I appreciate your weight struggles. Like a lot. Because remember I've had bariatric surgery. And I've regained about 25 lb since starting my doctoral program, and I am desperate not to regain more weight. So I literally turned to injectables. So when I tell you I understand the struggle, I really really do. But I promise you that it's far past time to stop blaming your parents or being in the hospital age too for being fat at age 40. If I had followed the track that my parents had set up for me, I would be uneducated and have probably 10 kids. That was what I was taught my entire life was my purpose was to get married and have children. I was told from a young age that women get their worth by the number of children they have. But I broke that conditioning and I got over that shit when I was in my early twenties. And here I am, almost halfway through an anesthesia degree. When I was studying engineering in my mid-20s, I was frustrated because I had struggled on a test in calc 2 or calc 3, and I called my mom for consolation, and her response was "I knew you couldn't do this. I knew you wouldn't be able to handle this. You should just drop out of school now and move home." Yet, here I am, 4.0 in a highly competitive program that has a less than 15% acceptance rate. If it had been up to my mom, I would have never made it this far. Fortunately, I moved out and quit being dependent on them when I was about 17, and then it became my responsibility to shake their weird, destructive values and form my own. And here we are!

Oh, back to the sibling thing real quick. I have five brothers and three sisters. None of us have the same body shape, for the most part. But growing up, my two older brothers and my younger brother were rail thin and I was not. My mother also grew up rail thin. I remember how skinny she was after having seven children, but she would stand in the mirror and talk about how disgusting fat was and how disgusting fat people were. And then almost in the same breath she would turn around and tell me that I was built like a brick shit house and so I couldn't wear girly things for feminine things because those kind of things weren't designed for girls who were built like me. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go put on my 1950s style dress that has an extremely full skirt, a belt, a lovely green cardigan, and a pair of super cute leather oxfords so I can go see my friend who is in the hospital. Parents are ridiculous