As soon as I got to school, I searched the crowds outside for my boyfriend, hoping to find him alone and away from his friends.

Wake Up Call

Today, I woke up somewhat on time. I got out of bed, I walked down the hall to use the bathroom, noticed mom was in the bathroom and walked down the stairs to the other bathroom as I muttered to myself about how I can't wait to move out, and I sat down to relieve myself. Being tired and not wanting to just go and get right back up, I sat there for a few extra seconds, maybe even a minute, and I looked around the bathroom. I checked to see if any spiders were hiding in the nooks and crannies. I checked to see if there was any socks left behind after a load of laundry. That's when I noticed what was sitting on top of the washing machine. I guess the washer and dryer and some kind of a storage area for things that have no where else to go and that's how the bathroom scale ended up there. I don't know what I was thinking, I don't know why I didn't just pan over it and then go about my business for the day, but I did. I looked right at it and I paid attention to it, and a false sense of confidence told me to jump on there and see how much weight I've lost since I last weighed myself. Lately, I've been eating whatever I wanted because my clothes have been fitting the same. I didn't think there would be any precautions for eating what I'd wanted because I was under some kind of impression that my body had hit a steady weight and it wouldn't move no matter what I ate. Well, I was wrong. My body weight is not steady. My confidence was out of no where and way out of line. And, at 7:20 in the morning, I woke up, for real.


I don't want to go into detail. There's an immense level of shame and guilt keeping me from admitting how high my number actually is. What I will say, though, is that I've hit a mark that I never thought I would hit. For the past two years, every time I weighed myself, I would feel kind of bad about the number but I'd make myself better by saying, "Oh, it's high but at least it isn't ###." Today, I couldn't say that because, by 0.8 lbs., I went past the weight of my worst nightmares.


I'll be honest, I got pretty mad at the scale at first. I picked it up, tossed it onto the washer where I found it and stomped up the steps. I became annoyed at mom when she tried to talk to me and seemed to be picking a fight. And I went upstairs and tried to go about my morning, ignoring what I just found out about myself. I made my bed, I talked baby-talk with the dog, and I looked in the mirror to do my makeup. That's when my self-conscious was through with denial. I looked in the mirror at the girl looking back at me and, not for the first time, I was disgusted. With the messy hair I'm too lazy to take care of and look after. With the double chin getting bigger and bigger. With the cheeks getting so big there's only a shadow of a face underneath. With the fat on the arms hanging down like wings. With the gut that gets forced into pants that try to slim it down. With the fat fingers that are outgrowing the engagement ring. With the fat legs that ruin pants from rubbing together. With the fat calves that make buying boots of any kind nearly impossible. And, even with the fat feet, that have bunions at twenty years old because no shoes fit right on a foot that fat. I was disgusted. For the first time in my life, I looked in the mirror and had an actual conversation with myself. I poked around at the double chin that seemed to have grown since I last paid attention to it. I poked the arm fat that wiggled around in protest. I put my pants on and observed the way my gut makes the pants look miserable and punished. And I decided I can't keep doing this.


As I continued to get ready with a new take on my body image, my mind raced in all kinds of directions. I thought about how this would be a bad time to be healthy because there's a whole bunch of leftover Chinese food in the fridge from last night's dinner. That's when I stopped myself and realized that I make too many excuses and that's how I wedged myself in this position in the first place. Just because Chinese food is there doesn't mean I have to eat it. Even if I want some, I need to set aside a small portion and not eat until it feels like my stomach is going to burst open. After I got some makeup on and started to pick out my outfit for the day, I thought about how it really is a bad time to be embarking on this journey because of the holidays coming up and how people get offended if you don't eat their desserts. But you know, that's when I thought more about it and realized that anyone in my family knows I've had a weight problem since I was a kid. If I decide to not eat their desserts one year because I'm trying to better myself as a person then I think they'd be a little less offended by it. Honestly the holidays will probably be more enjoyable this year if I decide not to eat myself sick and constantly want to take a nap. Maybe if I take it easy on the food I'll have a better time. Maybe just generally in life, if I stop eating so much and being lazy because I ate too much, things in life will start to pick up.


I finished up my morning walking to the kitchen after brushing my teeth and deciding that I'm going to have to take this journey one meal at a time. Some days when I'm home and can snack, I'm going to have to take it one hour at a time. There will be mistakes, there will be cheat days, and I will disappoint myself. Honestly, though, I need to take control. It would be great to look at current pictures of myself and think that I look great instead of deleting all but one because I feel that I look terrible. I don't want to look at pictures of my in ninth and tenth grade and wish I still looked that way. It's time to do something about my weight once and for all. It won't be easy. It's going to take a lot of hard work and self control but I have to start now. I want to wear a beautiful wedding dress and not some sort of lumpy frumpy one they make for plus sized brides. I don't want to have to spend tons of money on clothes because the only high end clothing stores for plus sized women are expensive. I don't want to hate being intimate with Wes because I feel insecure about how I look.


