I was young when it started. Only 8. It all started when a new girl came into our class. She seemed so very nice. Us children were all drawn to her like flies to honey. She wasn't beautiful or special or anything at all. She was simply our new toy. I don't know if i phrased that right. She was like those dolls you see in the toy shop window. You look at it and long for it but every time you go by you start to look less and less, loose interest. Thats what would happen. When the rest of us started to loose interest, like most young children do, she had a few friends, not close or anything, acquaintances you could say. People she would play tag with but never invite to her house.

Now on days when we played outside, which was nearly everyday, she would talk to me.

"Your hair is a bit frizzy today isn't it."

"Ugh, your dress is so ugly."

"Why do your teeth stick out."

I never thought anything of it. It simply went in one ear and out the other, I was but a child and a daydreamer at that.

Then one day she decided to go further. We were walking back inside from class. She was behind me in the line. She started to tap me.

"Cow. Cow. Cow."

She started to whisper chant it. I made my face as neutral is possible.

"You are such a little cow."

She said this as she pulled me close to her and wrapped her arm around my neck in a choke hold. She started to squeeze, tighter and tighter, whispering how fat and ugly and cow like I was in my ear. The kids behind us laughed. I never was popular. I had one friend and that was it, I didn't need anyone else. Sadly she was at the front of the line, she had started to hang out with another girl who said she hated me.

The girl started to tighten her grip even more. I felt as if I were going to shatter into lots of tiny little pieces if she squeezed much harder.

After a few more taunts she let go of me and ran of laughing with the other kids, leaving me rubbing my neck.

This went on for a good few weeks and then my Grandma died. She had been ill since I was born. I had always blamed myself, thinking that me being born had some how been a catalyst. Of course this was nonsense but I still believed it.

I came in crying, giving the girl another reason to laugh at my pathetic runny nose and blotchy face.She started to call me a fat bitch and say that my friend was now hanging out with the other girl because i wasn't pretty or skinny enough. And I believed her. I started to follow her around when she said she could help me become skinnier and prettier.

She started to take my snack from me at break and my lunch from me at lunchtime telling me I would become skinnier if I didn't eat. She would pull my hair, hard, telling me it would make it grow and would strangle me telling me it would make my neck more slender. She would slap me telling me all girls must have a little colour in their cheeks.

This went on for 4 years. Then I moved up to high school. She went to a different high school.

I thought I was free from her constant torture but a year later I got Facebook. She was the first person to 'Friend' me. I thought it would be rude for me to decline her offer of friendship so I went along and accepted.

As soon as I had done that I got a message.

"So fatass, hows it going? Have you put back on the pounds without me? I bet you are 200 already. You will have to half that to be at least okay. You better start working hun."

I listened to her. I stopped eating lunch much to my newfound friends bemusement. I started to tell my Mom I wasn't hungry even though I was starving. I started to count calories and when I saw no results I would cry. I wanted to be beautiful. I wanted to be skinny and 100 lbs. I wanted to have my stomach cave in and a thigh gap and a prominent collarbone. I started to hate myself. June 22nd I started to look at thinspiration. On August 2nd I started to punish myself, cutting. It had been 2 years since I had gotten that message and I still hadn't heard from her. I wondered if she would still want to be friends with such a disgusting person. I still don't know. Maybe she has forgotten about her fat little friend or maybe she still thinks about her and how day by day she shatters her a little bit more in that choke hold of hers.