The Weight.

She caught a bout of depression, and her body wasted away with it.

“You’ve become SO skinny,” a friend, who hadn’t seen her in a month said. “I didn’t know you had weight to lose to begin with, what the fuck. Are you OKAY??”

“Yes, jesus, yes.”

“Are you SURE?”

She looked at herself in the mirror that evening, and she saw what her friend saw. Her face, that had finally begun to blossom when she met him, over wine and high-carb snacks, had wilted again.

She stuffed her face with mac and cheese, and beer, rice and potatoes that week. Anything to make those cheeks come back, to bring that glow back. Where was the face she’d grown to dislike less?

She checked her weight that weekend, and she’d LOST an extra kilogram.

“I have been through what you’ve been through, except with gaining weight,” her therapist told her.

“I’ve been through what you’ve been through, except with gaining weight, and I grew to accept it and cherish it as another part of myself,” another friend texted her.

She added protein shakes to her breakfast routine, she checked her weight again that weekend. Her weight stayed the same. She took off her jacket. Her weight dropped by .8 kg.

“I want to lose three kgs before my wedding,” a glowing bride-to-be said, and she looked at the girl’s glowing, fucking radiant face in astonishment.

“GIVE me those three kgs,” she cried.

When people ignored her, or it seemed like they were making fun of her, she felt like the skinny seventh grader she’d been all over again – just there, that sweet, skinny, harmless girl, hardly a force to be reckoned with or bothered about.

“TAKE my four kgs,” another woman, on keto for the past month, said in a fit of despair over the phone to her. “For godssake it’s not that hard to gain weight, just eat a lot of cake.”

She stocked up her fridge with almond pudding and a birthday cake. Her weight stayed the same, except her dislike for shoveling food into her mouth was increasing by the day. Which amazed her, she used to love food.

“I feel like if I were a little thinner, I’d be okay, you know?” another girl, a girl she idolized, said to her. “I just feel like I’d be happier as it’s been a goal for so long.”

She left her phone behind at work one weekend. The buzz of plans, faces, texts, camera on portrait mode paused – for two days that felt like eternity.

Her brain breathed. Her body rested. She did not hyperfocus on hitting 2000 calories, on making it to every meal. She cooked turmeric and chick peas pasta with cheese, alfredo sauce, walnuts and honey. She did not think about a text from him that she’d never get, or view her life through his lens, or any one else’s lens. She wrote. She read. She deep-conditioned her hair.

She breathed. Her mind and body felt massaged.

She skipped dessert. She forgot to swear. She slept like a baby.

She just was. And everything felt okay.

 

 

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