Suzy Weibel - Secret Diary Unlocked: My Struggle to Like Me

2007 by
SUZY WEIBEL

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version. NIV. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked tniv are taken from the Holy Bible, Todays New International Version TNIV. Copyright 2001, 2005 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.

Editor: Pam Pugh
Book cover/interior design: Julia Ryan / www.DesignByJulia.com
Original cover image: JupiterImages, www.comstock.com
Feathery doodle: Dara Lowry

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Weibel, Suzy.
Secret diary unlocked : my struggle to like me / by Suzy Weibel.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-0-8024-8079-8
1. Teenage girlsReligious life. 2. Self-acceptance in
adolescence. 3. Self-acceptanceReligious aspectsChristianity.
I. Title.
BV4551.3.W45 2007
248.833dc22

2007008721

ISBN: 0-8024-8079-9
ISBN-13: 978-0-8024-8079-8

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THE YEAR WAS 1979. As far as 13-year-old girls go, this really should have been what they call a banner yearone of the best. I had been at this same school for six years now. I knew the ins and outs, I was fairly popular, I earned good grades, I was always one of the first chosen for teams at recess. My family vacations in 1979 included trips to Israel and Egypt as well as the Caribbean island of Grand Cayman. What was not to love?

Me. I was not to love.

My hair was curly and never cut right. I couldnt wear it long like all of my friends because it would frizz out and Id end up looking like Bozo the Clown. I wore it in pigtails in second and third grade, but a mature fourth grader cant really do that. Besides, Maureen Butler had thought for two full years that I was an Indian princess. I didnt want to be an Indian princess. So by middle school, my hair was really out there like Lisa Simpson, but not so neatly drawn.

One of my nicknames was Piranha, given to me by a guy whose nickname was Carrot Top. His nickname came, of course, from the fact that he had a shock of red hair. Mine was due to the fact that the only thing more noticeable than the huge space between my two front teeth was the fact that I was missing the next two required teeth in a full set (called the incisorsI know this because my dad was a dentist), but I had been blessed with two very pronounced canine teeth, razor sharp, one on each side of my mouth. Perhaps I exaggerate that a bit, but when a 13-year-old girl is dying to make an impression on the guys, this is not what she wants to see when she smiles at herself in the mirror.

Shopping for clothes was a nightmare. I hated it. I was constantly between sizes and had the kind of figure that wasnt really even a shape at all. I was the kind of girl that sales ladies would smile at kindly and say, You know, Dearie, vertical stripes are much more flattering. Ever try black? Its a very slimming color. Even when I was a junior in college and making, I thought, a nice impression on a very cute scuba diving instructor, he brought home the truth I had lived with for so many years when he said (to my mother of all people), Shell be a very pretty woman when she loses some of that baby flat. I think that was supposed to be a compliment.

The reason I was one of the first chosen for teams at recess is because I was fairly athletic, but not much of a threat to the guys in the girlfriend department. I was like a sister, they told me. I was also picked first for square dancing. See, if they picked the cute girls, those girls might get the wrong idea or the right idea. Either one was embarrassing for the boys. And they couldnt pick the outcasts for obvious reasons. So I was the best choice. Somehow this didnt make me feel any better.

I was forever doing stupid things. On the infamous Israel/Egypt trip my tour group was dining at a restaurant in Old Jerusalem when I decided I needed to visit the little girls room. My memory of this event may be a bit muddled by time, but this is the chain of events as I recall them: There were no other 13-year-old girls (or even 11-year-olds or a 15-year-old) to accompany me to the bathroom, leaving me to attempt this adventure all alone. This was uncomfortable territory to begin withhaving to go it alonebut to make matters worse, the signs on the bathroom doors were not accompanied by any courtesy English. I dont know about you, but my Hebrew is a little shaky. In America this would not pose too great a problemwed simply look at the picture on the bathroom door. I think you could do this in most European countries as well. However, in Jerusalem they must have really wished to preserve the Old World feel, because I insist to this day that both doors had pictures of people with robes on dresses as far as I could tell. I went in one and began to do my business, wondering as I entered if all ladies rooms in Israel had such funny-looking toilets. Before long I was not the only one in the bathroom. Someone in the stall next to me wasnow this was oddpointing his feet in the wrong direction, and they were big feet, too. In a blind rush I grabbed my purse and flew out of that bathroom so fast So fast that I did not realize until returning to the table that I had grabbed, in fact, an extra roll of toilet paper and not my purse. The story does have a happy ending, however. I convinced a 16-year-old guy (who later held my hand, but thats for another chapter) to return to the mens room and retrieve my purse. The entire tour group greeted him with cameras, like Hollywood paparazzi, as he exited the mens room carrying my purse!