Sticks and Tubes

The result to shopping for clothes is always the same results...well almost always. The clothes didn't fit...they look pretty, but ugly on me...the arm holes were meant for skinny stick arms and pants and waistlines for small tubed tummies. I wanted anything...anything at all that would make me feel at least a little bit pretty, to myself, or, preferably, skinny.

Visits to the doctor is always the same...repetitive. After awhile, one would become sick of going at all. You're short for your age as a girl. I know. You know your overweight. I know. You should go on a diet. I've tried. You should exercise more. I see. Okay, time for some shots. Whoopee. Oh, and let's not forget my doctor telling my parents how to feed us next to control what we eat.

My cousin Bianca recently lost a lot of weight going on a diet. And she is perfectly healthy and skinny. She is one of the envies of my mom and me. Even worse is going to school and seeing almost every teenage girl with skinny jeans and long shirts so tight, they show how skinny she is. Stick-like bodies looking perfect and beautiful in every outfit, air passing through between their legs.

I stand in front of the mirror in the bathroom every time I go to shower. I stare at myself to examine what looks pretty about me and what I need to disguise or get rid of....improve of myself, to achieve that perfect self.

I need to control what I eat...I should stop eating...My parents wouldn't notice either way, especially my dad, who has already identified the fact that we all are "fat." I'm not hungry. His response: good. If I didn't have any physical activity at all, this plan would have gone out just fine. Hapkido Martial Arts. Halfway throughout this school year, I discovered if I skipped breakfast and lunch and attended class after school, result: black out in the middle of martial arts. Perhaps I should have drank more water. But it wasn't going to work. So I cut something else off. I'll skip breakfast and lunch on days I'm not going to martial arts and cut my dinner in half. I cut off the amount I ate rice.

My parents began to tell my relatives, proudly, that I was trying to go on a diet, and cut off eating rice. "Yeah, she's just like Bianca now."

Nothing changed. My weight stayed the same. No matter how much I ran in PE or on the treadmill...no matter how much I pushed myself in Hapkido...cutting my diet...The same big fat three digits came about when ever I stepped on the scale.

I stare at myself in the mirror in my room. At my body. My arms and thighs half muscle, half fat. And glare. I would start doing sit ups and ab twists, secretly while no one is looking my room, to burn off the fat on my tummy and hope the rest of the fat will go away in Hapkido. Hoping I could too look like the skinny girls and guys. Without having to disguise that my legs are at least a little bit skinny while standing, and feeling ashamed of my thighs showing off their fat, spreading across the seat while I sit. Without feeling fat wearing beautiful tops, with my arms squeezing through the short sleeves. Going down a size in jeans and not feeling depressed because my thighs are too gargantuan to fit all the way through.

I envy them all and hate it when they call themselves "fat" while standing in their skinny stick like shells.

I want all the voices to go away, telling me I'm fat. The doctor, my parents, my relatives...

Sigh...

I stand in front of a refrigerator for a moment. Perhaps I should eat something for lunch...I'm not hungry, walking away, feeling satisfied temporarily in my shorts and t-shirt, feeling around my waist and stomach that I feel a little bit skinny...at least until the next time I eat: dinner.

Perhaps I try to hard to fit in with the rest of the world. Peer pressure as one would call it. Someday I'm going to die of starvation and wonder if it was all worth it in the end. But it'll be too late by then.

I hear, you need to lose weight. I need to hear more. I need someone to tell me I look beautiful as I am. That I'm not fat. That I'm pretty. It's quite a selfish request.

All this confusion is running around in my mind about what I want.

I want to be skinny.

I want to shed it all off.