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“You should be careful how much you’re eating, sweetheart. You’ve worked so hard to get into shape.” Mom patted my hand. “We’re all so proud of you.”
I froze, looking at my plate. Jesus, she was right. Why had I gotten that much food? I never ate that much.
“Corbin was an adorable little butterball,” my sister, Emma, said.
Everyone chuckled, including me as I rolled my eyes at them. “I’m not sure adorable is the word for it.” And I definitely didn’t need to eat all this food.
“Don’t say that to him,” Spencer’s voice broke through the chuckling.
“They didn’t mean anything by it,” I told him.
“That doesn’t matter. There’s nothing wrong with your plate. You hardly got a full serving of any of it, and if you had, that wouldn’t be a problem either.” He looked around the table at my family. “He should be safe in this house and not have to worry about people commenting on him eating too much or reminding him of something he’s insecure about.”
“He is safe in this house,” my brother, Blaine, said. “We love him and just want what’s best for him. You don’t have the right to come in here and judge us for it.”
But then, they judged me for things, didn’t they? They’d judged both me and Spencer.
“The way you judge us and our friendship?” Spencer asked, as if he’d plucked the thought from my head.
“We didn’t…” Mom started. “That’s not… Please, let’s just have a nice dinner.”
No one said much, but they began to eat. My family weren’t the type to make a scene. Sometimes I wondered how I was related to them because we were so different. I’d always been a big personality, which none of them was.
Tension lay thick in the air as everyone ate. I picked at the food but had lost my appetite, my brain going to what my mom had said…and to what my sister had said too. It made me think of when I’d turned eighteen and we’d gone out for ice cream for my birthday, how I’d said I wanted two scoops but my dad had only ordered me one. Or when I was a kid and Declan came over for the first time, Mom made cookies and Dec had taken three, but she had only allowed me one. Or the diets they had put me on, and when they’d made me get on the treadmill every night… Situation after situation kept popping into my head, creating a picture I had never allowed myself to see before.
There was nothing wrong with eating healthy or walking or limiting your snacks. But there had been hundreds of comments, all directed at me and not at anyone else in my family. They’d been disappointed I’d been overweight and disappointed I was gay. Disappointed I didn’t go to church, and maybe a hundred other reasons I’d never thought of before. How could I have missed that?
But Spencer didn’t. Spencer saw it…saw me. And he liked what he saw.
“Spencer’s right,” I found myself saying. I nearly turned around to make sure someone else hadn’t used my voice. “You’ve always made comments to me like that…about my weight, about my sexuality, all of it under the guise of loving me and wanting what’s best for me, but that’s not what it feels like inside. It hurts.”
“Come on, Corb. You know Mom and Dad don’t—”
“Let him speak,” Spencer cut Blaine off.
“Listen, buddy—”
I didn’t allow my brother to continue. “I know none of you wanted to hurt me, but you did. And you still do. Why can’t you ever accept me for who I am instead of trying to change me, or fix me, or put your beliefs on me, telling me that how I live my life hurts you.”
I couldn’t believe I was saying all this, couldn’t believe I’d kept this truth locked inside me because it made life easier for them. It had affected my whole life, hadn’t it? How I ate, how I saw myself. The way they showed their love had hurt me. I didn’t think people talked enough about that. It was always about people who did things hatefully, but sometimes how people chose to love could hurt too.
“Corbin, we didn’t mean to do that. We love you so much. We just want what’s best for you,” Mom said, tears in her eyes.
“Then love me how I am. Do you know that if Marcus or Spencer aren’t there, I try to only allow myself a meal a day? That I have such a complicated relationship with food because of the things people have hammered into my head? Kids at school called me fat, and then when I came home, you would allow my friends to have more cookies than me, or you’d hang out as a family while I was on the treadmill.”
