Me at 16

My high school graduation picture. I'm having so much fun scanning these old photos into the computer!

Looking through these pictures, I'm beginning to get annoyed, retroactively. You see, I was the pretty one in my family (it was a small family) but I was always the fat one. Fat in this case meaning 5'3" and 120 lbs. But my girl cousins were all so skinny you could see their belly buttons from the back, and to me skinny was the gold standard.

Of course, I didn't let the pretty part stop me for a minute, but the fat part really got under my skin. I had the feeling all through high school that the world was a tuxedo and I was a pair of brown shoes. I always felt fat and was always dieting. Possibly because my mother always felt fat and hadn't put on a bathing suit in 20 years, even though she loved swimming.

Now I'm mad! I wasn't fat! However, now I am fat. Just ask the cardiologist. But I just bought two bathing suits and I am going to Hawaii and I'm going to wear them! I'm going to swim!

I also bought two cover-ups.