Confidence is one thing I have struggled with throughout my life. Ever since I was little, I was put into a setting where food was the center of everything. From parties where there were lambs on spits to eating every weekend at my Papou’s restaurant. From all the food around me I became heavy. My real confidence troubles started in first grade. As soon as I stepped into the classroom, everyone started calling me fat. At first I thought that it would stop but it didn’t. Every day I would hate going to recess because that is where name-calling would take place. I would always be the last one picked when we played games because of my weight. I would always ask my parents if I was fat, but they would say no and that I would eventually fill out. My struggle with confidence was at its worst during my fifth grade basketball season. Since basketball jerseys are sleeveless, everyone wore them without anything underneath them. I was the only one who wore a t-shirt. Every game my teammates would tell me to take the t-shirt off and just wear the jersey, but I would always refuse. I was afraid of people looking at my body with just a jersey and see I was fatter than everyone else.

It wasn’t until the eighth grade when I realized I needed to get to a point where I was comfortable in my own skin and I could laugh at myself. That happened to me during a bake sale to raise money for eighth grade graduation. My mom asked me put on this pink and orange girlie apron to draw attention to the bake sale. She wanted me to stand there and encourage people to come and buy cupcakes and cookies. If she would have asked me to do that a week earlier, I would have looked at her and thought she was crazy. I mean, what would people say? What would people do? Would they laugh at me? Would they point at me? Would they talk about me behind my back? Up until that moment, those were things I spent time worrying about. But for some strange reason, I took that apron, put it on and said, “Sure what the heck?” I figured if I couldn’t laugh at myself, I was taking life too seriously. I realized I liked who I was and it was okay to laugh at myself. The funny thing was,I found if I could laugh at myself, kids saw me as being confident and secure. Thank goodness I put on that apron.