Pity Party

Chatting with my dad, sitting with one leg tucked under the other on the couch. He's asking about our day trip to the beach and detailing the logistics for our up-coming camping vacation with our cousins. I look down in my lap for a moment, but my eyes stop on my thighs bulging out of my denim shorts. I'm so pale I practically glow-in-the-dark and everyone knows white makes everything look bigger, kitchens and waistlines alike. My thighs don't look like they belong to a 20-year-old, they look grotesque and way too old for me.

My stomach is a huge jiggling lump. It juts off my abdomen in the most disgusting way. Handfuls of flesh on my sides, innie belly button, rolls when I lean over. Big bubble butt, cellulite thighs, ugly wonky knees, short legs, pale too-wide feet. Fat wrists, no visible bones, fleshy forearms, pudgy childlike fingers, untoned biceps, round fat shoulders. Double chin, baby fat cheeks, The stretch marks on my hips and breasts are shameful white lines on my pale pink body, only making the fat more obvious. I am the fattest girl in the apartment, fattest member of my family, the ugliest person in every damn picture.

At the beach I spent all my time watching the people walk by and judging their bodies. The skinny girls made me jealous, the fat ones got my pity, scorn, and empathy. The kids made me wish I hadn't grown up fat. My life would be so much better, so much happier, if I hadn't been addicted to junk food, if I'd grown up pretty and likable. My personality is so bland, it's not fair that I have to look ugly too. Aren't fat girls supposed to be funny and smart? I got the worst of everything. It's so hard to keep up conversation when your head is full of self-comparisons and self-pity. There's no socially acceptable way to talk about the thoughts that plague me day in and day out.

Looking down at my thighs, I felt the chicken and diet dr pepper churn in my stomach. I excused myself from the couch to go chug a glass of water and throw up everything left in my stomach. This life is torture.