”

“He’d just finished up at the water fountain, wiped the wet from his fuzzy chin with his palm, and pulled on his silky like basketball shorts that were too loose in the waist and showed his ass whenever he lifted his shirt. He didn’t wait for my response. Just scurried off back into the musty gymnasium to slap box with the rest of the coons.”

“Mind you, I was young, and my titties ain’t been much for looking at still, and while Vera Parker and April Riley an’em had hips spreading and sexuality measured at the round of their rumps, I was tall, bare chested and plain in the face.”

-Terrin Rhodes

“Twenty One Weaks”

And it wasn’t that long ago…penning my first novel. Some fiction and some true. It is Terrin Rhodes, and her narrative voice that allowed me to live truthfully through her.

Too skinny.

Then TOO BIG.

Walk funny.

Talk funny too.

Legs too long.

And then the stomach’s too fat for the legs that are too long and hadn’t caught up yet…leaving me unproportioned and still so very awkward.

I’ve never enjoyed the beach.

Ever.

Wondering too much about who’s watching. Looking too much at who’s perfect.

From Preschool on up I thought the only thing good I had going for myself was a ponytail long enough to be worthy of a compliment…and ain’t that some shit? That the one thing I liked about myself was only because they said so.

Sixth Grade: First time my breast ever got any kind of notice. Somebody balled up a piece of paper and tried to toss it somewhere. It ended up hitting me instead and bouncing off my chest…and then he says, “Her lil’ ant bites.” He was so ugly, and I don’t know why I let that bother me so, but I was supposed to, because they were just that. I was so skinny, and being tall didn’t help that disadvantage, and I didn’t have a week’s worth of bras either, because he knew just like I knew: I was bare chested and plain in the face.

I made the cheerleading squad my seventh grade year, and I figured that was the second best thing I had going for myself, but that didn’t help with my awkward stride, and my linky stature. And this would have been ok, I mean REALLY ok, had I not felt like the runt amongst a group of adolescents who all had morphed into fine devines of womanhood. They were young women to me; confident and chosen first. “…and while Vera Parker and April Riley an’em had hips spreading and sexuality measured at the round of their rumps, I was tall, bare chested and plain in the face.”

My Momma used to say: “Don’t worry ‘bout them girls shaped up like women now. I was skinny just like you in high school, and look at me now. By the time they reach my age they’re going to be fat and sloppy. Watch and see.”

So there was hope...

Sort of.

I learned that betting on growing up and aging like my momma was something genetically reserved for my sister.

I had my son, and I got smaller.

I got my first desk job, and things changed.

I got bigger, and then my biggest.

…and then I found a new group of women to idolize: Instagram Models.

And now it’s funny.

…that my ENTIRE life has been wanting to be anything BUT Brittanie.

Lately I’ve been doing this thing where I look in the mirror and talk to myself. The idea sounded kind’a corny at first, but OMG there’s this new found difference in how I look at myself. Not just look at myself, but really LOOK at myself.

“I love my brown skin,” I say. “And being tall too.”

SIDENOTE: I tried this in the sixth grade. I had a journal, and I wanted to write to myself and read it later on in life. That saaaaame lil’ ugly, peezy ass head boy read my opening of it (we sat alphabetically so he was always right there) and he made the biggest mockery of it. He shared this humor with another boy in the class snickering “Dear Brittanie, this is Brittanie,” and I thought to myself, “…yeah, that’s kind of stupid.”

HE was stupid.

And I was foolish enough to follow him up.

If there’s a lesson in life about trusting yourself and believing your dopeness then THAT’s the story I’d tell. ‘Cause how cool would it be to be able to read today what my young self wanted to say then!?

Ya’ll, I’m still working on being a better me, and that’s why it’s My Fat Diary, but while I’m doing and still going it feels so damn good to love me.

Life is short.

And even shorter now that I’ve let twenty eight years go by wishing I was anybody but me.

Short!

Way too short to live in Virginia’s Beach, and never enjoy Virginia’s Beach.

Life is shorrrrrrrt.

Short like dying tomorrow, and not living today.

I meal prepped my breakfast and my lunch for this week, and I’m proud about that. Rarely am I ever prepared, or even some kind of motivated about sticking to what I set out to do. I guess being in the kitchen for all of those hours made me feel like I had taken the first of many steps for the next day, the upcoming week, and the rest of my life.

A new YMCA just opened in Town Center. Brandon sent a picture from his workout the other day and the view is AMAZING. I need that type of movie like scenery because I’m a writer, and I work better that way. I’m already motivated to wake up early at least once this week and get a good workout in and catch the sunrise ‘cause that’s a good story to tell.

I am learning to enjoy the journey, live more than a little bit, and buy the bikini.

And just don’t listen to ugly boys. They don’t know a thing about a thing when it comes to YOU.

"Life is short. Buy the Bikini."