"About Me:" is a project created to shine a light on the effect that our words can have on an individual. 

Janetta. 

“It [used up] was something that more than one person said. It was mainly when people weren’t getting what they wanted from me, they would use my life against me, to either make me feel obligated to do whatever they were wanting or just to hurt me; and it did. It genuinely effected how I saw myself and how I felt myself going into other relationships, not just with men, but with people in general. Jobs, goals, all of that, that one thing is what always rang and still sort of does. And it’s just getting passed thinking that people actually think that, or that it ever even mattered.” 

Amber. 

“Fat should be just an adjective, it should be like tall or skinny. But it’s not. I don’t know how so many other connotations got attached to the word. When someone calls you fat, it’s cruel. It means ugly. I don’t know how it got to mean ugly, but it means unworthy of love. I’ve always been a bigger girl, and people used to throw that word at me and it would just tear me down. It effected every aspect of my life. I wouldn’t talk to the guy I thought was cute because I was fat. I’ve always loved fashion, but I didn’t buy the things that were in fashion because fat girls don’t wear crop tops, or two-piece bikinis, or skinny jeans. In high school I used to wear big hoodies and baggy jeans to try to hide the fact that I was bigger, which inevitably made me look bigger. I spent most of my life trying to hide my body, the body that I was given. I tried to starve myself, I went on weight watchers, and nothing worked for me. And I found out later it was health related, so I will struggle with it my entire life. So, I decided that if I am going to struggle with it forever, I may as well get used to it. There was no need to hide, there was no need to not talk to the cute boy, or to not wear the crop top. I just started going for it. I started playing with fashion, I started trying to be more confident, I started following more positive influences on social media and things like that. Then I started seeing more plus sized women in the media, which if you see that it validates the fact that you are okay. And I finally just got there. It took a long time and I wish I could go back in time and tell myself that fat is just an adjective. It doesn’t have anything else attached to it. I’m glad that at almost twenty-five I finally got there, and it didn’t take me longer than that.”

Katie.

“It has always been so easy for me to see the best qualities of others and hard for myself to see my own. And that's what makes me human and relateable. No one is weird. That's just a word people misuse when they can't relate to someone or what someone may like. Or maybe we're all a little bit weird. But in different ways and your friends are almost the same weird as you. - Of course, when I was younger, I hadn't learned this for myself yet. At one point or another, I started to believe negative words people said to me and developed pretty low self-esteem. I tried so hard to get the acceptance of others that I stopped simply being myself and I would be what I thought others wanted me to be even if that made me unhappy. Thus starting a vicious cycle that was my teenage years. And here I am, a 21 year old college student who is still figuring out who exactly she is, what positive impact she wants to make in this world, and how important it is to love herself in the process.”

Haley.

I had a hard time picking one word that accurately depicted what I wanted to reflect in this project. Let alone recall a consistent phrasing that has been used multiple times over, as most of them varied by situation or person. So, the reason I chose to use “insufficient” is because it relates to a pattern of opinions that have affected me throughout my life. It expresses their root meaning when amalgamated in to a singular category. 

Hearing that I’m “insufficient is something I have dealt with since I was young, and more increasingly (unfortunately so) into adulthood. Whether it derived from something within my social life, like not having the “right” brand of materials per the female social norm, being too quiet, or something from my personal life; it never changed in its ability to resurface, and honestly impacted me hard over my lifetime. One thing I’ve learned, especially within the last few years, is that once you’re told something so repetitively, it no longer becomes a fictional opinion; it takes physical form in you and you begin identifying with it as if it’s who you are. I think kids especially don’t understand how impressionable they really are within a certain age group, nor do they understand the gravity of what they’re communicating. A lot of people, including myself, carry things from their youth into their adult lives. Some recover, some learn to cope, and some simply diminish, sometimes catastrophically. I’m thankful that I’ve become considerably self-aware and self-loving since entering my twenties. But it was a hard road to get to where I am today. 

