Low Self Esteem

First I wanted to thank everyone so far that has emailed me or posted about the possible "tough love" board on the main message board. The comments from each of you are very helpful. I wanted to just touch on some things for myself. I've been obese all my life, since around age 5 I was told that I was getting "over weight". My parents where both obese. I picked up a lot of their eating habits and some they where better on like eating veggies, I never really did. I was one of those people that when someone picked on me I would ignore them. My mom always told me that was the best approach. All throughout my schooling, I have picked on daily. Some of the worse names you can imagine. I would come home daily upset and would quickly run to food for my support, even hiding food. As the years passed I quickly started to really get angry... I was angry because for all these years I had allowed these bullies to call me names. I was in high school, and this one kid who I might add was also "fat" came up to me and kept on and on. I had finally had enough, so he got a reaction. I turned around and grabbed him by the shirt collar. I said how dare you call me such names, have you looked at yourself lately. Everyone in the hall mouths dropped a mile. The nice quiet Amy they all knew had now suddenly had it. It was that point on that people treated me different and I didn't hear as many direct comments to me. I still had the worse time of my life because of my schooling and the day I graduated, I wasn't like most people all unhappy and sad to see my friends go, I didn't have many. I was actually deep within my soul relieved to never have to go back to that hell again. I would no longer have to wake up and pretend to be sick because inside my stomach was in knots from stress in worry. It was honestly because of my low self esteem and worry that I didn't do as well as I could of in school because I couldn't concentrate. I've been out of school now for over 10 years, but I will say that those who hurt me made a major impact on my life, they damaged how I thought about myself, even through I ignored them that didn't lessen the words they had said to me or the hurt I dealt with daily. I've been very lucky to have found a husband who cared for me, he saw the damage that these people did to me and worked with me to feel good about myself again. Even after all this time the pain, and hurt live with me. It's not something you can erase out of your memory. I even now have dreams about my schooling years. It's something I struggle with everyday and made me not want to leave my house. I'm a very homely person because of this too. Probably something that I'll never change, I like having my little safe haven. When I'm home I feel safe from the world. It's not a good feeling to want to not live in the world. I'm thankful daily that although it's through cyber space that I have a place I feel safe at. I've said all this to say this, when you reply to someone on the boards remember, you don't know their personal back ground, you don't know where they came from. Maybe they had a perent who verbally abused them and your response really set them off somehow, maybe you didn't intend for it to come out the way you worded it, who knows. But like myself, there are things in life that come back to me with a simple word and my defense goes up. We can all be tough and still be tactful about it, it's not about enabling someone, it's understanding that we each have different wants and needs and we don't know what lies on the other side of this monitor. It might be someone on the breaking point with a bottle of pills in hand. So when you answer try to be understanding with your response. I'm not saying let's all be sweet and kind, YES be yourself, but also bear what I've said in mind, we don't know how that person is emotionally. I've been told I'm too sweet or nice, I'm sorry for those who might think this, that is me. I was abused too much growing up by others and I wouldn't expect coming to any support group online or off and get treated badly. I've got tough skin and I've seen those words thrown around here, about get some "tough skin", but some people are too fagile and they don't get that tough skin. Think before you reply to someone please. Hope everyone is having a Happy Easter. Amy