My Body Story

I’m a fat little girl and I love food too much. I have chubby fingers and shining eyes and rosy cheeks. Problem is, chubby means fat, and fat is bad. Dieting is part of my early life, imitating what I see and hear. Unless you are constantly disappearing, you are not enough. My friend and I make diet pacts in Kindergarten, meticulously plan our packed lunches, and work out to 80’s exercise tapes. I am taught that my dreams are worthless and the only important thing in life is being slender, sleek and lean, skinny.

I begin to learn that I am an unacceptably fat athlete, too slow, too lazy, too much in too many ways. I am disgusting.

My tummy jiggles when I walk, my thighs rub together when between them should live an ocean. Thick arms and two chins and a whirlwind of Sabina, this is not okay.

Obese is the word whispered behind my back. Obese, or somewhere close.

A progression of failed diets, I refuse to go out because someone will see my stomach. People tell me the way I am is enough, but their actions never match their words. Unless you are constantly disappearing, you are not enough. I spend hours poring over low-carb cookbooks and magic websites that teach me how not to eat, how to be a wafer-thin girl, like the little kids I was always jealous of in elementary school. I count calories and inches and self-harm scars, yet I cannot stay away from chocolate.

When I finally start losing weight I become a miracle: perfect little girl, once just a little too big. How do you do it? How do you do it?

My body cracks under the strain of diet and training in two sports and self hatred. I gain injuries and surgeries and weight.

Of course I gain weight.

Obese, again whispered behind my back. Or somewhere close. My sport is tennis and in tennis, “love” means zero. Zero is all I love: zero calories, zero pounds, zero problem.

I cry for hours a day because of the size of my jeans or the way my stomach looks in a dress, wondering why I don’t look like the women in Nutrisystem commercials.

Weight loss is beautiful; weight gain, tragic. I am my number, scale like the balance measuring my soul against the Feather of Truth.

My self esteem drops, and eventually, so do the pounds. On and on and on, years in a cycle with no fulfillment. I am lost in a world of numbers, restricting and binging and losing and gaining throughout high school. Tiny girl, have you lost weight? It’s all I want to hear.

I refuse to wear real clothes, or anything revealing. I revel in my privacy. My body is only mine to hate.

When I am happy with my body, I am close to death. I cannot concentrate or think or breathe. I cannot walk up the stairs or down the hall or drive to school. My heart beats too quickly, perpetual anxiety over every little thing. I am tearful and tired and unhappy, but at least my BMI is low.

But my body contains a mind longing for more, and it survives despite everything. My body contains a mind that thinks, and I think I should love it a little more for that.

Someday my abused body will heal. Someday my mind will heal and the desire to be sickly and dainty and fragile will dissipate. Someday my body will be free and my mind will follow. Someday I will learn to accept and maybe even love my natural thighs and touching calves and squishy arms and healthy stomach. Someday I might feel comfortable and safe in my body; someday I might not feel the pull to eat less and less and less and challenge my thought that you are what you eat--and if you eat nothing, you’ll be nothing. Maybe I’ll be able to stop desiring to be nothing.

Someday I will be okay.