Speaking on this subject, I must reflect with primary focus on the last five years, because they’ve been the ones that have impacted me the most mentally, emotionally, and physically. I do not believe that anything that has occurred was simply by coincidence, because what is a coincidence anyway? The relationship I was in as well as those I was obligated to be around within that relationship, was toxic to my very existence. Literally, I heard these references so much, and so bluntly, that I was at one point hospitalized. I had three ulcers that had been bleeding, unbeknownst to me, for God knows how long. By the time I got to the ER (when I really started having trouble breathing) I had lost so much blood over time that my hemoglobin level was a 6. 11-14 is normal, 7 is transfusable, but 6 is where I sat. A hemoglobin rating of 1-0 (if not sooner) meant death. On the first night in the ER I was given a blood transfusion and then spent an entire week in the hospital, and during my time there I endured a rather large amount of downtime. It took them days to locate where I was bleeding from internally. I had gone through several endoscopy procedures, I lost a ton of weight, I lost so much of my hair; and in that hospital bed (feeling as uncertain as the doctors) I had lost myself and made peace with death. There are some things you can control and some things you can’t. I couldn’t control what was going to happen to my life, nor could anyone else, but I did realize I can control who I spend my time with.  

The truth of the matter is, that you may not be “enough” for someone, or sometimes maybe you’re going to be “too much.” My main point here is that at some point down the line there will be someone in your life who thinks you’re “insufficient.” Whether that’s being too quiet, too loud, too fat, too skinny, too dominant, too sensitive, and so on. When you’re asked to file down you’re edges, you lose your edge. You should never have to justify who you are to people or apologize for being yourself. At the end of the day, when you trace all of it back to the beginning, the person that’s giving out all the hurt is the root problem. Not to say you don’t have your faults, because we all do, but you need to realize that after a pattern develops over time, it’s not that you’re insufficient. There is something wrong with someone who actively wants to hurt somebody, or subconsciously hurts by nature. There is something wrong with someone who thinks they do nothing wrong, or is literally unable to apologize for anything, and constantly puts you down. I think those who are labeling people insufficient, need to step back and try to examine their own deficiencies and what made them think it’s okay to point those out in others. An individual who can hurt someone, or beat them down in such painful ways, must be missing parts of themselves somewhere. I believe they feel they can fill these spaces by creating holes in others, but this is NOT the case. 

To end, I have no excuse for how I’ve handled my life in the past, but some of the things I’ve endured happened due to a choice I made at some point. Staying married was a choice but leaving was one too. If you find yourself one day blind in the wrong situation, it’s okay to choose happiness. It’s okay to stop thinking about others so much and choose yourself, especially when your health is at risk. It’s not selfish, you’re worthy, and they’re underserving until they realize they’re humans too. You can’t change someone that refuses to change but you can change yourself and your circumstances. You’re more beautiful than you even realize, sometimes it’s just hard to see past an emotionally rooted situation. I chose personal health and happiness. I hope if you’re struggling with feeling like this at all you know you can too. Because honestly, I haven’t felt this at peace in years. Think before you speak. Your words impact people more than you realize. 

Ana. 

I have been loud my whole life. I grew up surrounded by a large family. At holiday parties when everyone got together it seemed like we were always yelling just to be heard over one other. Because of that I don’t think I ever learned volume control. I would talk just as loudly in a library with a friend as I would at the park with my cousins. Loud was just a part of who I was. It wasn’t a problem until I started high school.

The first time I remember when being called loud affected me in a negative way was at the movie theater with my boyfriend. The lights were still on and there was barely anyone else in the theater: “Why are you being so loud? You’re so embarrassing.” My heart sank. I slouched down in my chair trying to hide myself and didn’t say a word the rest of the evening. This was the first of many verbal attacks. My ex-boyfriend was abusive in many ways, but the emotional abuse was what hurt me the most. I was in a vulnerable place and became very critical of myself. I finally NOTICED just how loud I was in certain situations and that everyone else around me noticed too. “You’re so loud” “Can you be quiet?” “Do you know how to whisper?” “I can hear you, I’m not deaf.” All of these statements and more from friends, family, and classmates felt like a punch in the gut. Even after my boyfriend and I broke up toward the end of my freshman year, I worried about being loud. Was I really embarrassing? Maybe I was annoying and nobody cared about the things I had to say? I started to withdraw. In the classroom, at home. I thought my passions and my ideas and myself did not matter. I lost my voice. I did not become mute, but I began to only speak if I was spoken too. It was a miserable existence—having no one to share my thoughts with. I felt like I wasn’t leading my own life, rather I was being directed by everyone else around me. I feared if I told someone my feelings, my thoughts, my dreams they would tell me that was stupid. So I kept my mouth shut.

