An apology letter to my boobs.
To my Darling Double-Ds,
Started from the bottom, now we here.
This letter is a long time coming, I know. We’ve been through a hell of a lot together and I never appreciated you the way that I should have. But that’s all going to change now, ok? I’m going to make up for it. Today is the first day of the rest of our lives.
Today, we dared to go outside without a bra on for the first time since the third grade.
There you were, out for the whole world to see, in a daring spaghetti-strap crop top that screamed CLEAVAGE to everyone I pointed you at. Pew! Pew! Pew!
For the first time ever, we walked down the street, tits-first, loud and proud and bouncing.
“You seem more confident,” people say. “Like a weight’s been lifted off your shoulders.”
Yeah, or a couple of tight-ass bra straps and a lifetime of shame.
Those who’ve gone through puberty far too early will understand.
One minute you’re a child, happily frolicking with friends, digging for worms, doing cartwheels, memorizing the correct order of the (9) planets… the next minute, you shoot up like a beanstalk and exist in the stratosphere, far above the heads of your adorable, petit, normal friends. Your chest balloons out like someone cartoon-punched you twice from behind, your hair gets greasy and limp, and prickly little porcupine hairs start growing in disgusting places. Like on your legs.
It’s mortifying enough without all the little boys (who are all still shorter than you) yelling from across the playground, “Everybody get out of the way! It’s Boobasaurus-Rex!"
It turns out, I’d done all the growing I would ever do over the course of one summer. I haven’t grown an inch since then. I shit you not, I still wear the same shoe size as I did when I was 8 years old. I was a child in a woman’s body, the only girl who had to wear a bra, which might as well have been Forrest Gump’s leg braces for all the teasing and strife it brought me. Except that his awkward contraption brought attention to a far less mortifying part of his body.
I began to slouch in an attempt to fold my boobs back into my body and not look so tall among my peers. I crossed my arms a lot and held things directly in front of my chest whenever I could, which gave my arms the appearance of tiny little T-rex arms.
It became pretty clear that my friends were gonna have to ditch me soon. They included me at school out of sheer habit but, when they went to get glamor shots together at the mall on weekends, they never invited me. When they started picking out their first “boyfriends”, like picking names out of a hat so they’d be distributed evenly, it was never really assumed that I’d participate. Every cute little girl had a cute little boy to match but there was no match for me — Boobasaurus-Rex.
“You know what you should do?” said my mom after school one day when I told her about the bullying through tears, mucus, and hiccups. “You should ask those boys about their testicles.”
“Mama.”
I knew what testicles were, of course. My parents were both doctors and they gave me and my siblings “the talk” about once a year, aided by picture books and anatomy posters. If a certain number of months went by without getting “the talk”, you could be sure that one of them would bring it up some quiet evening at the dinner table.
“How long has it been since we talked to you guys about sex stuff? Does anybody have any questions? …About puberty maybe? …You guys doing ok?”
One day, the teasing at school just got to be too much. One boy was the worst. I won’t say his name to protect his anonymity but picture Jonathan Taylor Thomas if Jonathan Taylor Thomas was super mean (I guess I always imagined that the real Jonathan Taylor Thomas is pretty mild-mannered). He was, by far, the most popular boy in school and he hated my boobs. And not in the, “Oh, he just likes you!” kind of way, but in the, “Someone check on what’s happening to this kid at home” kind of way.
One day, as we were all trading pokemon cards under our usual tree (every little girl symbolically paired with every little boy in some awkward configuration or another), this particular little 90’s heartthrob took one of his typical jabs — “How’s your boobs today, Boobasaurus-Rex?”
Filled with blind rage and panic, I responded, “I don’t know, Michael, how are your testicles doing today? Did they drop yet?”
(Oops, I said his name. Whatever. Too late now, what’s editing?)
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