Again. The disappointment. The sinking feeling in the gut. The hate. The person standing in front of me was an embodiment of everything I loathed, everything I didn’t want to be. And yet, it was me. When I moved, so did she. I watched her bring her hand up to her abdomen and pinch an inch of fat. I sighed angrily, the corners of my lips clenching themselves downwards and my tongue wrestle to the roof of my mouth until my face started to ache in a deadlock cramp. I hate myself. My reflection was doing me no favours. She looked like she was mocking me; like she was smiling sadistically at me and shooting me down with poisoned arrows. She was ugly. Her eyes were too small and streaky to be pretty. Her double chin annoyed the fuck out of me; it just made her look more obese. Her shoulders were wide enough to be a man’s. Her arms were just utterly fat and undesirable. Her abdomen was covered in layer over layer of fat, wobbly and covered in stretch marks. Her legs were coated in obvious chunks of cellulite, and her thighs would not not touch no matter how she tried.
I grunted in disappointment at her, but mostly at me. I brushed my wet hair back as I moved away from the mirror, watching her disappear. I didn’t want to see her. I didn’t want to be her. Why couldn’t I just be perfect like all those other girls, those girls who have perfect chins, large eyes, nice shoulders and arms, long, skinny legs, and flat stomachs? Why couldn’t I have been with less bodily hair? Always the embarrassment, as if I wasn’t already manly enough to begin with.
I had been starving myself for 2 months now. All I had today was a glass of water. All I had yesterday was half a slice of bread. All I had the day before that was a bowl of cereal. Even then, I had thrown up everything. I hated the feeling of feeling full. It made me feel so much fatter than I already was, and just made me more disgusted with myself. I liked the feeling of being hungry because I really felt like I deserved to suffer for it. I hated being fat. And what do you do to something you hate? You punish it, you want to watch it hurt and you want to watch it suffer. I let myself get this fat, so I have to punish myself for it. Nobody likes a fat girl. To everyone, I’m a bloody whale, I’m someone who doesn’t deserve to be treated like the pretty, tall girl next to me. I’m not someone who has lots of friends, I’m definitely not attractive and I have never had a boy tell me he likes me. I am fifteen and all my confident, popular classmates and seniors can brag about their relationships and loves, and all I can talk about is how all my crushes have trampled over my heart because I never told them, because I didn’t deserve them. I don’t deserve anyone. I am the worst kind of person in this world. My stomach growled but I just slapped it and mumbled, “You don’t get to fucking eat anything until you become a size 4.”
I slipped on a blouse which was labeled size 16.
