Body.

Sometimes the pure cruelty and thoughtlessness of people astounds me.

I have learned over the course of my twenty-one years that if I say something bad about someone, it's bound to get back to them. I have a big mouth, and I often say things that I don't mean and instantly regret them. I have learned from experience not to speak ill of others, and I've done my level best-- especially lately-- to keep my mouth shut.

I'm not doing that today.

Nothing angers me more than ignorance. Genuine ignorance is forgivable, but ignorance in people who should-- and do-- know better is intolerable. I call it deliberate ignorance... sometimes it just falls under the definition of good old-fashioned hypocrisy.

Over the past year, my weight has fluctuated violently. I dropped from 140 pounds to 120 pounds, and then I climbed steadily to 175 pounds over the next seven months. I am not necessarily happy with my weight, but I'm not crying over it. I'm six feet tall-- I'm on the heavy side of slim. I'm more concerned with being healthy and with toning my body than with being Kate Moss.

There is a young man that I have been acquainted with since I was very young. For a long time our relationship has been very rocky, due to a couple of romantic interludes in high school and the fact that this young man has been more interested in me than I have been in him. There have been many problems because of this in the past, but I thought that they had been put behind us and we could move on with our friendship.

This is not a possibility.

Since his return from a stint in Germany, I have done my very best to be civil, if not actually friendly, to him. My attitude toward him has been unkind, more often than not, and I thought it was unfair of me to be that way. It was my goal to be a better friend to him when he came home... or at least to remain neutral, though I often feel like my efforts are wasted.

My feelings were validated today. I was more than a little shocked and infuriated to hear that this guy and his mother-- his mother-- have been making disparaging remarks about the way I look. To the tune of me not being able to be stuck-up anymore because I'm not thin and pretty now.

This is the most moronic... the most unbelievable... the most stupid thing I've ever heard. There is one sole reason for them to be nasty: that in high school I decided not to date this guy, and he's still sore over it.... so naturally, his mom's sore too.

Five years after the fact, they are evidently still holding grudges.

I have so many feelings about this subject that it wouldn't be possible to write them all down here. My hands literally start trembling when I think about how vapid, how absolutely shallow they must be to settle on making fun of my body. They can insult me as a person; that's fine. I'm the only one who knows what kind of person I really am; I will not allow their opinions of me to dictate my personality or my behavior.

But to take such a low shot at something that I really have little control over-- my body-- is the most infuriating and ignorant thing I can think of someone doing. I have offended them-- my body hasn't. It should stay out of every conversation, because my body has nothing to do with his emotional train wreck. Discuss me as a person freely; I don't care. But leave my weight, my looks, my height, my hair, and my face out of it.

In a world where every single girl has a complex about her body image, about being the thinnest and the prettiest, what gives them the right to add to that-- they, who have bodies that are far from perfect? They have no right. In a society that upholds a ridiculous standard, how dare they hold me to that... and not hold themselves to it? Ignorant hypocrites. And a man criticizing a woman's body... unchivalrous, disgusting, and painful. His mother criticizing my body? A woman that does not know me personally, that knows nothing about me besides what she's heard from a very biased source... and has nothing else to be critical of for that very reason? Shame on her.

My body has nothing to do with how I act. Why should my gaining weight make me a less beautiful person? That just points every finger at their being asinine and weak-minded. They still hold such a grudge that they have to resort to making fun of my body-- because they've run out of other material. There is no other reason for them to snicker at my body than this: it's purely malicious. They want me to hurt. They have to resort to something that individual and personal-- it sickens me.

It's the final straw in this whole enormous saga. I fully plan on confronting both him and his mother about it, and ending the friendship. Friends don't make fun of the struggles that their friends are having, and my body has always been a very personal struggle.

I don't need his miserable self in my life any more. When he was twelve, stupid comments were tolerable. When he was sixteen, they were passable. When he was eighteen, they were tiring. Now that he's nearly twenty-one, they're unacceptable in my opinion... and so I won't accept them.

People like these two are the reason I don't trust many friends anymore.