Lately, Wes has been giving up soda. You used to see him fill a trash bag with empty soda cans in a few days. Lately, he's been drinking a lot of water and I've noticed it becoming a natural thing. He doesn't even think about it anymore. He has soda he could drink, he just reaches for water instead. His face has been clearing up a lot and he seems to have more energy.

Dear Next Guy:

If there ever is a next guy, there are some things you need to know.

I've had bad.

I've had worse.

And I've also had damn near perfect. Hopefully, you'll fall somewhere different within the spectrum, somewhere I've never been loved before. I've been used, I've been abused, I've been loved and left, and I've loved and lost. I hope you understand that each adventure I allowed my heart to lead me on took me to dangerously beautiful places. There are bruises on my heart, scars even. It's been broken only to be fixed. It's been damaged only to be changed. My heart has been right, it's been wrong, and it's been confused beyond right and wrong into a gray area of hope and prayer. Just know that my heart is like a journal whose pages cannot be burned. The memories cannot be forgotten and no lobotomy can fry away all the feelings it's had. 

Avdiciro

     Avdiciro pulls into the driveway and notices a white car he's never seen before parked outside his girlfriend's house along the front sidewalk. He parks his car in front of her garage and looks around to see if anyone might be lurking around the area but the neighborhood is quiet this Saturday morning. He removes his keys and gets out of his car, fixing his tie in the reflection in the car window before heading to the garage door. He hopes Morgan, his girlfriend, is ready to go by now. It's her cousin's wedding, after all, and he doesn't want them to be late.

"Morgan, I think your neighbors are parking in front of your house again. Do you want me to knock on some do-" Avdiciro abandons his sentence when he sees a familiar face sitting on Morgan's couch.

It takes him a few minutes before he recognizes the guy's dirty blonde curls and icy blue eyes.

"Hello." He says to Morgan's rather recent ex-boyfriend.

He doesn't want to be overly friendly, as he doesn't like the guy and views him as possible competition, but he doesn't want to be rude and risk displeasing Morgan.

"Hey." The ex says simply.

Avdiciro meanders his way to the kitchen and nervously checks the refrigerator for nothing in particular. The ex just sits on the couch and watches TV like he's exactly where he belongs. Thinking back, Avdiciro remembers Morgan saying she bought the house after the two had broken up because she wanted completely new scenery. The ex looks like he's been in this living room thousands of times before. For a moment, Avdiciro worries maybe he has been in this living room before - behind Avdiciro's back. Even though he isn't a live-in boyfriend, he feels really heated at the idea Morgan might have invited another guy into her house behind his back and possibly had an affair.

Avdiciro takes a deep breath and realizes what he's saying. He's a personal trainer. Perfecty sculpted physically and financially set for life, as he comes from money. This ex-boyfriend is more than a little pudgy and doesn't exactly make a decent living. After all, Avdiciro has already spoiled Morgan with enough for her to know that he's a once-in-a-lifetime kind of companion, one that she'd be crazy to give up.

Avdiciro closes the refrigerator when he hears heels clacking on the wooden floors in the hallway. When Morgan appears in front of him in an adorable dark grey dress and

Untitled

    At the end of a day's work, the clock seems to drag by a lot more than it does on your day off. Hour long lunch breaks feel like fifteen minutes but an hour on the clock feels like an eternity. When the clock finally strikes five, Vera packs up all of her stuff and rushes toward the door to avoid any possible interruptions on her just-started weekend. The cool air hits her cheeks as she opens the door so she pulls her coat a little tighter.
     "Have a nice weekend, Vee!" Someone calls behind her.
     Rather than turning around and running the risk of getting stuck in a long conversation, Vera waves behind her back and lets the cold air

Starting With You

My first best friend was Ashley and we were four. Every day at day care, we played with blocks and fake kitchen sets and went on the best imaginary adventures. We spent every single day together through the week and sometimes hung out on the weekends, too. Something happened one day, though, because I remember going through elementary school and my mom requesting she and I not be in the same classes because we couldn't get along. Over the years, I had friends here and there that I knew well enough to come over and hang out but none I considered best friends. At least, not until seventh grade.

