I found it again a few weeks ago – words scrawled in black magic marker on the back of this old comp card from 1992. The kind of marker we used to sniff, chasing cheap highs to escape cheaper realities. The words hit harder than any chemical ever could:

"Fat girls don't model. That's what they say.

Seventeen. Size 16. Or 20 if the agency didn't care. Depends on the wardrobe. 

The makeup artist's hands shake when he contours my face. Like fat might be contagious. So "boooooteeefull" says the thick accent from the hair guy named Gigi. 

Why was this Carl guy taking me to Sam The Record Man? He's a creep.

High school was worse. Bad Brandon made me leave. For my own good. Just as well. He was the evil but there were still the others. The cafeteria was a battlefield. Lockers left bruises. Girls made a game of counting my calories at lunch. Mocking my clothes. They didn't make much for my size back then. 

So I left. Even though I have him. 

Midnight binges fill the empty spaces. Cookie crumbs in bed. Ice cream for dinner. No one watches me eat now.

But.

Pointed toes. Straight spine. Head high.

The camera loves angles they say. Even fat ones. Even mine.

Walk. Turn. Walk. Breathe.

They watch. The same ones who said I couldn't. Would never. Should not.

Fat girls don't model.

But here I am.

Walking."

Reading these words now, thirty-two years later, I'm struck by how much pain lived between those lines. I was broken by others, then finished the job myself. What that seventeen-year-old girl didn't know was that the worst was yet to come. The years that followed would carve deeper wounds, test stronger limits.

But here's what else she didn't know: she was stronger than all of it.

I showed them. All of them. The makeup artists with their shaking hands, the cruel girls counting calories, the Brandons of the world who thought they were doing me favors by breaking my heart. I showed myself too – the girl who thought midnight binges could fill the emptiness, who accepted crumbs of kindness because she thought she deserved no more.

I took my power back. One decision at a time, one pound at a time, one degree at a time. I got an education. I hustled. I lost a couple hundred pounds. But more importantly, I gained something priceless: self-respect. I learned to carefully curate who I allow into my space, understanding that the company we keep shapes the lives we lead.

That girl who wrote on the back of a comp card with a magic marker – she was already walking. Already defying. Already proving them wrong. She just didn't know yet that she was taking the first steps of a much longer journey.

I am no longer giving up on myself. That's the real transformation – not the lost weight, not the degrees, not the career success. It's the unwavering commitment to my own worth, the refusal to let anyone else define my possibilities.

They said what I couldn’t do. I showed them who I am.