For most of my life, mirrors were my enemy. I didn’t avoid them casually; I avoided them with precision. Bathroom mirrors, full-length mirrors, shop windows reflecting a distorted image of myself—I steered clear of them all. Each reflection was a reminder that I was too much for the world: too big, too slow, too undesirable.
By Peter8 months ago in Fiction
It’s funny how life can make you feel trapped—not by circumstances, not by society, but by your own body. I didn’t grow up thinking I’d be “fat.” I just… existed. My body felt like someone else’s, a cage I couldn’t escape, a uniform that didn’t fit the life I imagined for myself.
It wasn’t a Monday morning miracle. It wasn’t some diet book, or kale smoothie, or Instagram influencer’s “miracle” routine that made me change. I didn’t wake up one day to see my reflection and think, Wow, I look great. No. The truth is far messier. I lost weight because, one day, I finally stopped despairing.
TUS NUA – ch 52 New Beginnings – Mia and Midnight (*)(*)(*) Finola watched as Ali, her family, Jules, and Sybil entered her now vacant office and saw Alistar approach. “Cousin, my dearest, will you listen?”
By Margaret Brennan8 months ago in Fiction
The alarm rang at 5:42 a.m., the same shrill digital scream it had made every weekday for the past six years. Lena reached over me to turn it off.
By Jenny 8 months ago in Fiction
My husband never complained. Not when the landlord raised the rent again. Not when his hours were cut without warning. Not when life narrowed into something smaller than what we had imagined.
The call came at 2:17 a.m. I knew it was bad news before I answered. No one calls at that hour to say life is going well. My phone vibrated on the nightstand, its screen glowing in the dark like an accusation. For a moment, I let it ring. I was afraid that if I didn’t answer, whatever reality waited on the other side would remain suspended, unreal.
When I first met Daniel, he was arguing with a vending machine. “Come on,” he muttered, slapping the side of it. “You can’t just eat my last dollar like that.”
The first thing the restaurant gave me was hunger. Not the kind that lives in the stomach. The kind that lives in the future.
The first thing New York taught me was indifference. Not cruelty. Not kindness. Indifference. I arrived on a gray morning in February, carrying two suitcases and a body that had always arrived before me. At JFK Airport, people moved with the speed of purpose. They walked past me without slowing down, without looking twice, without calculating my size the way people had done all my life.
The first thing I learned about being fat was not hunger. It was silence. I was twelve when my aunt stopped introducing me by my name.
PROLOGUE — The Sea Swallowed Me London Docklands — Years Ago The water didn’t look like water at night. It looked like a decision.
By Novel8 months ago in Fiction
