on shame - by Ava - bookbear express

When I was 8 years old and wearing a cute blue skirt I liked and my dad walked into the living room and joked, “Hey, only skinny girls should wear skirts like that!” When I was 9 and my piano teacher, frustrated at my inability to play one particular section in the Bach fugue perfectly, asked me what my grades at school that semester were and said, “Well, I guess you’re pretty dumb, aren’t you?” When my mom came to my piano recital when I was 13, two years before I quit, and remained silent while we visited a relative in the hospital afterwards, disgusted and unable to talk to me because my performance wasn’t up to par. When I was 15 and the doctor made me stand on the scale in his office, which made me want to scream because back then I hated weighing myself in front of other people, and said “You’ve stopped menstruating because your estrogen and progesterone levels are too low. You need to stop starving yourself.” When I was 18 and my on-off boyfriend gave me the silent treatment for the entire evening because I didn’t realize the leggings I was wearing were slightly see-through from certain angles.

When I was 8 years old and wearing a cute blue skirt I liked and my dad walked into the living room and joked, “Hey, only skinny girls should wear skirts like that!” When I was 9 and my piano teacher, frustrated at my inability to play one particular section in the Bach fugue perfectly, asked me what my grades at school that semester were and said, “Well, I guess you’re pretty dumb, aren’t you?” When my mom came to my piano recital when I was 13, two years before I quit, and remained silent while we visited a relative in the hospital afterwards, disgusted and unable to talk to me because my pe