Total pages in book: 112
Estimated words: 107944 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 540(@200wpm)___ 432(@250wpm)___ 360(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 107944 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 540(@200wpm)___ 432(@250wpm)___ 360(@300wpm)
After dinner, I went to the bathroom attached to my bedroom and stared at myself in the mirror. I took off my T-shirt and slid out of my sweatpants. I stood there in my bra and panties as tears rolled down my cheeks. My hands moved across my body, across my skin, and gripped the extra weight. I pinched it, I bunched it up, I hated it. I hated it. I hated it.
Me.
I hated myself.
Fat ass.
Disgusting.
He’s cheating on her.
Did you see the size of her thighs?
I pulled out the scale from under the sink and dusted it off. I stepped onto it. Two hundred and forty-five pounds. I was two hundred and thirty when the school year started, not that long ago. How did that happen?
Fat ass.
Disgusting.
He’s cheating on her.
Did you see the size of her thighs?
I threw up.
I hugged the toilet seat as everything inside me came up. I threw up until I was dry heaving. Until my eyes watered. Until everything felt dizzying.
I stood from the floor, brushed my teeth, then tossed mouthwash into my mouth and wiped the tears from my eyes. I spat out the mouthwash.
I stepped back on the scale.
Two hundred and forty-four pounds.
One pound down?
How was that possible?
I put on my pajamas and climbed into bed. Aiden hadn’t stopped texting me. He’d already booked a flight and was on his way to the airport. He kept updating me about when he would get home. It was two in the morning when there was a knock on my window. I went to open it to find my best friend, my person, standing there with the most heartbreaking stare I’d ever seen in my life.
I turned on my lights, then opened my window. The chilled breeze brushed against my face.
“Hey, you.” He smiled, but I felt his sadness.
“Hey, you,” I replied.
“Can I…?” He gestured into my room.
I stepped to the side. “Yes.”
He climbed through my window. He stood beside me and wrapped his arms around my body. I tried to wiggle out of his embrace, uncomfortable with the idea of him feeling my rolls through my pajamas. It was silly because he had held me many times before, but now my mind was jumbled with other people’s thoughts that didn’t belong to me.
I always thought I was enough. The rest of the world was trying to convince me otherwise. I hated that they were winning, too. I hated that their thoughts in my head were louder than my own.
“I’m sorry,” he started.
“It’s not your fault.”
“It is. It’s happening to you because of me, and I hate that.” He took off his jacket, followed by his shoes. He rolled up his sleeves. “They’re idiots. People who feel loud and proud behind a keyboard are total dicks who just type bullshit to get likes from other miserable people.”
“Yeah, but…” My voice trembled.
“I know. It still hurts.”
I nodded. “It still hurts.”
“They made you insecure.”
“Yes.”
It wasn’t a secret to me that I was plus size. I lived in my body day in, day out. I saw all the things in every situation that non-plus size individuals probably never even thought of. When we went to restaurants, I noticed the chairs. I wondered how I would fit in them, or if it would be an embarrassing situation if said chair snapped beneath me. I never sat in lawn chairs at parties for that exact reason. I loathed airplanes, because sometimes I’d have to ask for a seat belt extender. I overthought what the strangers beside me thought about being seated beside me on the flights. I’ve walked into shopping malls and had the biggest sizes be too small. I’ve cried in dressing rooms. I’ve cried into my pillows when most of the fashion choices I’d had looked like something my grandma would wear.
But also, I’d danced in my body. I’d moved it and flourished in it. On my best days, my body was there for me. On my worst days, it carried my sadness around. I knew my body. I knew its pros and cons. I knew how it squatted and how it stretched. I knew of its abilities, its strengths and weaknesses. It wasn’t a new relationship—the one with me and my body. We had our ups and downs, but that was the thing—it was ours.
Now, it felt as if the rest of the world had a say on my body without knowing the history behind every single inch and every single pound. That brought about a whole new level of uncertainty. My body and mind hadn’t even had the time to figure out how to process the whole situation.
Society made me doubt myself in a way that I’d never had. Sure, I’d had bad days in my body, but I also had great ones. Yet the world judged me from a few photographs. They didn’t know me but pretended to know my body.