My Leather Jacket Disguise

I hit puberty fairly early. By age 12, I had C-cup breasts. I had gained weight, due to hormones, and started to feel very set apart from others around me.

There were a few kids at school who teased me relentlessly for having breasts so young. As if I had done it on purpose!

My family was going through a very nasty, long, and messy divorce. My sibings teased me for the weight gain, and my mother never bothered to explain to me what was going on with my body. She bought me training bras, but never took me to buy real ones, and I felt wrong for having been an early bloomer, I never asked her to take me to buy any.

I began to hate myself. I looked at myself as a strangely shaped, heavy, awkward thing.

And here enters, my leather jacket.

It wasn't anything special. It had a light blue fabric on the inside, and it was fairly thin. A fall/spring jacket. I realized that if I wore it, you could not see my breasts of my stomach. I could hide in it.

So I wore it every day. No matter what the weather was. This means, I wore that jacket every day of the hot summer. I didn't leave my bedroom without it on. By the fall, the blue fabric had turned gray from my sweat. It was disgusting. I felt disgusting.

My parents never asked why I wore it every day. Never even noticed, it seemed.

I guess we all handle body-image issues one way or another. I'm healthy and love myself now. But looking back, I wish someone had just told me I was beautiful.