They said my eyes are too big.

Too much.

Not in a beautiful kind of way.

Just big.

Just wrong.

“Frog.”

“Bug.”

“Hyde from Wednesday.”

She said it casually,

like it was funny.

Like it didn’t matter.

It did.

But I didn’t cry

Didn’t flinch.

Didn’t try to change.

I just lived with it,

Because what else could I do?

And it wasn’t just my eyes.

It was my body, too.

They called me skinny,

The skinniest in the friend group,

Like it was something I chose.

Like it defined me.

Yes, it is part of my identity,

But they made me want to hide it.

They said it like a joke.

But it made me feel like a shadow behind the girls around me.

Not enough to be a whole.

Just a body.

An echo.

And still, I showed up.

Sat at the table with them.

Laughed at all their jokes.

Lived in the skin they picked apart.

Because I had to.

A year later,

That same girl who called me a frog

Told me I was pretty.

Just like that.

Like the past could be erased with a single compliment.

I smiled.

Not because I needed her words,

But because I realized…

I realized I didn’t.

By then,

I built this thick skin able to wear their words without letting them in.

Alone.

Confidence made from steel and quiet rage.

The kind that survives and stays standing

After every name they tried to bury me under.

I feel grown now.

But sometimes I do miss being a kid.

Not the reality of it,

But the idea.

The version of myself where I did not have to be

So strong.

So aware.

But I don’t hate the girl I was.

I never could.

She carried me here.

I am made up of all my ages,

Layer by layer,

Like a tree trunk.

Eyes wide,

Never hiding.

Let them look.

Let them whisper.

Let them wonder.

My wide-eyed strength.