Mirror Mass

She had the humor of an angel with a crooked halo with a face like the rock the halo had been broken on. She stood by me in everything and would defend me to a fault. We would stand side by side in the reflection of restaurant windows, and while passerby stared at her face in rude curiosity, I would silently mock them, knowing what her true flaw was: the flat expanse of midriff that she modestly hid behind her shirt.

It wasn’t the flatness that annoyed me but more the lack of effort that went into keeping it so. I watched her down five scoops of ice cream from and still be hungry for more. I saw her steadily eat through five plates at the buffet. I was audience to the destruction of her own brothers in a pizza-eating competition. And yet, her waistline was never a true witness to her digestive intake of calories. But my body is not like hers. My body couldn’t just make calories puff away with the strum of a heavenly harp, instead stabbing them into place with no thought of ever letting it go.

Holly Folke said there were ways I could let it go. And I wouldn’t even have to give up my favorite foods! That if I just ate the right ratio of fats to protein to carbs, that my body would be reprogrammed to burn fat instead of keeping it. She said that as long as I ate more fats and proteins than carbs, then I would lose that extra poundage, gain that extra muscle, look more like my angel of a friend with the broken halo than I’ve ever looked like before. But my favorite foods are carbs. I crave the starchy and savory goodness that comes from complex sugars and grains. She was half Italian and loved pasta and bread as much as I do, and I LOVE bread. I LOVE rice, and crackers, and tortillas and muffins and potatoes and all of it.

I loved carbs as much as I hated shopping for clothes. My joy in tasting umami was equal to my dread at entering the changing stall at Kohls. I can hear my mom’s voice.

Try this on. You look great. Just get it. No this makes you look fat. This isn’t right for you. Why are you being so picky? I’m just trying to help you. If you don’t try this on now, we’ll have to come back. Just look. Just try it. I don’t care. Here’s some more pants to try. Don’t make a scene. We’re not leaving until we find something.

In the triple mirrors that ganged up on me in the stall, I saw three images of myself that looked like the bread loaves or chocolate cake I enjoyed but three times as unappetizing. There was no clothing size that fit me, no measurement that complimented my body shape. The shoulders would be too small, the arms too long, the chest too tight, the waist too low, the stomach too clingy, the hem too baggy. Every piece of clothing my mom proffered through the stall door was another testament to the unconformity of my body that would never make me as happy as eating a bag of tortilla chips with cheese.

Clothing sizes are more like green apples: hard to bite into, harsh to the tongue. They are the most common thing outside of sliced bread to find in the market of your social media. We try to cover up the sour truth in the caramel sauces of drapery, but the core of the matter remains: your clothing size defines you. A green apple will always be a green apple. The world will put the least amount of value on your person as they do to green apples on a shelf. You wish for the sweetness of favorable numbers that other people have, hoping that someday your report would ripen to numbers that reflected the body of your dreams. But for now, your size is nothing but undesirable.

Apples are made up of 85% water. A diet that consists of 85% water. I’ll learn to fill my stomach with 85% water. With 85% less of carbs. I’ll pretend I can’t eat carbs. That eating them will make me puke.

The taste of apples makes me puke.

I know the post-taste of apple.

It tastes like saliva.

It tasted like iron, bitter on my tongue. I was hungry. So hungry. And the only thing available to comfort my shriveled stomach was that bottled water. Metallic, hard-tasting bottled water. The kind that comes in a batch of fifty, wrapped in plastic that squeals and screeches when you move it from the shelf to your shopping cart. I drizzle a bit of water in my mouth, noting the taste of the metal shelf it came from matching the metal taste of hunger on my tastebuds. Why? Why am I doing this? Animal crackers and pretzels and brownies are just at the end of the main school hallway, sitting in the dank dark prison that is my locker. It's a prison to keep them in and keep me out. They sit on the floor of my uranium-colored locker, a temptation of love. From my mom who makes me a lunch every day that I only eat a quarter of. From the animal crackers that would smile at me as I push them down my gullet.

But no. Remember. Remember, the last time you looked in the mirror on the bathroom wall and saw your reflection in the silver-backed glass. And the face looking back at you was one that refused to wear make-up and was the breeding ground of blackheads and pimples. And the face looking back was fat and round and had a crooked smile that looked worse after the braces.

And the face looking back had greasy hair atop a wide forehead. And then that face looked down on the scale that its body was standing on, and the three-digit number staring back reminded you of the other things that were wrong with you.

You used to do it every morning.

5:00 AM – Snooze your alarm once

5:15 AM – Snooze your alarm twice

5:30 AM – Finally fumble for your glasses and stumble to the bathroom

5:32 AM – Poop. Don’t forget to poop. Poop is weight that doesn’t count as your actual weight.

5:35 AM – Step on the scale. Remind yourself that there’s probably more poop in your rectum causing a faulty measurement.

5:36 AM – Stare at the mirror above the scale and pop all the zits. If you pop them now, your face will swell, but will disappear by the time you get to seminary.

5:40 AM – Return to your room to pick what to wear. You MUST get this right. If the shirt is too tight, your chest will stick out, or your stomach will stick out, or your arms will look fat. If the shirt is too loose, your chest will still stick out, and you’ll still look fat. If the pants are too low then you won’t be able to bend over. If the shirt has too much cotton, you’ll have sweat stains from your pits. If there’s too much wool, you’ll be itching all day. If you choose the wrong bra, everything will move around too much during gym class.

6:00 AM – Brush your crooked smile, wash your zit popped face, go to the bathroom again, pack your backpack.

6:10 AM – Eat breakfast. Make sure not to wake Mom or she’ll insist on making you something that you know will have too many calories. Just a slice of bread will do.

6:12 AM – Fix your hair. Make sure it has the right part, that’s it’s not too greasy, not too flat, not too staticky, not too weird. It’s definitely weird but pretend that you fixed it.

6:15 AM – Grab your jacket that you wish you could wear all day to hide the horrible clothing decision you chose from your closet, pull up the hood to hide your horrible decision to pop zits in the morning, bundle out into the cold to ride to seminary where you will fall asleep before class to avoid thinking of the thoughts that will run through your classmates’ minds when they see you looking like the same rag-a-muffin bumhead you always look like, without fail.

The ultimate characteristic of misery is that it loves company. And not just the company of others but that of other miserable memories. When I cried myself to sleep at night, memories of the day flashed in the mirror of my mind, reminding me that not only was I fat and ugly and undesirable, but that I had a horrible personality, that my sisters didn’t love me, that I had no friends, that I was stupid and mean and made poor decisions and that my metabolism was laughable and that my smile was crooked and that I wasn’t athletic enough and my boobs were too big and that I was so so so so hungry.

And when I had cried myself out of tears, the mirror of my mind would cast one final reflection to my dream stage: that of a young girl curled in her bed, scared to see herself in something other than a mirror.