dear god, it’s me, kate. please send me breasts.

Puberty. Puberty just really was miserable, wasn’t it? I remember being embarrassed when I started to get hair, hair in strange places but with no mother figure to show me the way I became confused what do, how do it? How do you ask your stepmom or your grandma about shaving your legs or your armpits or anywhere else for that matter? Even though the hair was growing, one actually two things weren’t my breasts. I desperately, desperately wanted boobs more than anything. I remember sticking out my chest as a child trying to look like Brooke Shields- little did I know she didn’t have much to speak of herself. I would check out my other female family members weighing the possibilities that their genetics might be mine. I would stuff my bra for fun around the house. I even tried I must-I must increase my bust exercises. I think I even stuffed my bra with shoulder pads for a dance- I guess I was too scared to actually make the purchase of the padded bra. Like the acknowledgment in that purchase would mean they would never grow. I prayed to God every night to send me some womanhood so I could be like everyone else. So I would be liked. So guys would like me. Little did I know that these precious endowments would be the least of my worries in getting guys to like me.

When I was in jr. high- it seemed like guys only liked girls with breasts and guess what I didn’t have any. So when your are in math class, math class and one of the infamous cool kids, cool kids in jr. high didn’t always make it successfully to be popular in high school. He says in front of 40 set of eyes, 40 sets of eyes, I was in public school of course, why is your chest as flat as your back? Part of me died. I hadn’t even started my period yet you stupid idiot. My ability to be strong was weakened and dulled by thoughts of others and being liked and not standing out. Because at my junior high if you didn’t smile and look pretty at everyone you might get your face slammed into a locker. No joke. It was a scary place. At only 5 ft and 90lbs I didn’t have much wiggle room. So what I wish I would have said, was something about how no one knew what kind of manhood he had in his pants- no one could judge him, judge him for his shortcomings, why don’t you pull it out for everyone to see or something like that I would have said. I would have kicked his ass. I would have told him he was asshole. Instead I sat there with a room full of laughter on my account, the tears falling on the inside.

So this comment, those words why is your chest as flat as your back stayed with me for years and I referred to myself as flat chested. Flat chested even after my breasts grew to an ample perky C. Until one day someone said, you aren’t flat Kate what are you talking about? What was I talking about? Why had I let such a loser have effect on my self-esteem? So years later, years later after I was done with college and in the midst of grad school, I saw this boy now a supposed man at a bar in our hometown. He was bloated fat from the love of the beer, and living in his mother’s home and had never left the confines of our childhood suburban bubble. With some wonderful liquor courage, I told him what he had said to me- why is your chest as flat as your back. His response, he looked me up and down and said well it’s not true now is it and within an hour asked me to go home with him, to his mother’s place. I passed. This time the only humiliation was his and I was the one laughing.