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Mom
Fine, ignore me. I was just trying to cheer you up. You've always been an ungrateful bitch.
God knows when she actually sent the texts. Service is spotty around this place. She got her reaction, though, even if I won't give her the satisfaction of letting her know it. In my bed, I pinch low on my sides at my love handles, if you could call them that. I can feel the upper curve of my hipbones when I do it, and the harder I pinch and the more I try to silence her voice, the louder it becomes.
You're not thin enough.
You're not pretty enough.
You're a fat, fat, fat piggy.
It's too much. I pinch harder, sending pins needling through my sides. I can still hear her, though.
No one will ever love you if you're fat.
Don't you want to be loved?
I stand, scrambling out of my bed, desperate to get some relief from whatever hell is playing out inside of my brain. I go to the bathroom, and as I stare at myself in the mirror attached to the wall, I see my mother's face looking back at me, telling me that I'm the reason my father hates coming home. I know it's not true. It's because as hard as he tries, he can never make her happy, but the memory hurts just the same.
I look down at my body and the ugly white panties and plain bra they make us wear until we get our shit back after it's been searched for contraband. I look at myself, and I think I see it for a minute, the real me with wobbly knees, indents between my ribs, and a gap between my thighs. It's there for a second and gone in the blink of an eye. The dysmorphia takes over, like it always does when I look at myself for too long.
I've had it since I was six years old, when Mom wanted me to compete in pageants and always win the big trophy, like my self-worth was tied to hers. I competed for years until she finally lost it when I didn't make it to the local semi-finals. She said I was too fat, too big to compete, and that all the other little girls and their parents were making fun of me.
I broke down and cried, ruining my mascara. I believed her, but now I understand the truth. She was the only one making fun of me as the other moms looked on, horrified. The damage has already been done, though, and as much as I tell myself that all of her mean, nasty words over the years were lies and that I am worthy of love and respect, I still can't see it. She's scarred me where you can't spot the marks, carved deep into the very center of me.
I don't think the doctors realize that no amount of therapy is going to undo that for me. I needed a mother, and I got a fucking bully instead.
I remember my last pageant before she pulled the plug completely, announcing I was too big and ugly to participate. I was eight years old, and I was so thirsty. I just wanted a sip of juice. My mouth felt like I'd been chewing on cotton balls after the bright stage lights that morning. There was a table for the contestants filled with juices, water bottles, prepackaged snacks, and bite-size cookies. I snatched a juice box off the top of it. I didn't think she was watching. She was so engrossed in talking to another mom about her pageant days, but then she was right beside me, snatching it out of my hand.
"Don't drink that," she snapped. "The sugar will make you even fatter."
She threw it in the trash and handed me a bottle of water.
I unscrewed the lid and started to drink. I thought she might let me have something to eat off the table. She was in a good mood that day after all. She even let me have a biscuit at breakfast, and she never let me have morning carbs.
"Mom," I had said, greedily gulping the water before taking a deep breath. "I'm hungry. Can I have something off the table?"
She looked at the table, her gaze scrolling across the assortment of crackers, cookies, Goldfish, and Rice Krispie treats.
"Pigs are always hungry," she told me, "and you're a pig, aren't you? You want to eat that crap?" She cackled. "I might as well buy you a bucket of slop."
I started to cry, and my father frowned as he looked over at me. He murmured something about embarrassing ourselves in public and how my mother needed to calm down. It was just a snack after all. Too bad for me, it was the only time he ever used his backbone. He's always been enamored with her, my fucking mother.
She was everything he ever wanted, captain of the cheerleading team that went to state finals, a model on the weekends, and the epitome of a pretty wife for a pretty life. Then there was her money too, inherited by her parents and theirs before them, and the social connections that come with loads of cash, like being invited by the governor to his personal dinner parties on occasion. She was everything he ever wanted, and he got it all, at my expense. Now he ships me across the continental United States because he can't deal with his failures and seeing what he let her do to me.
The fucking coward.
Oink, oink, oink.
It's harder when the dysmorphia takes over because then I can't really see where my mother is wrong. Instead, it all blurs together, and I see the fat at my sides, the bit of a belly on my abdomen, and the cellulite sprinkled across the backs of my thighs.
I zero in.
I find every flaw.
Until it's all I can see, and I am the sum of the worst parts of myself.
I look in the mirror attached to the wall, but it's too short and small. Even when I stand on my toes to try to get a better look at my body, I can't see much more than my top half.
