Memoirs of a Fat Girl

Strong women don't cry. This is what I told myself. A strong woman doesn't cry over anything, because strong women don't have time for tears. This is nothing. Nothing at all.

I kept telling myself that every time I talked to Sandy. I didn't cry when he thanked me for still being in his life. He needed the support of all the important people, you know. I didn't cry when the families pooled together to buy them house, so the baby could have a decent place to grow up. I didn't cry when they moved in together, when he told me about her monthly progression, or when he announced the birth of his son.

I didn't cry months after I'd stopped calling him, though I still missed him, because I knew the best thing to do for everyone involved was just disappear.

I know better now. It isn't that strong women don't cry; strong women know when to cry.

I should have cried. I should have spent a weekend with the curtains drawn, crying my heart out, surrounded by all my girlfriends while they bitched and insulted him 'til the cows came home. I should have used up boxes of tissue, drowned my sorrows in a tub of Chocolate Chocolate Chip, and wallowed like it was going out of style. Anything to get it all OUT, because I shouldn't have let it rot inside me.

I didn't do that. Instead, I went back to life as usual, and ignored whatever hurt was there. I just told myself that it didn't exist.

If this had happened to me in my twenties, or after I'd had more significant experiences with men and the swine they can be, I might have handled things differently. I would have walked away a lot sooner, that's for sure. Nowadays, if I was seeing a man I was really into and he told me he'd had another girlfriend all along, I'd tell him to fuck off and throw a drink in his face.

If that same man told me he'd knocked up someone else, I'd tell him to fuck off in ten different languages, and throw my entire meal in his face. You play me, the least I can do is pound on your humiliation buttons, and rake up the dry cleaning bill. And from this point on, stay the hell away from me.

What did I know about love at 17? Diddly squat. I knew I could love, and be loved back. Heartbreak, that was something else. And to be fair, the whole situtation had "extenuating circumstance" written all over it. When you're in high school you usually dump someone because you've outgrown each other. How often is a baby involved?

I thought about it like this: by the twelfth grade, three boys had played very important roles in my life, Chris, Sandy and Asad. I'll tell you about Asad later. The point was, things with Chris had never left the ground, while Sandy and Asad had been fiascoes, to say the least. At this point, I determined that I'd had three runs, mostly bad, and I had to stop thinking about boys so much. Period. Either I wasn't prepared for them, or they weren't prepared for me.

I'd chosen not to cry, to be strong, and brush it all aside. But part of growing up is realizing that if you don't handle things one way, you handle them another way, often without even realizing it. This is what I did.

For starters, my social life was cut down drastically. I barely went out with Georgia, or anyone else for that matter. At least that made things easier because now I didn't have to sneak out anymore.

Work & studies became a lot more important. I was on the student council that year, the workload in general was heavier, and I'd finally met the bains of my academic career: Chemistry and Physics. Trying to figure out those ridiculous formulas and just how many times the pendulum swayed became my new Friday night companions.

I also started to eat more. A lot more.

Snacking was a big thing for me. I'd get home, and sometimes grab a bite before settling in to homework. Then I'd have dinner, then I'd work late into the night, always with a cheese sandwich, some olives, or even cookies on the table beside me.

Much like my life, my regular meals weren't balanced. I never ate breakfast, but bought something fatty at school before classes started. Lunch was usually a sandwich, and dinner was junk. Mom worked the afternoon shift those years, Dad came home later and Oli lived at school. I never made myself a healthy meal because I just didn't want to.

I stopped taking gym, too. In fact, I stopped doing anything physical, really. And little by little, slowly but surely, I started to gain weight.

I don't blame Sandy for the turn I took. I know I was medicating myself with food for my loss, but somewhere along the line, it became a habit, too. I was holding the fork. Just me.

That was the catalyst, though. Still, I just blame myself. Maybe if he hadn't even had been a part of my life, something else would have started it. Maybe I wasn't the strongest person in the world, and something like that was just waiting to happen to me. I don't know.

And so to answer the question to all of you who know me in person, who didn't know me then, but are always saying things like, "You look fantastic!" or, "Why do you call it 'Memoirs of a Fat Girl?' You are so not fat!", I am telling you that once a fat girl, always a fat girl. Even if you are slim on the outside, she will always be with you on the inside.

So to those of you that did know me then, you know the road I travel, and how far I have come. But if you didn't know me then, you should know that the reason I say these things is because by the time it was my turn to start University, I weighed 240lbs.