One day, I was partnered with this girl in woodshop I'd never met before. At first, she was kind of quiet and that wasn't really my style so I asked her a bunch of questions until I found something we could talk about. Her name was Emma and after that first day, we were the absolute best of friends. I'll always remember that friendship because of what happened the day after I first met Emma. I walked into homeroom and some popular girls were laughing about something. I sat down next to one and asked them what was going on and they told me. I don't remember what it was exactly, I just remember they were making fun of Emma. At that moment, I was faced with a tough decision because middle school is the peak of life when popularity matters the most. Up until then, I was pretty good friends with the popular girls and I knew I could make fun of Emma with them and be in the in-crowd for the rest of my grade school career. Instead, I got up from the desk I was sitting in and walked over to sit down next to Emma, ignoring the popular girls. I knew it would ruin my repuation but I liked talking to Emma and being a friend to her felt way better than being friends with those other girls. I introduced Emma to some friends I'd already had when she told me she just moved from Ohio. She introduced all of us to Sara, who also just moved from Ohio. So the five of us kind of stuck together for seventh grade and I can honestly say it was one of the best years of my entire academic life. Emma and I hung out all the time. We had sleepovers and watched horror movies like the Grudges but also watched chick flicks like She's the Man and John Tucker Must Die.

Truthfully, Emma and I never stopped being friends. We were put into separate sections in eighth grade and slowly grew apart as we made new friends. She decided to hang out with a crowd of people who were pretty much the entire opposite of me. I missed her and I missed having someone close but that was part of life. At the end of eighth grade, her mom was tired of her misbehavior and she pulled her out of school and moved the family back to Ohio, cutting Emma off from our town in the mean time. That was hard but it got to the point where it was a fun surprise getting an email from Emma and it was like having a virtual pen pal when I wrote her messages about my life and read messages about hers. Nowadays, we're friends on Facebook and she and I would have never kept our friendship thriving had she stayed in this town. I'm more traditional and old school and she's picking up new trends like piercing her septum and going to school for art. She's happy though, and I applaud her for that. I miss the confidence she used to instill in me.

Losing Emma was hard. Sara and I became really good friends in eighth grade but it wasn't the same because Sara wasn't someone I wanted to hang out with outside of school. In ninth grade, I became closer friends with Caitlin and Emily from seventh grade and even met some of the friends they'd made in eighth grade. My next best friend was someone I'd met during softball in middle school that I had homeroom with in ninth grade. We were comparing schedules on the first day and realized we had tons of classes together so we grew pretty close. Her name was Victoria and we were a pretty great team. She had the answers I didn't and I had the answers she didn't. She pushed me to be the best I could possibly be and I taught her to relax sometimes. We were at each other's houses all the time and I don't think an hour went by that we weren't communicating somehow. She and I were best friends all through ninth grade and tenth grade, despite her disapproval of my first boyfriend. There were other fake best friends between tenth and eleventh grade but Victoria and I were the ultimate best friends. We even went to homecoming together in eleventh grade. What happened, you might ask? It started with a major disapproval for my second boyfriend and everything just kind of snowballed until we just blew up one day and stopped being friends. In her absence, I mostly depended on my then-boyfriend for friendship and he loved the attention.

During my senior year, I became best friends with a freshman who was excited about high school and we blended so well because we were so much alike. On the first day, she needed somewhere to sit so I told her she could sit with me and my friends. She blended in well and she and I became so close we would spend entire weekends together and I actually used her shower.

Two Years Later

Two years ago, in a long white gown and matching cap, I walked across a stage with two hundred other young adults, signaling the end of our mandatory academic career. Some were enlisting, some were going off to college, and some knew they were just simlpy entering the work force. I, myself, was undecided. That's right, I was one of the losers who had no idea what life after high school entailed. During my entire high school career, I thought I would go to college. Though my exact education path was never fully decided, furthering my education at least, was. For some reason, though, when push came to shove, I was undecided. I graduated high school with plans to continue my minimum wage career at the Kmart. That's not even mediocre. That's below average. That's a D on my life's report card.

To be clear, I didn't intend to stay at Kmar for the rest of my life. Full time opportunities were few and far betwen, if they came along at all, and the word 'raise' at Kmart was like the name 'Voldemort' at Hogwarts. I remember feeling so low about myself as my peers all seemed so put together and ready for the future while I had no idea what my next step might be. My future looked like minimum wage, holiday hours, a car older than me, and spending my weekdays off lounging around with my boyfriend doing nothing. My friends had higher expectactions for themselves than I of myself. They had a purpose, a plan. And I was just letting my life go with the flow. Suffice to say, I felt like a failure.

Fast forward two years later and you'll see a completely new person (and not just because a double chin disguises me). I have an actual career, a 401K, a 2.5 karat ring on my left hand, and realtor.com in my browsing history. I'm twenty years old and I've begun to spread my wings and fly. I don't feel like a failure. For once in my life, I feel like I have everything pretty much together. I have medical benefits, a car I put the miles on, a fiance, and somewhat of a plan. Some of my classmates' plans have fallen through. Some have made terrible life decisions. And others aren't even alive anymore.

Growing up is real. It isn't for the faint of heart and anyone who sees the world through rose-colored glasses won't survive. You have to make every decision with every duck in a row. You have to prepare for anything and everything.