I believe that my insecurities with being loud and/or annoying to those around me have led me to where I am today. While it still saddens me that I spent all those years thinking my words were not important, I still had dreams. I kept my head down and worked diligently to accomplish my goals. It’s like that saying “Work hard in silence and let your success do all the talking.” I’m graduating college this semester. One full year early. I’ve secured a job working with The Marcus Center for Autism in Atlanta, Georgia which I’ll begin in June. I have a wonderful boyfriend and friends who care what I have to say. I’ve held a position within my sorority, and I became a representative for an organization that deals with mental health awareness and suicide prevention. I found my voice again, and I have learned to use it for things that matter. I hope that my voice can help change the world. 

Taryn.

“So I am the oldest of three siblings, and I have to kind of be the example. You know, the typical ‘you’re the oldest so you have to be the example for your siblings’ kind of thing. I’ve been known to get really passionate about the things I talk about, and I still do that at time, but it was really bad when I was little. I didn’t have many friends growing up, which is a little sob story but I’ve grown from it so it doesn’t bother me anymore. So, anytime someone would show me any attention I would be like ‘Oh my gosh, it’s time to impress them, it’s time to be the center of attention’ but not in a bad way. But I would show these kids me as myself and they would shy away. So I would come home crying thinking ‘why doesn’t anyone want to be my friend?’ My mom would have to sit me down and say ‘You know you can be very loud and some people don’t like that and some people shy away from loud noises and it’s not you it’s them.’ So I’m like a seven year old trying to understand what this means like why no one wants to be my friend because maybe I’m too intense or loud. I got bullied out of my whole existence when I was little and I think that is also another thing. At times I can be very loud and at times I can be very quiet, and my mom always says it’s one of those two intensities, it’s never an in between. As an adult I shouldn’t really care what people think, but whenever I’m in a public setting with friends or I’m at a party or something I have to make sure that I’m not talking too much or that I’m not accidentally talking over someone. My best friend has told me before, and when my best friend tells me that I’m too loud it hurts even more than my mom telling me I’m too loud. Because there is a difference between what your mom says and what your friends say with the way it affects you. My friends will be like ‘hey you need to be quiet’ and I feel like I just became the most annoying person in the world. I feel like a little kid. When someone says that it makes me feel like I’m being a nuisance. I go to school for theater, and that is how I have let my big booming personality out into the world. And that is the only place I have ever been told to be louder. It was the coolest feeling in the world to me. It’s sad that the only way I can feel like myself is being in a fantasy world. I love theater and I love making other people happy and making them smile, but it’s just sad that this is the only place I can be myself and be my loud booming personality." 

When asked “If you were to have a voice for the people that are like you, how would you tell them to get towards embracing the intense sides of themselves?”

"I have two very good friends of mine and as much as they tell me that I am loud, they still love me for who I am. They tell me all the time that I have the most interesting personality I’ve ever met and that I’m not like anyone they know. That could be said for other people who feel like I do. I think there is something special in people who are really loud both physically and mentally because you can’t keep that stuff in, and I think that anyone who is like that you just has to be themselves. Forget about all the bullying and all the people who are too insecure about themselves to be that expressive or aren’t comfortable enough with themselves yet to be that expressive. And not everyone is going to be that flashy and crazy at times, but as long as you have at least one person or at least yourself to tell you that you are fine in that you can be yourself and that you can be loud and you can be passionate about anything you love then I think it’s totally fine."