FilmmakerKevin Smithspent his childhood being mocked about his weight.
The incident that forever changed Smith occurred one morning when he was in fourth grade.
“We had just finished the Pledge of Allegiance and I noticed my teacher standing next to me, eyeballing me,” Smith tells PEOPLE. “Everyone turned to look at her and, when I looked up, I just saw this abject expression of disgust on her face before she said, ‘The gut on you, Mr. Smith.'”
Now 52, Smith admits that he’s been “frozen” in that moment for much of his life.
“It really broke me down,” recalls Smith, who has released an intimate, first-person video account of his mental health journey on People.com in the hope that his ordeal could help others.
“I felt disgusting, like I didn’t matter. I asked to go to the bathroom and cried for a while and then I told myself, ‘That is never going to happen to me again.'”
WatchTrauma is Trauma: A Mental Health Talk with Kevin Smithbelow
So Smith, who was 9 years old at the time, hatched a plan—and it wasn’t until undergoing therapy earlier this year that he realized the impact that comment, along with his reaction to it, had on his life in the decades that followed.
“That’s when ‘the other guy’ started to appear,” he says, referring to the wise cracking, “larger-than-life” public persona he created to hide behind that eventually eclipsed his core sense of self.
“I decided I’d be entertaining and make people love me before they noticed I was fat. I used to refer to is as ‘stealing the thunder.’ I’d make fun of myself before anyone else could.”
For more on Kevin Smith’s mental health journey, pick up the latest issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands Friday.
“And when I went looking for the authentic me,” he says, describing his mental health crisis that erupted one morning last January, “I was terrified to find that there was nothing there.”
If you or someone you know needs mental health help, text “STRENGTH” to the Crisis Text Line at 741-741 to be connected to a certified crisis counselor.
source: people.com
