Pieces Of Me [an online journal of sorts]

Entry Thirty-five: eat

I don't respond well to peer pressure. 

You know how sometimes you make friends that you really like, but you just don't like what they do or what they make you do? It could be completely unintentional on their part, but that's not stopping you from doing what they're doing just because you don't want to be the odd one out.  

Here's the funny thing though: when you think of peer pressure, you think of, I don't know, people smoking just because their friends started smoking first; you think of people picking up drinking and doing drugs because their friends were the ones who introduced the damn things to them; you think of people turning into this twisted, mean version of themselves just because their friends thought it was lame to be nice to others and be actual human beings. But with me, that's not the case at all. Heck, it's not even my friends who are pressuring me to do things I would rather not do. With me, it's my cousins. 

There are a couple of things you should know about me and my cousins: 1) I am an incredibly insecure person, and 2) my cousins most definitely aren't aware of that. Or at least I don't think they know just how extensively bad my self-esteem is. 

So, what do I do? 

I do my damn best to hide it from them. 

My cousins and my sister and I have this tradition we started just this Ramadan of staying up 'til the early hours, watching TV or playing Wii, and eating. And when I say eating, I mean a lot of eating. We get all these different kinds of junk food and sodas and leftover food and put them on the table and just dig in. This doesn't sound too bad, I know. It might sound actually fun, which it is, most of the time. 

Don't get me wrong: I love food and I love my cousins, but that doesn't mean I like them put together. Hell, sometimes I don't even like either of them on their own.  

Anyway, during these little gatherings we have, we eat a lot. I know why they do: they're fucking hungry when they eat. I, on the other hand, am not. I'm not even craving food in the slightest. But it's just, there's a shitload of food in front of you, and everyone around you has their mouth filled with something, and you just can't sit there and watch them eat, even if you're not hungry. And here's my problem: I can't just watch. If I don't eat, they'll ask why. And when they do, I'll have to say I don't want to, and there's no way I'm saying that because I'd be lying if I said that.  

So I don't say anything and dig in because there's this paranoid little version of me in my head telling me they'd see straight through my lie and know that I don't want to eat, not because I'm not really hungry, which is mostly true, but because I don't want to get fatter than I already am. And then they'll know I'm trying to lose weight, and they'll know I don't like the way I look, and they'll know how pathetically insecure I am, and they'll probably think I'm stupid for feeling that way. 

I like my cousins -I really do- but they don't get it, you know? It's hard being around them because sometimes they act really bitchy and superficial, and I hate that. We watch soaps on TV, and I swear to God they spend most of the time complaining about how the actors look and how that particular actress has a huge butt. I mean, I don't mind them noticing these sort of things or not liking how a certain person looks because people have different tastes and likes, but when it's all they focus on? People aren't pieces of meat you just need to glance at to figure out whether they're good or bad. People are complex human beings with stories and secrets and feelings and thoughts, and if you can't bring yourself to look past their looks, you're willingly depriving yourself from the amazing individuals they could quite possibly be. It makes me think if they took notice of my bulging stomach and jiggly thighs, that would be all they say. That they wouldn't see me. 

So I eat. I eat because I don't want them to think I don't want to eat because I don't want to gain weight. I eat because I don't want them to use that against me - to use my looks and my feelings towards my looks against me. 

I eat because I don't want them to know I might just be as superficial as they are, after all.