If so, this story might resonate with you.

I was born with a condition some people call pigeon chest. It’s where your breastbone sticks out further than normal, making your chest look pushed forward. It bothered me a lot because it was very noticeable and made me deeply uncomfortable taking off my shirt during weekend swims in my little town.

And in a small town, kids—like all kids, really—can be innocently judgy.

A Pool Full of Snakes—and Insecurities

Our “pool” wasn’t a typical pool; it was more of a large, open-air concrete tank used to store water for irrigation. It was usually murky and teeming with frogs—and their predators, mostly small snakes. These snakes didn’t really bother us. We just sort of pretended they weren’t there. For a flimsy sense of safety, I’d toss in a red ping-pong ball first, just to see if a snake might go for it. (Don’t ask me why—I just thought snakes hated red.)

Anyway, enough about swimming—back to the existential crisis my pigeon chest was causing me.

Luckily, the other kids never quite managed to come up with a catchy nickname for it, so I was spared that particular embarrassment. But I was my own worst critic. My mom was the one I’d always run to, asking her, “Do you think it’ll ever go away?” And she’d say, “Of course, honey. You’ll grow, and you won’t even notice it’s there.”

Every single day, I’d wake up and head straight for the mirror. It became a daily ritual, a habit I still have. These days, I’m looking for skin issues or other little things—different age, different concerns, you know? The pigeon chest isn’t such a big deal anymore because I’ve built up some muscle, which makes it less obvious.

Advice That Turned Into a Hidden Burden

Back then, though, that fear and discomfort were pretty clear to anyone around me. I had a friend with his own noticeable issue—ears that kind of stuck out, like Dumbo’s. He was self-conscious about them too, but we never discussed these things, even though we were both wrestling with body image. Still, I bet, much like I confided in my mom, my friend had probably talked to his family about his ears.

His dad, however—who, like many dads, seemed to have a good sense of the insecurities kids face—noticed I was always sitting hunched over. He asked me, “Joe, what’s the matter? Why are you sitting like that? It’s not good for your shoulders.”

I mumbled something like, “I just like sitting this way.” He insisted I correct my posture and told me to open up my shoulders. Reluctantly, I did. But I felt so exposed and uncomfortable that I finally blurted out, “I hate how I look like this! Can’t you see my chest?”

He looked at me kindly and said, “Yes, I can, and it doesn’t look bad at all. You’re worrying way too much about it. Soon, when you grow up—and you will—you won’t care nearly as much. Once you put on a little weight, you’ll be fine.”

That conversation was meant to be reassuring. I didn’t feel any better about myself that day, not really, but I walked away thinking I had a solution. Add weight. That sounded easy enough. So, from then on, I started overeating without a second thought, and sure enough, the pounds piled on.

The Second Insecurity I Didn’t See Coming

A couple of years later, I was chubby, sporting a noticeable potbelly, even though I was nowhere near being a dad. The pigeon chest was finally hidden under layers of fat (with what little muscle I had buried underneath), but now I felt terrible about how I looked. I still couldn’t bring myself to take off my shirt. Nothing had really changed, except now I felt even worse.

So, I’d traded one problem for two: the pigeon chest and all this extra weight.

That extra weight didn’t stick around forever; I lost it eventually. But that whole ordeal taught me to appreciate what I’d had all along. It made me appreciate my actual body and realize that what truly matters is how I see myself—not how other people might define me, or whether they accept me.

The Psychological Knot You Can’t See in the Mirror

I often think about how many of my decisions—how many of the things I say—are driven by something buried deep inside. Some psychological knot I’ve never fully untied. And I wonder how much that internal tension shapes me into a version of myself I don’t particularly like—a version that’s harder to live with than if I simply accepted who I am: the missteps, the misunderstandings, the flawed assumptions I’ve made about others and about myself.

Sometimes the only way to accept ourselves is by allowing change to happen in ways that don’t look like growth—not at first. Maybe, in some cases, becoming a seemingly “worse” version of ourselves is actually part of the process that leads to the best version later. Maybe the transformation has to look like a step backward before it ever looks like progress.

But that’s the scary part, isn’t it? What if that detour becomes the destination? What if the “temporary” bad version sticks, and we never make it to the other side? That, I think, is the greatest risk of all—not the falling itself, but getting too comfortable with the fall.

Still, maybe becoming worse, in the eyes of others—or even in our own—is sometimes just the price of eventually becoming whole.

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