Sometimes when I am asleep, and the wind is coming in through the window of my childhood bedroom, I can almost feel you here. For a sleepover, the way we used to do all the time. It was just our clothes then, I didn’t know what was mine or yours. It was our day then, we never left each other’s sides. It was our life then, a pact that if we made it to 40 and were still single, we’d run away together and live on the beach in Mexico. I always wake up in a sweat from those dreams now. Now I live in your phone as an unknown cell number, I live in your photos as a girl you used to know. I live in that stain I left on the carpet of your truck when my bubblegum ice cream melted. Now I’m the most hated girl. For twenty-five years in a row. If you’ve never been the last choice friend, undiagnosed depression at a very young age, artsy but filled with melancholy girl, then you’ve never been the most hated girl. But I’ve worn her skin all my life. At first it was the separate group chat with 9 memb...
I think I was like - the last of my friend group to figure out about being self conscious about my body. Every thirteen year old it seems has this moment of like “oh my god, I’m supposed to hate being chubby?” Well imagine me, a baby-faced ninth grader, finding out I’m supposed to be kinda hot now instead of cute. There were so many feelings that came with that. Because I had friends with long hair and straight teeth, and my braces were still months away from coming off, and because I wasn’t ready to give up heaping servings of spaghetti. I could not, at the time, come to terms with the fact that I was supposed to desire skinniness. In fact, I never even thought I was ‘big’ in the first place. Then that pivotal moment happened. I think I was 14. We were getting ready for a party and trading clothes, how girls do, and someone quietly noted how they could never fit into my clothes because they were ‘way too big.’ Ugh. My heart still breaks for the me who heard that. I never thought ...