Such a pretty face
All my life they called me fat. It started in second grade or so, and I can remember putting my sandwich back in my lunchbox, half eaten, feeling ashamed of the way my body bulged through my shirt and against the waist of my pants. I had belly overhang even then.
It didn’t get any better in high school. Then, the best compliment I got on my appearance was, “You have a pretty face, and if you weren’t so big, I’d definitely do you.” That gem was spoken by Matt Thomas, 11th grader, when I was still a freshman. He said it out loud, between 4th and 5th period, in front of his friends. I wanted to die. Instead I went to history class feeling heat rising in my face and wanting to throw up.
And then there was Mitch. He was the only guy I ever had sex with in college. He didn’t want to be seen with me, and he always came over late and hurried into my dorm room when my roommate wasn’t around. He had to turn the lights off to have sex, he said, otherwise he couldn’t get his head into it.
How I later ended up married to Josh, a fitness trainer and social media “influencer”, was beyond me in the beginning. He had a six (almost eight) pack and seemed so charming at first. He told me nice things with a big smile. He said I was the best cook he’d ever met. He almost never said anything mean, except maybe when he was trying to help me watch what I ate, and even then he always told me it came from a good place.
It wasn’t until about six months after the wedding that he started to act weird, coming home late and smelling like strange perfume and getting defensive when I asked him about where he’d been. I found out he was cheating on me because one of my single friends saw his profile on an online dating site. I confronted him about it and he told me I was crazy. He said he was just looking for clients for his work, that it wasn’t sexual, that it was just marketing.
God he was so full of shit.
It was around then that I said fuckit. I started getting up at 5:30 to walk three miles every morning before work. I signed up for a yoga class three times a week. I went plant-based. The inches started melting. And then, I started to feel good about myself, which sounds bad, because my self worth shouldn’t be tied to my appearance, but my God was it a sweet relief and taste of heaven to feel my “fat clothes” start to get loose.
Three months after starting, I was down almost 20 pounds and I had more energy and I started putting up with less of Josh’s bullshit. I got myself new jeans, and they were tight, and they looked great on me. He started to make mean remarks about my weight loss, telling me it was temporary, that I’d rebound like a balloon, that I shouldn’t let it go to my head.
I still remember the Friday when Josh left his phone in the kitchen and stepped out to get the mail. His phone was unlocked, and a text message came in from a “Hot Sandra From Tinder”. She wanted to know when she could have him inside her next.
I felt my pulse quicken, and a brief swelling of rage. And then, calm came over me. Josh came back in holding the mail. I held up his phone. I said, “Who’s Sandra?”
The color left his face. I smiled. I walked past him, saying, “It’s over.”
I stepped out into the light of a brilliant sunny day and took a deep breath and wanted to cry and scream and laugh all at once. Instead I just started running. I ran to the end of the block, and then ran some more. I ran past the Safeway at the end of the neighborhood, and I felt good enough to run even more. I ran and ran until the smell of ocean was strong, and I didn’t stop until I felt the sand shifting under my sneakers. I took them off and carried them as I walked down toward the water, feeling sand between my toes. There were surfers bobbing in the water, waiting for the right swell to pass. There was the sound of a dog barking. And I knew that this was the beginning of something good for me. Something new.
